Mark 1:1-8

1 Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ, Son of God;

2 as it is written in [Isaiah] the prophet, ^[a] Behold, *I* send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way. ^[b]

3 Voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of [the] Lord, make his paths straight. ^[c]

4 There came John baptising in the wilderness, and preaching [the] baptism of repentance for remission of sins.

5 And there went out to him all the district of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem, and were baptised by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

6 And John was clothed in camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins, and ate locusts and wild honey.

7 And he preached, saying, There comes he that is mightier than I after me, the thong of whose sandals I am not fit to stoop down and unloose.

8 *I* indeed have baptised you with water, but *he* shall baptise 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