Mark 1:12-13
“Notice what you notice.” Sorry for a late post today, folks. Things happen! So today only two verses – Mark’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark is not at all detailed in his account of the content of the temptations. He has nothing to say about the content. However, he includes one item that the other two synoptics do not include – wild beasts.
I had never thought about wild beasts in connection with Jesus in the wilderness. But when we think more fully about it, in the OT there are a number of occasions where we see lions in Palestine: “The presence of the lion in the land of Palestine is shown in the historical narratives in which the lion actually appears, most of which are well-known to all of us. Such familiar incidents include Samson’s empty-handed slaying of the lion in the vineyards of Timnath (Judges 14:5, 6); David’s combat with a lion in defense of his flock (I Sam. 17:23); the slaughter of a lion in a pit in winter by one of David’s notable companions in hiding (II Sam. 23:20); and the tribe of lions which, sent by the Lord, descended upon godless Samaria and killed some of them (II Kings 17:25), as well as the destruction of the disobedient prophet by a lion, mentioned in I Kings 13…” (https://standardbearer.rfpa.org/node/46784). We also have the story of two female bears killing 42 boys (2 Kings 2:23-24).
So, reading between the lines and with reference to OT texts, lions and bears were probably among those wild beasts that Jesus may have encountered in the wilderness. How did Jesus handle them? Matthew says that angels came and ministered to Him after the temptations while Mark says that angels were ministering to Him (verse 13, past continuous tense). Guardian angels? We have seen such “creatures” before in the OT (Ps. 34:6-7, 94:11) and we’ll see them again in the NT. Here we see them with Jesus. Can we see them with and around us?
We may have just two verses today, but as always Mark packs a lot in a few words!
The first thing I noticed today was in comparing Mark 1:12 to Matthew 4:1 from yesterday’s reading. Matthew has “Jesus was led up by the Spirit…” whereas Mark has “The Spirit…drove him…” I am not at all sure what to make of the different language here, but Mark’s wording seems more forceful — at least in English. In any case, between the two of them, the Spirit both pulled and pushed Jesus into the wilderness.
The second thing I noticed was again in comparison to Matthew’s telling. Because of Matthew 4:2 (“and after forty days…”) one gets the feeling with Matthew that all of the temptation came at the end of the time in the wilderness in the “Big Three” challenges. In Mark 1:13, though, we have Jesus “in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan,” which implies a continual temptation process throughout the wilderness experience. So I expect that Jesus faced a long series of temptations in the wilderness that culminated in the “Big Three” at the end.
The third thing I noticed — like Fred — was Mark’s reference to wild animals. And that is worth looking up in the commentaries!
OK, so I DID read some commentaries. Here are a couple of conclusions. First, Jesus being tempted in the wild is compared to Adam being tempted in the garden; Adam failed, Jesus did not. Second, there were a number of references to Daniel co-existing with the lions. And third, the most telling of all the commentaries was that the wild beasts were submissive to Jesus – that THEY RECOGNIZED THEIR CREATOR -and submitted to Him. That was particularly intriguing, especially that one commentator included SNAKES as being one of the number of wild beasts. HeeHee!!