Translation
And answering, the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
Go to footnote numberand the power of the MOST HIGH will overshadow
Go to footnote numberyou, therefore also the holy one being born will be called the SON OF GOD.
Go to footnote numberParaphrase
By way of an answer the angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will temporarily take over your body and the power of THE MOST AWE-INSPIRING, MOST POWERFUL GOD, will totally cover and surround you, and that is the reason the one to be born will be set apart for a special purpose and will be called
ONE-AND-THE-SAME WITH GOD.
Footnotes
1
The phrase “come upon you,” means that “the Holy Spirit will take over for a short time, allowing your body to do things that it would otherwise not be able to do.” A good example is that of Sampson; almost every time he did something extraordinary, the text first says that the Spirit of God came over him and . . . he did something amazing. This shows that his strength was from God, it was not his own. I picture Sampson as a pretty normal-looking guy, not a ripped body-builder type. I know the story of Sampson presents some questions in our minds due to his lack of moral fiber; all I am saying here is that the usage of the phrase “the Holy Spirit came upon him” is there to point to God’s intervention in the situation. Another example is in the book of Acts where we see the phrase “full of the Holy Spirit” used several times to indicate that the events to follow were not normal human effort, but were made possible only because of the Holy Spirit of God intervening in the situation.
2: “overshadow”
This word means “to cast a shadow on, or to cover in shadow, to envelop in shadow.” Therefore the translation “overshadow” is correct, but with such a choice in English the reason such a word is used is still not clear. That word was used to communicate the idea that the Holy Spirit would be totally covering and surrounding (i.e. in charge of and in control of) every aspect of this “problem” she had presented in her question.
3: “Son of God”
Now Mary could have no doubt what the angel was talking about. He was indeed saying she would give birth to the long-awaited Messiah, and he was making clear that the Messiah would not be a human leader, but would be a member of the Godhead wrapped in human form. His father would be God Himself, not Joseph.