Earlier this month, I wrote a post called What is a horn of salvation? In that post I discussed the difficulty of understanding the use of the metaphor “horn” in the Bible. Many Bible translations just translate the metaphor word-for-word and then give a paltry footnote about “horn symbolizes strength.” Over the course of discussing this metaphor in the comment section we came to understand that “to exalt someone’s horn” meant to give them politicial power or military victory.

Left untranslated, the metaphor is mostly meaningless for modern readers and that is a big loss. Specifically in the Gospel of Luke, understanding the significance of a “horn of salvation in the house of David” provides vital background information for interpreting Jesus’ incarnation. Zechariah prays “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel because he has visited his people and accomplished redemption. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David.” Our modern tendency is to apply this personally: I have been redeemed and saved by Jesus. But that is most certainly not what Zechariah is talking about here. This is about liberation from the Romans. This is about freedom for the people of Israel. Jesus is that coming messiah who will be a military victor like David. Only when we understand that are we able to fully appreciate how Jesus simultaneously fulfills and disappoints the hopes of the Jews.

Even though there is a centuries-old tradition of under-translating “horn of salvation” in English there is a parallel tradition of translating the intended meaning of Zechariah’s words. And that tradition is found in the Book of Common Prayer. Zechariah’s prayer is traditionally referred to as the Benedictus, here is the text of the first lines of the Benedictus from the 1559 Book of Common Prayer:

BLESSED be the Lord God of Israell: for he hath visited and redemed his people; And hath raised up a mighty salvacion for us: in the house of hys servaunt David;

Over the centuries, that language has been modernized but the most recent version still adequately translates the meaning of the original:

Blessed be the Lord the God of Israel, who has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty Saviour, born of the house of his servant David.

In fact I consider this to be a slight improvement since it uses “Saviour” instead of “salvation” which I believe accurately personifies this “salvation” in a person. By the way, the Latin translation uses cornu, horn.

In 1998 we spent the summer in England and one of my many book purchases was an edition of “Celebrating Common Prayer.” For a couple years after that we regularly used this “Readers Digest” version of the Book of Common Prayer in our family devotions. If you’ve never heard the little voices of children reciting the Benedictus it is a beautiful sound. And thanks to some very good translating it is understandable to children.

Jesus is our horn of salvation! To appreciate that statement we must understand a lot of background information. First, “horn” was an ancient metaphor for military power. Second, Zechariah probably understood the advent as the coming of a military conqueror modeled after King David. Third, Jesus did in fact come to set his people free and to usher in a kingdom but this was a spiritual and not political kingdom.