John 1:23 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

I am the voice, &c.— It is to be feared that Clemens of Alexandria, and Archbishop Fenelon, lay too great a stress on the word φωνη, voice, when the former of these excellent men says, "Does not John call men to salvation, and is he not entirely an exhortatory voice?"—And then the latter endeavours to illustrate the humility of John the Baptist's reply, as if he had said, "Far from being the Messiah, or Elias, or one of the old prophets, I am nothing but a voice, a sound, which as soon as it has expressed the thought, of which it is the sign, dies into air, and is known no more." Had the Baptist said only, I am a voice crying in the wilderness, there might have been more room for such a supposition: but since he calls himself the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the words are plainly to be understood with very great latitude; for they would else imply that he was not the very person that so cried; and designedly referring his hearers to the words of Isaiah, who cannot be imagined to have intended a diminution of this saint's character, they are an instance of that remarkable liberty of expression which the Hebrew language, wherein they were spoken, admits. It is as if he had said, "I am the person of whom Isaiah speaks, when he says, the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness." By a like liberty, the kingdom of heaven is said, Matthew 13:24 to be likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field, that is, as Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the words, "The kingdom of heaven, or the Gospel dispensation, may be compared to that which happened to a man who had sown good seed in his ground." Several very considerable Greek writers express themselves in much the same manner.