It seems like the angel tells her in Luke 1:31 that it's happening whether she wants it to or not

> "You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus"

It's nice that she accepts it afterwards, but that's definitely not how consent works, and it doesn't seem like she was given any other option

Edit: I saw your other comment saying "there's other evidence of god respecting free will and he probably would have been fine with it if she didn't want to". The bible is full of contradictions so there may be evidence of a respect for free will somewhere else, but this specific story seems to contradict that

There's a difference between prediction and commanding.

It's like when a father tells his daughter she'll get married and have three sweet little children. That doesn't mean it's immediately set in stone and she's forced to.

I can agree with that, but as far as we see in the text it is a command - she's never told she has another option and we as the readers aren't given any indication that she thinks there is. I get that there's a charitable interpretation here if you look for it but I'm trying to just go based on what it says in the book

At least we can all agree YHWH was a bit more more polite about it than, say, Zeus would have been.

But he was god… could she really be in the position to refuse? It’s like Monica and Bill Clinton… a poor intern with a powerful president! That is why it is usually forbidden for a person in power to hit on an underling!

As I said below, a cursory look at Christianity teaches the God respects human free will. It's partly why so much evil is in the world. If Mary had refused (which she could have), he would have respected that decision. The Jewish people would have needed to wait longer for their messiah, and it might not be the year 2022 right now.

Also, God is not a human, and is not subject to the human weakness that a position in power has for underlings.

You assume that Mary has not felt any pressure to accept such request from god? It’s not like Old Testament god is a nice guy… I would be terrorised to disappoint him! So no… Mary was in no condition to refuse!

God is at fault for giving free will to humans.

Well, funnily enough, he put us in a Garden where we had everything we could possibly want and we had free will, but had no knowledge of what evil was. However, because we had free will and he didn't want little robots, he put a tree in it with fruit that would give us that knowledge if we freely choose it, but warned us of the consequences. We chose the knowledge. And we made that choice pretty quickly off the bat too, Adam and Eve hadn't even had any kids yet when they made that decision.

And now, thousands of thousands of years later (in the grand scheme of things according to the Bible), a Hacker News commenter complains that God shouldn't have given us free will to make that decision and we would have been happier staying robots. Philosophically profound that is.

Not a complaint but a fact.

God was in a position of power. Infinite power.