The chapter
Simply The chapter opens by naming seven public figures and the year, then leaves all of them for a man in the desert. John tells the crowds to change how they live, and when three different groups ask what that means, he answers each of them about money. He says someone stronger is coming. Herod shuts him in prison. Jesus is baptized and prays, and a voice calls him Son. The chapter ends with a list of names running backwards from Jesus to Adam.
Context Verse 1 dates the word of God by the machinery of the world: an emperor, a governor, three tetrarchs and two high priests, all named. It is the most precisely dated sentence in the four Gospels, and what it dates is a man in the wilderness rather than anyone on the list. The chapter then closes with a second list, of seventy-five names, running the other way. Both lists are ways of placing the same person, and they place him very differently, one in a year and one in a descent.
Verses 1-20
Simply John preaches a baptism of repentance and quotes Isaiah about a road being made straight. He is blunt with the crowd: being descended from Abraham counts for nothing, and God could raise children for Abraham out of stones. Three groups ask him what they should do. He tells the crowds to give away a spare coat and spare food, the tax collectors to take no more than the rate, and the soldiers to stop extorting and be content with their pay. He says he is not worth untying the sandals of the one coming after him.
Context The question WHAT MUST WE DO is asked three times, at verses 10, 12 and 14, by the crowds, by tax collectors and by soldiers, and John answers three times. All three answers are about property and money and none is about religion: a second coat, an honest rate, a soldier's wages. Only this Gospel records the three exchanges. Two other things in the passage are worth noticing. The quotation from Isaiah runs one line further here than where the other Gospels stop, as far as ALL FLESH WILL SEE GOD'S SALVATION at verse 6. And verses 19 and 20 put John in prison before the baptism at verse 21 is narrated, although the baptism came first: the arrest is reported early so that John can be finished with before Jesus begins.
Verses 21-22
Simply Jesus is baptized along with everyone else, and while he is praying the sky opens. The Spirit comes down in a form that can be seen, like a dove, and a voice says: you are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased.
Context Two words here are only in this account, and both can be checked against the other two versions in this app. This is the only one of the three that says Jesus was PRAYING when the sky opened, and it is the only one that does not say who baptized him: Mark 1:9 says he was baptized by John, Matthew 3:13 to 16 has the two of them argue about it first, and Luke says only that he had been baptized when all the people were. The voice is also aimed differently in the three: here and at Mark 1:11 it says YOU ARE my beloved Son, to Jesus, and at Matthew 3:17 it says THIS IS my beloved Son, to whoever is listening. All thirteen offered editions were read at verse 22 and none of them departs from the wording served here.
Verses 23-38
Simply Jesus is about thirty when he begins. Then the text names his ancestors backwards, seventy-five of them, from Joseph to Adam, and ends by calling Adam the son of God. Matthew's Gospel also gives a list, and the two lists are not the same one.
Context Both lists can be opened in this app and counted, and they were. This one runs backwards and stops at Adam, where Matthew's runs forwards and starts at Abraham, so this one reaches past Israel to everybody. Between David and Joseph the two disagree about almost everything. Luke gives forty-two names for that stretch and Matthew twenty-seven, so fifteen generations of difference sit over the same run of history. Luke goes through David's son Nathan, Matthew through Solomon. Luke says Joseph's father was Heli, Matthew says Jacob. Of the forty-two and the twenty-seven names, five are shared: David, Shealtiel, Zerubbabel, Eliakim and Joseph, and even Shealtiel is given a different father in each, Neri here and Jechoniah in Matthew. This file reports the two lists as it finds them and does not reconcile them; the harmonisations that have been proposed are church history rather than something the text says.