Luke 1:48 Commentary - Whedon's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I. Recognition of God’s grace to her humility.

Compare the song of Hannah upon a similar occasion, the birth of a future prophet and judge of Israel. This is formed upon the same model of that, as proof that the new dispensation is the outgrowth of the old, and that the same spirit, in different ages and persons, breathes the same holy strains. But the song of the latter is gentler, grander, opening into a far sublimer prospective.

48. Low estate of his handmaiden Mary’s ground of praise and thanksgiving is the wonderful grace of God that had condescended to even her. True, she is daughter of the noblest line of Israel or the world, but for ages that royal line has been in a low estate. It seemed wonderful that the daughter of neither Augustus nor Herod should be selected as the mother of the Incarnate, but the humble virgin of Nazareth. Some ten years before Mary uttered this hymn, Virgil, the Roman poet, had in one of his finest strains predicted the birth of a noble babe, under whose sway a new order of things should commence, and the renovation of the world be accomplished. It was suggested, doubtless, by the prevalent presentiment that a great deliverer was soon to be born, arising from the prophecies of the Messiah. But the worldly poet preferred to find his mother for the Messiah in the wife of a Roman consul. So differs the wisdom of God from the folly of man.

All generations shall call me blessed Here is prophecy; and how wonderfully has it been fulfilled! Sad it is, indeed, to think that even the Christian Church has made her the object of idolatry. But let that not prevent our uttering the epithet blessed upon her whom God deigned to honour above all her sex.