Mark 1:3 — Community Reflections

MARK 1:3 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him — Isaiah 40:3 was originally spoken to exiles in Babylon, promising that God would make a highway through the desert for his people's return. Mark applies it to John because the return from exile is not complete until the Messiah arrives: Israel returned geographically from Babylon but the deeper exile — separation from God's covenantal presence — continued. John's wilderness location is not accidental but theological: the wilderness is where the old world ends and the new begins, where Israel's identity was formed before the conquest. The straight paths prepare not a royal road but a relational readiness for the arriving King.

Church Fathers on Mark 1:3

Being about to write his Gospel, Mark rightly puts first the testimonies of the Prophets, that he might notify to all, that what he should write was to be received without scruple of doubt, in that he shewed that these things were beforehand foretold by the Prophets. At once, by one and the same beginning of his Gospel, he prepared the Jews, who had received the Law and the Prophets, for receiving the grace of the Gospel, and those sacraments, which their own prophecies had…
Bede · 8th century

Hierom. ad Pammach, Epist 57: But this is not written in Isaiah, but in Malachi, the last of the twelve prophets.
Jerome · 4th century

The Forerunner of Christ, therefore, is call an angel, on account of his angelic life and lofty reverence. Again, where he says, 'Before thy face,' it is as if he said, Thy messenger is near thee: whence is shewn the intimate connection of the Forerunner with Christ; for those walk next to kings who are their greatest friends.
Theophylact · 11th century

Read all 13 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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