Anna’s unexpected blessing

She is not one of the better-known women of the Bible and appears in only a few verses at the beginning of the gospel of Luke (2:36-39). The prophet Anna endured a long life and saw some of the most difficult events in Israel’s troubled history. As a descendant of Jacob’s son Asher, she is of one of the northern tribes thought to be lost after the Assyrian conquest seven centuries earlier. Assuming the events recounted in these verses occurred around 4 B.C., Anna would have been born in approximately 88 B.C., during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, the second ruler of the Hasmonean dynasty founded by his great-uncle Judas Maccabeus.

Nearly a century earlier, Judas and his brothers had revolted against the tyrannical Greek ruler of Syria, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who was persecuting the Jews in his efforts to hellenize his diverse subjects.

By the time of Alexander, the autonomous kingdom of Judah had forged an alliance with the Roman republic against the Greeks, which Rome used to its own advantage. Anna would have been a young woman of about 25 in 63 B.C., when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem, thereby making Judea into a puppet kingdom of the republic, soon to be restyled an empire.

Sorrow to joy

How Anna becomes a prophet we do not know. What we do know is that, in addition to experiencing the subjugation of her own people, she has seen sorrow in her personal life as well. She married, likely in her youth and perhaps to a much older man, who died seven years later, after which she remained a widow, a status that makes her particularly vulnerable to abuse.

From then on, she has devoted her life to prayer and fasting and appears to have taken up residence in the temple. Perhaps it is here that she was endowed by God with her prophetic gifts. One can imagine her reputation growing with the years, with visitors to the temple seeking out the wisdom of this remarkable woman of God.

Near the end of a life filled with adversity, Anna, whose Hebrew name means grace, is surprised by joy, to quote the title of C. S. Lewis’ famous book. As a permanent resident of the temple, she is on hand when Mary and Joseph bring the 40-day-old infant Jesus to offer sacrifice in fulfilment of the law. “And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (2:38). More of the surrounding passage in Luke is devoted to the equally elderly Simeon who speaks to God and to the baby’s parents. But it is Anna who becomes the first evangelist, telling others about the promised salvation now in their midst in the person of Jesus Christ.