{Is heard} (eis(886b)ousth(885c)). First aorist passive indicative.
A sort of timeless aorist, "was heard" when made, and so "is
heard" now. Probably the prayer was for a son in spite of the
great age of Elisabeth, though the Messianic redemption is
possible also. {John} (I(9361)n(886e)). The word means that God is
gracious. The mention of the name should have helped Zacharias to
believe. The message of the angel (verses  13-17 ) takes on a
metrical form when turned into Hebrew (Ragg) and it is a prose
poem in Greek and English like  1:30-33,35-37,42-45,46-55,68-70  2:10-12,14,29-32,34-35 . Certainly Luke has preserved the
earliest Christian hymns in their oldest sources. He is the first
critic of the sources of the Gospels and a scholarly one.