Exegesis:
kai egeneto hōs ēkousen … eskirtēsen, cf. on v. 8.
ton aspasmon tēs Marias ‘the greeting of Mary,’ i.e. Mary greeted Elizabeth when entering Zechariah’s house. There is no reason to suppose that in her greeting Mary had told the story of the angelic visit.
eskirtēsen to brephos ‘the babe leaped.’
skirtaō (only here and v. 44 in the N.T.) ‘to leap,’ is used in the Septuagint in Gen. 25.22 of the struggling of the unborn twins in Rebekah’s womb. Neither that meaning, nor the general meaning ‘to leap,’ or ‘to spring’ are adequate here, where a sudden and vigorous stirring of the unborn child within his mother’s womb is meant.
brephos either ‘unborn child’ as here and in v. 44, or a newly born child as in 2.12, 16; in 18.15 it has a more general meaning.
en tē koilia autēs ‘in her womb’; the phrase probably goes with the preceding to brephos, rather than with eskirtēsen.
koilia ‘womb.’
eplēsthē pneumatos hagiou ‘was filled the Holy Spirit’; when in the aorist tense the phrase refers to a sudden and momentary experience enabling a person to inspired utterances, as here and in v. 67. Here it marks the utterance of Elizabeth in vv. 42f as prophetic.
Translation:
In rendering the verb to hear the following points must be kept in mind. Some receptor languages use the verb, as a rule, with an object, others do so always. In some languages the object can be both a person and the words said by a person, but elsewhere it must be either the words or the person. In the latter case the phrase in this verse will have to become ‘heard Mary greeting (or, while she greeted, or, who greeted) her.’ When intentional, attentive hearing is meant a specific verb (e.g. ‘listen’ English, Sranan Tongo, in 9.35), or a specific verbal for of ‘to hear’ is obligatory in some languages. The same is true when ‘to hear’ refers to the faculty of hearing, see below on “the deaf hear” in 7.22.
The babe … in her womb, or, ‘within/inside her (i.e. Elizabeth)’ (cf. An American Translation, Phillips, Apache). If “babe” is rendered by ‘(little) child’ (as is idiomatic in several languages), the phrase “in the womb”, taken adjectivally, qualifies the child as still unborn (cf. also ‘the child that-made abdomen-her,’ Tboli); if idiom requires here a more specific term for “babe”, such as, ‘unborn child,’ ‘embryo’ (for which see on “fruit of the womb” in v. 42), the prepositional phrase may be unduly redundant and better omitted.
Leaped. A literal rendering may sound vulgar (Dan), or unidiomatic, e.g. because the verb means only ‘leaping of a surface’ (Aymara, Tboli). Current idioms for the process here mentioned are, ‘trampled’ (Javanese), ‘shook-itself’ (Kituba), ‘wriggled’ (Thai), ‘danced’ (Sediq), ‘stirred’ (Toraja-Sa’dan), ‘sprawled’ (Batak Toba), ‘played’ (Shipibo-Conibo). In some cases idiom or decency requires a more generic word, e.g. ‘moved’ (Tae,’ Aymara, Tagalog); in Dan the clause has to be rendered, ‘her stomach moved.’
And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, or, ‘now (particle indicating punctiliar action) the H. Sp. came to be/stay/live with E.’ (Tboli); cf. also above on v. 15.
Quoted with permission from Reiling, J. and Swellengrebel, J.L. A Handbook on the Gospel of Luke. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1971. For this and other handbooks for translators see here . Make sure to also consult the Handbook on the Gospel of Mark for parallel or similar verses.