The Story
The first words spoken by a human being in the New Testament are spoken by a young woman in a forgotten village. "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" She has just been told, by an angel standing inside her house, that she is going to bear the Son of the Most High.
Her name was Miriam in her own language, Maria in the Greek the world would come to know her by. Mary of Nazareth. She was probably in her mid-teens; the Gospels do not say. She was engaged to a tradesman named Joseph, a craftsman of doors and yokes, who would have had every legal right to break the engagement when the news of the pregnancy came. He was warned in a dream not to. He kept her.
What she said to the angel, after her one careful question, is the line on which the rest of the New Testament hangs: "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word." It is two thousand years old. It is the most consequential yes ever given by a human being.
Then she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant herself with the child who would become John the Baptist. And in the doorway of the older woman's house, the younger woman opened her mouth and sang. The song she sang is recorded in Luke 1, and it is older than the New Testament itself in its rhythms, because Mary was singing back the song of Hannah from 1 Samuel 2. "My soul magnifies the Lord… He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of humble estate." It is a revolutionary song. It is also a young Hebrew woman's song. The two have always been the same.
Eight days after the baby was born she carried Him into the temple in Jerusalem, where an old man named Simeon — who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the consolation of Israel — took the child in his arms and blessed God. And then he turned to Mary and prophesied. "This child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel… and a sword will pierce through your own soul also."
She kept the words in her heart. She kept many words in her heart. Thirty-three years later, on a hill outside Jerusalem, she stood at the foot of a cross and watched her son die. The sword Simeon had named was unsheathed at last. Jesus saw her there, and saw the disciple John beside her, and said two sentences that gave her a new son and gave the Church a mother: "Woman, behold your son… behold your mother."
She is in the upper room at Pentecost. After that, the New Testament loses her in the silence of the Church. But the Magnificat keeps singing. And every Christmas, every Lent, every Easter, the Church remembers a girl from Nazareth who said yes, and a mother who stood at a cross, and a sword that did its work and was, somehow, holier than any throne.
Scripture
And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus."
Luke 1:30–31 (ESV)
And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."
Luke 1:38 (ESV)
And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant."
Luke 1:46–48 (ESV)
And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed."
Luke 2:34–35 (ESV)
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
John 19:26–27 (ESV)
Lyrics
*[Intro]
Before the world had heard her name,
A girl no older than the dawn
Looked into the face of Gabriel
And said one word: yes.
[Verse 1]
She did not ask the angel
How a thing like this could be
Beyond a single quiet question —
"How shall this be, for me?"
And he answered with a fire
That was older than the law:
"The Holy Spirit shall come over you —
And you will hold what no one saw."
[Pre-Chorus]
And she lowered her head and lifted her hand,
And she said the line that broke the world —
"Behold the servant of the Lord —
Let it be unto me Thy word…"
[Chorus]
My soul magnifies the Lord,
My spirit lifts in song,
For He has looked upon His lowly maid
And kept her all along.
The mighty fall, the lowly rise,
The hungry eat their fill —
And the Word becomes a heartbeat
In a girl from Nazareth still.
[Verse 2]
She brought Him to the temple
Where an old man waited there,
And he held the child and wept aloud
And he prophesied an air:
"This child is set for the rising and the falling —
A sign that shall be opposed —
And a sword shall pierce your own soul too —"
And she folded what he disclosed.
[Pre-Chorus 2]
She watched Him grow in wisdom,
She watched Him leave the wood,
She watched Him heal and teach and bleed,
And she stood where mothers stood…
[Bridge]
(Mary's voice, broken but clear)
I am Mary —
Handmaid of the Lord —
And the sword that Simeon promised me
Is at last unsheathed in full…
Yet my soul still magnifies the Lord —
Yet my spirit lifts in song —
For the One I held in Bethlehem
Is the One who holds me all along…
HE WHO IS MIGHTY HAS DONE GREAT THINGS!
AND HOLY IS HIS NAME!
HIS MERCY IS FROM AGE TO AGE
ON THOSE WHO FEAR HIS FRAME!
[Final Chorus]
My soul magnifies the Lord,
My spirit lifts in song —
For He has looked upon His lowly maid
And kept her all along.
(All along, all along, all along…)
From Hannah's barren whisper
To the empty Easter dawn —
Every woman in this window
Has been singing all along.
*[Outro]
And the same God who heard a girl in Galilee
Hears the silence of every heart that bows —
And the song that started under the palm of Deborah
Is the song that is rising now.
About the song
"The Sword Through Her Heart" is the EP's closer and its emotional peak. Mary's Magnificat in Luke 1 deliberately rewrites Hannah's prayer in 1 Samuel 2 — so the song does too. The melody that opened the EP under Hannah's silence comes back here, transposed, sung by a girl in Nazareth and then by a mother at a cross. Every woman in the EP has been singing, in one way or another, all along. This is the song that finally lets them sing together.