As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face,
who shall prepare thy way;
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight—’
We see a sequence beginning to take shape. Mark has rooted the person of Christ in the ancient story of God and his people, first by using the phrase the beginning, then by naming Jesus as the Christ (the anointed one anticipated in the Old Testament) and now by making explicit reference to the prophets – Malachi and Isaiah – who foretold his coming.
These references to the prophets (‘Behold, I send my messenger…’ is the first line of the Malachi reference, and ‘The voice of one crying…’ is the first line from the Isaiah one) also develop Mark’s claim that Jesus is the Son of God. It isn’t immediately obvious, but there are three characters introduced in the Malachi reference: the ‘I’ (God) the ‘messenger’ (John the Baptist) and the one whose way will be prepared. Who is this third character?
The reference from Isaiah gives the answer: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord.’ The man Jesus will appear after John in a few verses time, so we know that the third character is him. But the implication of the prophecies is incredible. There is one who is distinct from God but also, like God, called Lord. As one commentator writes, ‘the Father, who is Lord, sends the Son, who is Lord – at least two persons, then, in one God.’
Again, we are being given special insight into the identity of this man from Galilee. The verses we have looked at today provide a gloss for Mark’s opening claim from verse 1: this is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Author: Nick Raven
10/04/2020