Elizabeth’s “Seclusion”: A Veiled Reference to Her Bold Belief?

Abstract

Abstract The narrative significance of Elizabeth’s “hiding” for five months in response to her pregnancy (Luke 1:24) has not been adequately explored. Some have proposed that Elizabeth’s hiding serves to keep her pregnancy secret until the time of the angel’s annunciation to Mary. This article concurs but argues that Elizabeth’s action is also a response of faith to the angel’s prophesy regarding her pregnancy. Clues in the narrative emphasize that Elizabeth was both past her childbearing years and that she hid herself soon after the conception of her baby. As a postmenopausal woman, however, she did not have the telltale pregnancy marker of a missed menstrual period. Thus, she hid herself before she had any physical evidence of pregnancy. Elizabeth, then, acted on her belief that “there will be a fulfillment of the things that were said from the Lord” (1:45), setting up a contrast with her unbelieving husband and an alignment with her believing relative Mary. This is the first of many contrasts in the narrative between characters who respond with belief and those who do not. Luke’s reference to Elizabeth’s “hiding herself” for five months is not an insignificant narrative detail but one that presents Elizabeth as the first of many unexpected characters of faith in Luke’s account of the “things fulfilled among us” (1:1).