Zacharias said to the angel, "How can I be sure of this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well advanced in years."
For I am an old man; at least sixty years of age; for with the Jews, sixty years were reckoned, לזקנה, "for old age" w; and a man of these years, was accounted an old man: and the Jewish Rabbins observe x, that the word for old age in Job 30:2 is by "gematry, sixty"; that is, the letters of the word, numerically make so much. The Mahometan writers, as before observed on Luke 1:7 make him to be ninety nine years of age: he was not discharged from service; the Levites were at fifty, but not the priests; blemishes, as the Jewish writers say y, made them unfit for service, but years did not: and even the law concerning the Levites, they say z, only respected the time they carried the sanctuary from place to place, and not future generations; and that they are disqualified neither by blemishes, nor by years, only by voice, for singing of the song; but then they might be among the porters; so that they were not on that account laid aside from all service: