“And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.”
And then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying — the eighty-four years of age or widowhood communicate the extraordinary length of Anna's faithful waiting. Never left the temple: the single-minded devotion of her later life is entirely temple-oriented. Night and day fasting and praying: the sustained intercessory prayer that defines her decades of waiting. Anna is the Jewish tradition's archetype of the faithful widow whose entire existence is oriented toward God's house.
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