Zechariah, Father of John the Baptist

Zechariah was a priest of the course of Abijah at the temple of Jerusalem in the last decades of the first century before Christ, married to Elizabeth, a kinswoman of the Virgin Mary, and grown old without children. The first chapter of Luke's Gospel records what happened to him at the altar of incense on the day his course drew the lot to enter the sanctuary: the archangel Gabriel appeared at the right hand of the altar to announce the birth of a son who would be the Forerunner of the Christ, and Zechariah — disbelieving, as he asked how this could be at his and his wife's age — was struck dumb until the day the prophecy was fulfilled.

When the child was born and Zechariah was asked what to name him, he wrote "John" on a tablet, and his speech returned to him at once. From his mouth came the prophetic hymn the Church sings at every Lauds: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people."

Tradition records that when Herod sent his soldiers to slaughter the children of Bethlehem, the boy John was hidden in the wilderness by his mother, and Zechariah was murdered by Herod's men between the temple and the altar — the place to which the Lord Himself refers in the Gospel ("the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar"). His feast is kept on September 5.