John the Baptist's Birth and Preparation (5): John's Godly Upbringing (Luke 1:66-80) by Rev. Angus Stewart
I. His Spiritusl Instruction
II. His Personal Growth
J. Feather: "The Hebrew people have always been strong upon the poetic side, and there is much in the story of their race that spontaneously lends itself to this treatment,—much of heroic faith; of walking with God, not knowing whither they walked; of sublime victory or pathetic captivity; and above all, there is that religious truth and those observances around which their highest aspirations and deepest reverence clung,—the presence of Jehovah among them, and the sanctities of His worship. Loved and prized by all were 'Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide.' And as children naturally fall to poetry, for the world to them is still poetic, John would certainly store in his memory those psalms and poetic compositions in history and prophecy which still form a large part of the choicest and most valuable spiritual heritage of mankind" (The Last of the Prophets: John the Baptist, pp. 25-26).
Josephus (a first-century Jew): "Our principal care is this, to educate our children well; and we think it to be the most necessary business of our whole life, to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of piety that have been delivered down to us ... [The law] also commands us to bring the children up in learning, and to exercise them in the laws, and make them acquainted with the acts of their predecessors, in order to their imitation of them, and that they may be nourished up in the laws from their infancy, and might neither transgress them nor yet have any pretence for their ignorance of them."
Matthew Poole on Zacharias' prophecy (Luke 1:67-79): "In this prophecy there is both predictions of what should come to pass concerning John and concerning Christ, and also applications of what was before spoken of them by the prophets; and it is observed by some, that it is an epitome of all those ancient prophecies, and that there is in it a compendium of the whole doctrine of the gospel."