Mark 1:1-8

John the Baptist Prepares the Way

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, ¹the Son of God.^[a]

2 ²As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,^[b]³"Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,

3 ⁴the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ⁵'Prepare^[c] the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'"

4 ⁶John appeared, baptizing in ⁷the wilderness and proclaiming ⁸a baptism of ⁹repentance ¹⁰for the forgiveness of sins.

5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, ¹¹confessing their sins.

6 Now John was ¹²clothed with camel's hair and ¹³wore a leather belt around his waist and ate ¹⁴locusts and ¹⁵wild honey.

7 And he preached, saying, ¹⁶"After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

8 ¹⁷I have baptized you with water, but ¹⁸he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

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Mark 1:1-8 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO MARK

This is the title of the book, the subject of which is the Gospel; a joyful account of the ministry, miracles, actions, and sufferings of Christ: the writer of it was not one of the twelve apostles, but an evangelist; the same with John Mark, or John, whose surname was Mark: John was his Hebrew name, and Mark his Gentile name, Ac 12:12,25, and was Barnabas's sister's son, Col 4:10, his mother's name was Mary, Ac 12:12. The Apostle Peter calls him his son, 1Pe 5:13, if he is the same; and he is thought to have wrote his Gospel from him {a}, and by his order, and which was afterwards examined and approved by him {b} it is said to have been wrote originally in Latin, or in the Roman tongue: so say the Arabic and Persic versions at the beginning of it, and the Syriac version says the same at the end: but of this there is no evidence, any more, nor so much, as of Matthew's writing his Gospel in Hebrew. The old Latin copy of this, is a version from the Greek; it is most likely that it was originally written in Greek, as the rest of the New Testament.

{a} Papias apud Euseb. Hist. l. 3. c. 39. Tertull. adv. Marcion. l. 4. c. 5. {b} Hieron. Catalog. Script. Eccles. p. 91. sect. 18.

Taken from John Gill's Exposition of the Bible