Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the country round the Jordan,
A whole region empties itself into the desert to hear one man preach. Commentators ask two questions here: why did the crowds have to meet God's messenger outside the city, and how deep did the movement go?
People did not just come; they had to leave the religious centre to do it. One writer sees the place itself as a message:
John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. He is not in the temple among the learned and the great. There was no room for him there. He is outside the camp, and the people too have to leave Jerusalem and go out to him. This is once more significant. It shows what the end will be.
The reason lies in the state of the system they left behind:
For a priest to preach in the wilderness is completely out of character. Nothing but the sovereign power of the Spirit of God can account for his large audience. They came from Jerusalem and all Judea out into the wilderness to hear this unusual messenger of God. God Himself had established the formal religion of the Jews. But it had decayed so badly that His testimony must now stand in complete separation from it. That testimony had to bear solemn witness against the sin of elders, priests, scribes and people, for their state was as desolate as the wilderness.
John had no fame to trade on and no wonders to display:
The Baptist's mission had stirred very many. Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan flocked to that remarkable man. His ministry was clearly of God. Neither eloquence, that we read of, nor displays of miraculous power made him famous. It was not how he preached so much as what he preached that gripped people and gathered crowds around him. He preached, but he preached repentance.
The crowd was not one type of person. It mixed religious leaders with tax collectors and soldiers. One writer takes that breadth as a sign of who was behind it:
It was a wonderful and stirring moment of God's activity: "Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him." Pharisees and Sadducees, tax collectors and soldiers, the real and the unreal, the "brood of vipers" and those who boasted, "We have Abraham as our father" — all were moved, because God was moving among His people. And who could resist Him?
One writer reads the Jordan as a picture of death. Stepping into it admitted something about themselves:
He preaches in the wilderness. He tells the people not to say within themselves that they have Abraham for their father, because God was able to raise up children to Abraham out of the very stones. So the crowds came to his baptism, confessing their sins. He baptized them in Jordan, the river of death. They owned that all was over with them as to natural claim, and that divine mercy in a Saviour alone could meet their need.
One writer measures the crowd carefully. He grants a wide reach and a touched conscience, but stops short of claiming more:
The effect was great. I do not mean that it saved them, but it was widespread, and it did touch the conscience.
Another writer reaches the same caution. He compares this verse with what the Gospels later say about who believed John:
Verse 5 shows a fairly general movement at first to hear him. But we know from Matthew 21:31-32 that it was only the disreputable and vile who believed him. And Luke 7 shows a marked separation: all the people and the tax collectors were baptised, while the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves. So John's testimony, where it reached, brought to light a remnant who took their only true place — the place of any man — of confessing sins.
- Out. The meeting place was the wilderness, not the temple. To hear God's messenger, people had to leave the religious centre.
- Why out. Israel's religion had decayed so far. God's witness now had to stand completely apart from it.
- The draw. No eloquence and no miracles pulled the crowds — the message of repentance did.
- The water. Jordan pictures death. Going into it admitted that descent from Abraham secured nothing, and that mercy alone could meet their need.
- The measure. Commentators are careful here. The movement was of God and wide in reach. But reach is not the same as saving effect: what it left was a remnant willing to confess their sins.
and were baptised by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.