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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 495. John and the Jews
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Everything that we are told of John the Baptist is unique. The asceticism of his life in the desert, the startling message with which he broke the silence maintained by the spirit of prophecy for four hundred years, the incorruptible sincerity of his humility, out of which no allurement could bribe him, the fearless honesty of his words, and the tragic horror of his death-all combine to give him a peculiar and distinctive place on the page of Scripture. But these things were, after all, only the indications and accompaniments of the singularity of his official position; for he stands alone among the servants of God. He came, no doubt, in the spirit and power of Elijah, and his dress is not the only thing about him that reminds us of the prophet of Gilead; but yet, take him for all in all, there is no one to whom he can be properly compared. He stood between the Jewish and the Christian dispensations, having much that connected him with both, and yet belonging exclusively to neither. He had more knowledge of the nature of the person and work of the Messiah than any of his predecessors among the prophets, and yet “he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
For centuries the thoughts and passion of the prophets had streamed into and filled the Jewish heart. They kindled there vague desires, wild hopes of a far-off kingdom, passionate discontent with things as they were. At last, about the time of the birth of Christ, these scattered dreams and hopes concentrated themselves into one desire, took form and substance in one prophecy-the advent of the anointed King. It was the blazing up of an excitement which had been smouldering for a thousand years; it was the last and most powerful of a long series of oscillations which had been gradually increasing in swing and force. Now two things are true: first, wherever there is this passion in a people, it embodies itself in one man, who is to be its interpreter; secondly, wherever a great problem of the human spirit is growing towards its solution, and the soil of humanity is prepared for new seed from heaven, God sends His chosen creature to proclaim the truth which brings the light.
So a great man is the product of two things-of the passion of his age, and of the choice of God. So far as he is the former, he is but the interpreter of his own time, and only the highest man of his time; so far as he is the latter, he is beyond his age, and points forward to a higher revelation.
Such was the Baptist's position-the interpreter of the spiritual wants of the Jewish people, the prophet of a greater revelation in the future.
There is something which touches in us that chord of sadness which is always ready to vibrate, when we think that John the Baptist was the last of all the heroes of the Old Dispensation, that with him closed the goodly fellowship of the prophets. For we cannot look at the last lighting up of the intellect of a man, the last effort for freedom of a dying nation, or the last glory of an ancient institution like that of the Jewish prophets, without a sense of sadness.
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great hath passed away.
But if there be some melancholy in the feeling with which we view the Baptist, there is also much of enthusiasm. If he was the last, he was also the greatest, of the prophets. That which all the others had dimly imaged, he presented in clear light; that which they had spoken in parables, he declared in the plainest words.1 [Note: Stopford A. Brooke.]