After His baptism, did Christ go into the wilderness, or to Galilee?
John tells what followed the forty days: the Baptist speaks of the baptism as past when Jesus comes to him again.
The Passages
Mark 1:12-13
John 1:29-43
See Also
Matthew 4:1-2
The Difficulty
Mark says that after Jesus was baptized, “immediately the spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan” (Mark 1:12–13). John tells of no wilderness: John the Baptist sees Jesus coming to him, the next day two of his disciples follow Jesus, and “the day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee” (John 1:29, 35–43).
The Answer
John doesn’t tell the baptism as it happened. He gives the Baptist’s witness to it afterwards, as something past: “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him” (John 1:32), “and I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God” (1:34). So when Jesus comes to John at Bethabara (1:28–29), it is after the forty days, as Gill says, returning from the wilderness. The order is the baptism, the forty days in the wilderness (Mark 1:12–13; Matthew 4:1–2), the return to the Jordan and the first disciples (John 1:29–42), and Galilee (1:43). Mark passes over the time John tells of, and takes up again “after that John was put in prison” (Mark 1:14).
Sources
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Not to be baptized, for he had been baptized before by him. This seems to have been after Christ had been forty days in the wilderness, from whence he now returned, and came to attend on John’s ministry
Checked against: Internet Archive scan of the first edition, 2026-10-28
