as it is written in [Isaiah] the prophet, Behold, *I* send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way.
Mark gives no birth story and no family line. He opens with words spoken centuries earlier, and three questions follow. Why start with prophecy? Why name Isaiah when the first words come from Malachi? Why change one small pronoun?
Each Gospel opens in the way that fits its subject, and Mark's subject is a Servant at work. A record of service does not need a family tree.
In John, a human genealogy would be out of place. That Gospel presents Him as the Word who was God. It would be just as out of place in Mark's Gospel, though for the opposite reason, since Mark shows Him as the Servant. As another has said, "Mark is devoted to the details of His service… So, as the Lord was the perfect Servant, the perfect account of it says nothing here of a genealogy; for who would ask the pedigree of a servant?"
What a servant does need is proof of who sent him. The prophecy gives it.
If a servant's family line is not a needed opening to the account of his work, is it not fitting to state his credentials? … Jehovah guaranteed that Jesus was the promised Servant. That should have secured His acceptance by the people chosen to guard the prophetic writings.
The words that follow come from Malachi. The words in the next verse come from Isaiah. Some copies smoothed this over by reading "in the prophets." The older manuscripts keep Isaiah's name.
In Mark 1:2 the Revisers have rightly dropped "in the prophets," though most manuscripts give it. It is a clear correction made to ease the difficulty… Even on human ground it is absurd to suppose that the writer did not know that the first words quoted came from Malachi 3:1. If we allow inspiration, the only question is the principle of merging a secondary quotation into a primary one… Careless readers have been quick to charge a slip, as the later copyists were to remove it. But it is as irreverent as it is unwise and evil to hide or deny the truth in points like these, because Scripture applies Scripture in ways that differ from the ways of ordinary men.
In Malachi, God says the way will be prepared before Me. Mark has before your face. The words now address the One who was coming.
Second, we have here Jehovah speaking and Jehovah sending — "Behold, I send my messenger." And as it is Jehovah who sends, so it is Jehovah who is coming. Malachi is precise about this: "Behold, I send my messenger before my face." In Mark the pronoun changes from the first person to the second, "before your face," because of the incarnation. He who sends had taken the place of the sent One, but the Sender and the Sent are one… So He who stands before us in this Gospel as Jehovah's Servant is the One who sends the greatest of all servants besides Himself.
The prophecy gives John two titles. Both point away from the man himself.
He is called "My messenger" and "a voice." The important thing about a messenger is the message he brings, and a voice is important for what it speaks. The Lord Jesus (though far more than a messenger) was bringing the matchless message of the grace of God. The way must be prepared for this, however. John's message called people to repentance, the only attitude that rightly values God's grace.
Jesus applied these words of Malachi to John himself, and He did it when John sat in prison.
The Baptist's testimony was over. He was in prison, and to all appearance he and his work had failed. Then the Lord said plainly, "This is he of whom it is written, 'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist"… John abased himself in line with the prophecy of Isaiah, but the Lord exalted him in line with the prophecy of Malachi.
In Malachi, these words open onto a day no one could survive. Mark quotes them anyway.
The One predicted is the coming Judge. The prophet goes on: "Behold, He is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming, and who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap…" This looks forward to a day of judgment still future. Yet the same Person who is then to come as supreme Judge came to John to be baptised in the Jordan.
- Sent — the verse gives a servant's credentials, not a family tree. Mark shows who sent Jesus.
- Written — Malachi's words stand under Isaiah's name. Commentators call this deliberate: a secondary quotation merged into a primary one, not a slip.
- Yours — Malachi's "before Me" becomes "before your face": the God who sends and the Lord who comes are one.
- Voice — the messenger matters only for his message: repentance, clearing the road for grace.
- Coming — the Judge of Malachi's refining fire is the same Person who came to the Jordan to be baptised.
Voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of [the] Lord, make his paths straight.
Mark opens with a voice, not with a birth or a family line. An unnamed herald stands in an empty place and calls people to clear a road. Whose road is it, and what does He ask of them?
The words come from Isaiah. There the road belongs to the LORD Himself. Mark applies them to Jesus:
Jesus of the New Testament is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. The second quotation from Isaiah speaks of preparing the way of the LORD. So again it is Jehovah whose way is prepared — for Jesus is Jehovah.
Mark names the herald by his sound, not his name. Pressed to say who he was, John the Baptist answered:
They were determined to have an answer, and he gives them one. They would force him to speak of himself, and he does. But notice his answer! Who or what was he? Nobody. He was only "a voice." There is a real moral beauty in this. Here was a man of real power and dignity, one of Christ's most famous servants, holding the very highest position. His preaching had stirred the hearts of thousands. Angels had announced his birth. Prophets had foretold his ministry. He was the herald of the kingdom, the friend of the King. Yet when this remarkable man is forced to speak of himself, he will say only, "I am a voice." Not even a man, but only a voice.
Why did this call go out in an empty place? By human standards the world of that day was in good order:
Everything was in the most perfect order, as far as man could judge, and as far as man's wisdom could achieve it. You will find the emperor in his place, and the priests in their place. Government and religion were all in their proper place and order... Still all was a wilderness as far as God and light and truth were concerned... The servant of God stood outside that ordered state of things. He was not claiming a throne for Jesus, but ploughing up the consciences of men.
The command falls on the hearers, not the herald. So what did God want from them?
Repentance was necessary. Self-judgment, and the confessing and forsaking of sins, were essential if their portion was to be blessing and not judgment. For the One whose way John was to prepare was Jehovah Himself, the Lord. What then was John compared to such a glorious Person? He was but a voice... In preparation for receiving Jehovah their King they were to make His paths straight. As His people they were to walk in His paths and not paths of their own choosing. Reality and the evidence of it was what was required, not natural claim and empty profession.
Mark joins words from two prophets but names only Isaiah. Commentators differ on why. One writer says the two prophecies point in opposite directions:
Malachi foretells the messenger who was to bring in the promised One. Isaiah foretells the message itself. A nameless, unknown "voice" crying in the wilderness would announce it before the Messiah came. In Malachi the messenger prepares the way; in Isaiah the voice calls on the audience to make ready the way. The later prophet looks on to coming judgment, the earlier to coming salvation.
That difference, the same writer suggests, explains the naming — and the silence:
John's preaching produced a moral preparation, and that is what this Gospel writer records. So he names Isaiah, who prophesied of this preparation and not of the future day of judgment... Leaving out Malachi's name here says something loud. "The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" agrees with the prophecies of mercy, not with the prophecies of punishment.
Was the road ever cleared? One writer holds that the cry met refusal, so the promise still waits:
Israel as a whole was blind and deaf. The testimony was cut short, and the people refused the Messiah... The way of Jehovah was not yet prepared, and there was no straight highway in the desert for God. Man was left on his own responsibility, and he heard the cry only to sin the more. But in time God will make it all good in grace by His own power.
- Wilderness — Outward order can still be a desert to God. That is where God set His witness.
- Voice — The herald claims nothing for himself. He is only a sound carrying a message about Someone else.
- Way — The road belongs to Jehovah, and Jesus is Jehovah. The verse is a claim about who He is.
- Straight — What God asks for is His paths, not ours; reality, not profession.
- Glory — The cry was refused then, so the highway is still unfinished. God will complete it by His own power.
There came John baptising in the wilderness, and preaching [the] baptism of repentance for remission of sins.
Mark opens with no birth story and no family line. The first voice we hear belongs to a man in the desert. Two questions come at once. Why does this Gospel begin in an empty land instead of the temple? And what could his baptism offer people before the cross?
Matthew and Luke both trace family lines. Mark gives none. Writers see that silence as a choice, not a shortcut.
Mark 1 presents neither genealogy nor early history, as we have in the accounts of Matthew and Luke. Yet this is not because he was shortening facts already well known. It is because of the divine design, which made a genealogy out of place here. The service even of such a Servant did not call for it. The forerunner is introduced briefly, preaching and baptizing.
John came from a priestly family. He could have asked to preach in the temple, and he did not.
It is not even mentioned that John was from a priestly family. His service comes first: he baptized in the wilderness, preaching the baptism of repentance with a view to the forgiveness of sins. Being a priest, he might have asked permission to preach in the temple. Instead he went to the wilderness, and this matched the spiritual desolation of Israel. No impressive legal forms and ceremonies were there to attract people. There was only the solemn, serious declaration of their guilt, and of God's requirement that they repent. They were baptized — figuratively buried in the muddy Jordan River — confessing their sins. The Jordan pictures death, running into the Dead Sea. It was God who brought the crowds from Judea, and especially from Jerusalem, to accept in effect the sentence of death against themselves — a death deserved because of their sins.
The place itself raised a question about Jerusalem.
But where does this voice of the herald cry, and where was he baptizing? "In the wilderness." What, then, was the state of Jerusalem and the people of God? They had to go outside to John if they wanted to take their right place before God. The effect was great — I do not say saving, but wide-reaching, and not without touching the conscience.
John's call rested on an assumption the earlier prophets did not share.
The older prophets always assumed the nation could still return to the Lord. Like them, John the Baptist had certainly preached repentance, but a repentance founded on ruin without remedy... What remains of man? Nothing. The wrath of the Lord has blown upon him. From then on, repentance meant self-judgment in the presence of God. People "went out" to the prophet, "confessing their sins," and he baptized them in the Jordan. The sinner did not stop at confessing his sins. He owned that from then on the only answer to his state was death. There was no remedy.
This phrase names the purpose of John's whole mission.
The Lord was coming according to His promise. To prepare His way before Him, John was preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins. This was what they needed. Forgiveness of sins for the repentant was the great thing, the formal purpose of John's mission. Repentance and forgiveness of sins have to do with the responsibility of man before God. They qualify him to receive the blessing God purposed: morally, because he judges his sins as God does; and responsibly, because God forgives them all. So forgiveness is necessarily a present, actual thing.
Commentators differ here. Another writer reads the wording as "unto" forgiveness — a hope held out, not yet a possession.
John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, preparing people for the coming Lord. So it was a purification. It marked out a remnant from the mass of the people, to escape the coming judgment. They are baptized for, or rather unto, forgiveness of sins, waiting for this in hope, though not yet having received it.
John's preaching broke through pretence, and his baptism had one condition.
John preached, and his word had power to break through the hollow crust of things and bring men to reality. Crowds from all the country round about poured out to listen to him, and submitted to his baptism. The conditions of it were within easy reach: every convicted sinner had in this his title.
- Servant. Mark drops the family line because a servant needs no pedigree. The Gospel opens with work, and John is the first at work.
- Wilderness. A priest's son skipped the temple and preached in the desert. The empty place matched how empty Israel's religion had become.
- Outside. Anyone who wanted right standing with God had to walk out of Jerusalem to get it. God Himself brought the crowds out.
- Ruin. The repentance John preached left man no remedy. Those who went down into the Jordan owned death as the verdict they deserved.
- Title. The forgiveness rested on the Saviour still to come. The one thing that gave a person title to it was a conscience that admitted guilt.