In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,
For the proper introduction to this section, we must go to --
Luke 3:1-2. Here, as Bengel well observes, the curtain of the New Testament is, as it were, drawn up, and the greatest of all epochs of the Church commences. Even our Lord's own age is determined by it (3:23). No such elaborate chronological precision is to be found elsewhere in the New Testament, and it comes fitly from him who claims it as the special recommendation of his Gospel, that 'he had traced down all things with precision from the very first' (Matthew 1:3). Here evidently commences his proper narrative. Matthew 3:1. "Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" - not the fifteenth from his full accession on the death of Augustus, but from the period when he was associated with him in the government of the empire, three years earlier, about the end of the year of Rome 779, or about four years before the usual reckoning. "Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea." His proper title was Procurator, but with more than the usual powers of that office.
After holding it for about ten years, he was summoned to Rome to answer to charges brought against him; but before he arrived Tiberius died (35 AD), and soon after miserable Pilate committed suicide. "and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee (see the note at Mark 6:14), and his brother Philip" - a very different and very superior Philip to the one whose name was Herod Philip, and whose wife, Herodias, went to live with Herod Antipas (see the note at Mark 6:17) - "tetrarch of Iturea" - lying to the northeast of Palestine, and so called from Itur or Jetur, Ishmael's son (1 Chronicles 1:31), and anciently belonging to the half-tribe of Manasseh, "and of the region of Trachonitis" - lying further to the northeast, between Iturea and Damascus; a rocky district infected by robbers, and committed by Augustus to Herod the Great to keep in order, "and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene" - still more to the northeast; so called, says Robinson, from Abila, eighteen miles from Damascus. Abilene" - still more to the northeast; so called, says Robinson, from Abila, eighteen miles from Damascus. Matthew 3:2. "Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests."
The former, though deposed, retained much of his influence, and, probably, as Sagan or deputy, exercised much of the power of the high priesthood along with Caiaphas his son-in-law (John 18:13; Acts 4:6). In David's time both Zadok and Abiathar acted as high priests (2 Samuel 15:35), and it seems to have been the fixed practice to have two (2 Kings 25:18). "the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness." Such a way of speaking is never once used when speaking of Jesus, because He was himself The Living Word; whereas to all merely creature-messengers of God, the word they spake was a foreign element. See the note at John 3:31, and Remark 5 at the close of that Section. We are now prepared for the opening words of Matthew.
In those days - of Christ's secluded life at Nazareth, where the last chapter left Him.
Came John the Baptist, preaching - about six months before his Master.
In the wilderness of Judea - the desert valley of the Jordan, thinly populated and bare in pasture, a little north of Jerusalem.