Mark 1:9-20 Notes
It is important to realize that the events described in these opening verses of Mark are different in character from those that take place in most of the remaining pages of the gospel. Elsewhere, though unusual things happen, we do not find visions or voices from heaven (except once, in chapter 9); nor do we read about the activity of the Holy Spirit and Satan (apart from a discussion about them in chapter 3); we do not even have the meaning of what is going on spelt out for us by Mark with the help of Old Testament texts, as it is here. In other words, we have here a concentration of christological material—information about the identity of Jesus and the meaning of his ministry. Remarkably, it is concentrated into these few verses, before the ministry of Jesus begins. It is as though Mark were allowing us to view the drama from a heavenly vantage-point (whence we see things as they really are) before he brings us down to earth, where we find characters in the story totally bewildered by what is going on. In these opening pages there is no secret about who Jesus is: on the contrary, the truth about him is spelt out several times; but it is only we who read the gospel who overhear what is said. We need to take careful note of the information about Jesus with which Mark here provides us, for he expects us to hold it in our hands as a guide as we thread our way through the rest of the story, but we need to remember that Mark is letting us into secrets which remain hidden, throughout most of the drama, from the great majority of the characters in the story
Both John himself and the baptism that he proclaims point forward to the one who follows him. Mark’s emphasis on John’s presence in the wilderness is by no means surprising. Because of Israel’s original sojourn there, the wilderness came to be associated (as in Isaiah 40) with the idea of a new Exodus. Some of the prophets, protesting about the nation’s sin, looked back to the years spent in the wilderness as an ideal period, and regarded the nomadic life as divinely approved, in contrast to agrarian settlement (Jer. 2:2; 31:2; Hos. 2:14; 9:10; Amos 5:25). The eschatological hope came to be centred on the wilderness, and leaders of revolts led their men into the wilderness (cf. Acts 21:38; Josephus, Wars II.13. 4f.; VII.11.1), which suggests that the Messiah may have been expected to appear there (perhaps Matt. 24:26), and to repeat the miracles performed by Moses. Others besides John associated the wilderness with preparation and repentance. We find Isa. 40:3 being used by the Qumran society in support of their withdrawal into the desert
Three times in 1:2–3 the word “way” or “path” occurs. The initial reference to “the gospel about Jesus Christ” (1:1) is thus a way (cf. Acts 9:2). From its outset the story of Jesus directs hearers not to metaphysics and mysticism, nor to ethical rules and systems, but to something practical and transforming, a way of salvation made possible by God. Mark will resume and refine this theme in the second half of the Gospel, where “on the way” directs Jesus—and his disciples—to the fulfillment of his mission in Jerusalem. In Mark, the way of God is ultimately the way of Jesus to the cross