Matthew Poole Commentary - Matthew 3:1 - 3:1

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Matthew Poole Commentary - Matthew 3:1 - 3:1


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

MATTHEW CHAPTER 3



Mat_3:1-4 The preaching of John the Baptist; his office, and

manner of living.

Mat_3:5,6 He baptizeth in Jordan,

Mat_3:7-12 and rebuketh the Pharisees.

Mat_3:13-17 Christ is baptized, and receiveth a witness from heaven.



That is, in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, (as Luke expounds it, Luk_3:1) when John the Baptist and Christ also were about thirty years of age, Luk_3:23, for there was no great difference betwixt the age of Christ and John, as may be learned from Luk_1:31,41,57.



In those days, while Joseph and Mary, and our blessed Lord, dwelt in Nazareth. See Exo_2:11. This phrase in those days is the same with in those years. It is an ordinary thing in the Hebrew to confound the words signifying a day and a year, and the Greeks did the same, as appears by the seventy interpreters, 1Sa_1:3,7. The evangelists pass over with a great deal of silence our Saviour’s minority, only mentioning his disputing with the doctors in the temple, Luk_2:46.



Came John the Baptist; John the son of Zacharias, Luk_3:2, called the Baptist, either because he baptized Christ, or because by him God instituted the ordinance of baptism, which before that time the Jews used in the admission of their proselytes.



Preaching according to his commission, Luk_3:2, where it is said the word of the Lord came to him.



In the wilderness of Judea; some parts of Judea, where houses and inhabitants were very few. None must think that the history of the second chapter is continued in this, there was a distance of twenty-eight or twenty-nine years; the evangelist designing not to satisfy men’s curiosity, but only to give us that part of Christ’s story which might be profitable to us to know.