"If the birth of Christ, to borrow Zechariah's metaphor, was 'the Dawn from on high' (1:78), then Chapter 1 of the Gospel covers the last few hours before sunrise. The night had been long and, for Israel, at times very dark. But through it all - through times of national success and disaster, through the conquest and the monarchy, through the exile and return - hope had persisted that the night would at last end and, as Malachi put it, 'the sun of righteousness would arise with healing in his wings' (4:2). Isaiah had prophesied (40:3-8) that before the 'glory of the Lord' should 'be revealed', a forerunner would be sent to prepare the way of the Lord. Malachi had added that before the day of the Lord came, the prophet Elijah would be sent to 'turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse' (4:5-6). And now more than four hundred years after Malachi the seemingly interminable night was coming to its ends: the dawn was about to break."
David Gooding, According to Luke, 33-34.
