Daily Bible Reading 13th March 2026 // Luke 1:46-56
46 And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
52 he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring for ever.”
56 And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.
We must note at this point a curious and significant fact: on the one hand, there is no specific mention of the Child to be born in her song; and on the other, as commentators are quick to point out, the things she does say do not seem to have much connection with what has happened to her. The significance of this is that Mary's song very largely and considerably echoes another song, the song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2, and clearly owes a great deal in its thought, structure and ideas to that earlier utterance. As for Hannah, the Lord's turning away of her reproach was seen by her as a token of His turning away Israel's reproach. What He did in her He would do in the nation, and through what He had done to her. And this is the kind of emphasis we see in the Magnificat. Mary saw beyond her own involvement in this divine transaction to what God was doing for the world. The thing she sang about was not the virgin birth and the mystery of conceiving by the Holy Spirit, but what that signified for the world. As Hannah saw in the birth of Samuel the turning away of the reproach of Israel, so Mary saw this also, on a far greater scale, in the birth of her son. And it can hardly be doubted that it was through her clearly intimate knowledge of the Scriptures that she was enabled to discern the purposes of God for her and through her. The entrance of His Word had given her light, and her whole understanding was quickened into awareness, by the influence of the Scriptures upon her.