Matthew3chapter 3

The Judean wilderness is a stretch of bare, folded hills falling away east of Jerusalem toward the Jordan valley — hot, almost treeless, dropping to the lowest land on earth. A man could live there off wild honey and locusts, which the Law lists among the few insects Israelites were permitted to eat. Camel-hair clothing and a leather belt deliberately echoed the prophet Elijah.

Ritual washing was ordinary Jewish life. Step-down stone baths called mikva'ot have been excavated all over first-century Judea, including outside the temple, and a person immersed himself for purity before worship. What was strange about John was that he immersed other people, once, as a turning point — and demanded it of Jews, not just of Gentiles converting in.

The two groups he confronts were rivals. The Pharisees were popular teachers who built careful rules around the Law and expected a resurrection. The Sadducees were the wealthy priestly families who ran the temple, worked with Rome, and rejected the resurrection. That both came out to the river shows how large the stir had grown.

A community of separatists also lived near the Dead Sea in these same years, keeping strict washings and quoting the same verse from Isaiah about preparing a way in the wilderness. Their library, found at Qumran in 1947, shows John was not the only Jew who thought God was about to act.