Mark 1 Bible study: The beginning of the Good News

Mark's first sentence stands like a heading: "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1) (tap Good News). His next sentence opens, "As it is written in the prophets" (1:2), and gives two sayings. The first: "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you" (1:2). The second: "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord! Make his paths straight!’" (1:3). Mark names no prophet. The words stand near two Old Testament verses, and the WEB words each one differently. In Malachi, "the LORD of Armies" says, "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me!" (Malachi 3:1). Isaiah has "The voice of one who calls out" (Isaiah 40:3), and then, "Prepare the way of the LORD in the wilderness! Make a level highway in the desert for our God" (Isaiah 40:3). Here is what almost everyone misses: in Malachi the messenger prepares the way "before me" (Malachi 3:1); in Mark the words are "before your face" and "your way" (1:2), spoken to someone the verse doesn't name. Mark doesn't stop to explain. His very next words are, "John came baptizing in the wilderness" (1:4), and John says, "After me comes he who is mightier than I" (1:7). The chapter on Exodus 23 looks at Malachi's words and where else the New Testament gives them, and the chapter on Isaiah 40 at whose voice 40:3 is.

Leviticus 14:2→leads toMark 1:40-44

"This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest" (14:2). A leper came to Jesus, and Jesus "touched him" (Mark 1:41); "immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was made clean" (Mark 1:42). Then Jesus told him, "go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing the things which Moses commanded, for a testimony to them" (Mark 1:44). Matthew and Luke give the same command (Matthew 8:4; Luke 5:14). Jesus doesn't name the chapter; the offerings Moses commanded for a leper's cleansing are the ones set out here (14:4-32). Mark doesn't say whether the man went to the priest; he says the man "went out, and began to proclaim it much" (Mark 1:45).

εὐαγγέλιονeuangelionsay yoo-ang-GHEL-ee-on

Strong's: "a good message, i.e. the gospel". Thayer's first sense for the New Testament is "the glad tidings of the kingdom of God soon to be set up, and subsequently also of Jesus, the Messiah, the founder of this kingdom". The chapter has it three times: in its first verse, "The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God" (1:1); when Jesus comes into Galilee "preaching the Good News of God’s Kingdom" (1:14); and in the first words Mark gives from Jesus, "Repent, and believe in the Good News" (1:15). The WEB has Good News in eight verses of Mark, and in each of them the Greek has this word. In the Greek text the WEB translates, the New Testament has it 77 times. Later Jesus says, "The Good News must first be preached to all the nations" (13:10).