Matthew 3:4
~ “Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his
waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
So here we
see John the Baptist and his eclectic diet of bugs and honey. At once we are
struck with the oddity of not only his sustenance in this passage but also his wardrobe
too. He eats bugs and honey which comes from bugs (bees) and he dresses in robe
or cloak made of camel hair and girded by a leather belt. Inquisitive minds
will want to know…why the peculiarity and unconventional nature of his not-so-normal
existence? It should be noted immediately that John wears the garb of the Old
Testament prophet when it tells us he wears a camel’s hair garment and leather
belt. Even Jesus tells us that John is indeed a prophet in the mold of the Old
Testament. He will be the last, and he will be the greatest. Jesus speaking to
the disciples says as much….
Matthew
11:9-11 ~ “What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you,
and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, “‘Behold, I
send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. ’Truly,
I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than
John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater
than he.”
What’s more
is it stating this Jesus is recalling or quoting the prophet Malachi and the prophecy
of the Messenger of the Covenant. Which is also a herald mentioned in Isaiah
40:3
Malachi 3:1
~ “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then
suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger
of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
Isaiah 40:3
~ “A voice cries:“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight
in the desert a highway for our God.
The Old
Testament prophets not only told of the coming of the Messiah but they also
foretold of the coming of the last of their kind in John, and Jesus confirms
this (Luke 16:16). If we refer to the original Hebrew of Malachi 3, the Hebrew
tells us the messenger is [mal’ak] “messenger-of-me/Me” or literally “a
messenger; specifically, of God. Whomever this is that is coming …the one the messenger
foretells of will be directly from God himself. This first messenger will also
prepare the way for God or in this context/case Jesus Christ and as suddenly as
this messenger will come, the Lord they are seeking will come to His temple.
This verse is the Old Testament counterpart to Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2 and Luke
7:27. It is also the Old Testament companion to Isaiah 40:3: “A voice of one
calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the LORD make straight in the
wilderness a highway for our God.
The
Messenger is clearly John the Baptist.
Knowing this
makes the identity of the One that will usher in the New Covenant and the One
who will abrogate the Old Covenant obvious in hindsight. It is Jesus Christ or
the One who will prove He is God by purifying His people like a “refiners fire”
(v.2-3) and punishing sinners. So we have clearly connected John to the
prophets of old here both through prophecy and Jesus’ own words.
So why the
bugs and ascetic and frugal lifestyle?
Well, first
we should note that John came preaching (v.1). Preaching what? The same things
the prophets of Old had alluded to: A Gospel of repentance and an exhortation
to turn back to God. This is what prophets do…they exhort people to return to
God that have gone astray. Repentance or μετάνοια / metanoia literally means to
turn one’s mind. Why? Because the Kingdom of God was at hand…literally Jesus
was at hand and near. Kingdom is where the King is and Jesus was here! How
could anyone turn their back on the Son of God? Well, easy…sin blinded them.
The quintessential message of a prophet. A prophet like Elijah. Why is this
important? The Gospel of Matthew is intent on showing that Jesus is the Messiah
foretold of in the Old Testament and John plays directly into those foretelling
being the predecessor of Jesus. What is even more important is that John, being
a type of Old Testament prophet breaks a 450 year prophetic silence over the
land of Israel. A silence that started at the time or Malachi…the exact prophet
that foretold of John!
If we look
closely at the emphatic pronoun αὐτὸς or “himself” in verse 4 we see
Matthew as writer draws our attention to John and that fact that John’s manner
of living in this verse was in accord with prophecy of the forerunner of the
Messiah. John is literally depicted as a type of Elijah who wore the same
wardrobe in 2 Kings 1:8.
2 Kings 1:8
~ “They answered him, “He wore a garment of hair, with a belt of leather
about his waist.” And he said, “It is Elijah the Tishbite.”
John’s personality and method of preaching is indeed exactly the same as his predecessor’s. No holds barred and in your face regardless of who you were. Elijah confronted and went head-to-head with Ahab and his disgusting wife and John went toe-to-toe with Herod and his disgusting wife. What is further ironic is that the evil women behind the kings in these stories did more to steer the bad behavior of the kings than the kings themselves. What we see here is God’s chosen going against those that apostatized from God. Jesus even makes the direct correlation between Elijah and John by name.
Matthew 11:13-14
~ For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you
are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come.
Matthew
17:12-13 ~ “But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not
recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man
will certainly suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he
was speaking to them of John the Baptist.”
The eating
of the bugs though leave us puzzled. Couldn’t John have just killed a bird or some
other animal and eaten somewhat normally? Well, we should probably without
judging what John ate. Why? Because locusts are still eaten to this day in the
Middle East. Although his diet sounds meager, it was actually nutritious and healthy
considering how little he ate. I believe the term is nutrient dense. It was
also the diet associated to the very poor. We see shades of the “last being
first and the first being last here.” He is dressed in poor man’s clothes and
eats poor man’s food but in terms of spiritual importance, there would be none
greater than him other than Jesus Himself. Like Jesus we see a man that seemed
to have, “no place to rest his head.” He lived in the wilderness and was
essentially a wild-eyed prophet living at the fringes of society. A man that
dresses ruggedly and eats even more harshly, like he lives in the desert
wilderness somewhere between God and man but not firmly in either camp. Prophets…men
ostracized by their calling and God’s will for them. Ostracized by the tone of
their message and a world that rejects them because they don’t want to hear the
message of the God behind it. They would rather dwell in their sins.
We should
probably also mention that John’s diet eating of locusts is not only permitted
in the Old Testament law, it is actually encouraged by God in Leviticus.
Locusts and similar insects almost seem to be singled out as acceptable clean
animals in the dietary laws.
Leviticus
11:20-23 ~ “All winged insects that go on all fours are detestable to you. Yet
among the winged insects that go on all fours you may eat those that have
jointed legs above their feet, with which to hop on the ground. Of them
you may eat: the locust of any kind, the bald locust of any kind, the
cricket of any kind, and the grasshopper of any kind. But all other winged
insects that have four feet are detestable to you.
Also, just
because the Bible says John ate locusts and honey does not mean that these are
the only foods he ate. Again, these two culinary items are mentioned by Matthew
to draw the parallel to Elijah which we have already alluded to earlier in this
post.
So what we
see in the end is not necessarily the physical human significance of John in
this passage so much as the spiritual aspect that is being drawn out by
Matthew. Yes, John is probably a wild-eyed man in the wilderness drawing people
to him and pointing them towards the One he foretells of by his enigmatic
behaviors and words…but it is what is at the heart of these words and actions
that is the telling sign for Matthew. John is preaching a baptism of repentance
and the parallels of wardrobe and diet are to align him spiritually to His
predecessor Elijah and these dietary parallels are drawn to show the spiritual significance
more than the physical. Matthew isn’t telling us John eats bugs to gross us
out, he is doing it to show that the Old Testament spoke of him first and this
is how you would know. That means the One whom John had spoken of…had come too!
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