Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

122:9.2There lin­gered con­stantly about the courts of the tem­ple two re­mark­able char­ac­ters, Sim­eon a singer and Anna a po­et­ess. Sim­eon was a Judean, but Anna was a Galilean. This cou­ple were fre­quently in each other’s com­pany, and both were in­ti­mates of the priest Zach­a­rias, who had con­fided the se­cret of John and Je­sus to them. Both Sim­eon and Anna longed for the com­ing of the Mes­siah, and their con­fi­dence in Zach­a­rias led them to be­lieve that Je­sus was the ex­pected de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish peo­ple.

122:9.3Zach­a­rias knew the day Joseph and Mary were ex­pected to ap­pear at the tem­ple with Je­sus, and he had pre­ar­ranged with Sim­eon and Anna to in­di­cate, by the salute of his up­raised hand, which one in the pro­ces­sion of first-born chil­dren was Je­sus.

122:9.4For this oc­ca­sion Anna had writ­ten a poem which Sim­eon pro­ceeded to sing, much to the as­ton­ish­ment of Joseph, Mary, and all who were as­sem­bled in the tem­ple courts. And this was their hymn of the re­demp­tion of the first-born son:

122:9.28On the way back to Beth­le­hem, Joseph and Mary were silent—con­fused and over­awed. Mary was much dis­turbed by the farewell salu­ta­tion of Anna, the aged po­et­ess, and Joseph was not in har­mony with this pre­ma­ture ef­fort to make Je­sus out to be the ex­pected Mes­siah of the Jew­ish peo­ple.