<p>9:12 <em>And he said to them: Elijah indeed comes first- </em>&nbsp;There can be no doubt that 'Elijah' will come in some form:&nbsp; &quot;I will send you Elijah the prophet before the&nbsp;<em>coming&nbsp;</em>of the great and dreadful day of the Lord... lest I&nbsp;<em>come</em>&nbsp;and smite the earth&quot; (Malachi 4:5,6). The coming of the Lord must therefore be preceded by Elijah's work. His mission will be to direct Israel's attention to God's Word, &quot;lest I come and smite the earth with a curse&quot; (Malachi 4:4,6).&nbsp;This was evidently not totally fulfilled by John the Baptist, seeing that the land was smitten after A.D. 70 due to Israel's failure to repent.&nbsp;&quot;Lest I come...&quot; is clearly referring to God's manifestation in Christ's second coming - it is associated with the arising of &quot;the sun of righteousness&quot; (Malachi 4:2,6). Whilst John fulfilled the role of the Elijah prophet to those who truly repented (Mt. 11:14), he emphatically denied that he was 'Elijah' (John 1:21,23).&nbsp;This can only mean that the Elijah prophet is yet to come.&nbsp;&nbsp; Our Lord silences all doubt about this: &quot;Elijah truly shall first come, and restore all things&quot;. Elijah's work will be to turn the hearts of Israel back to the patriarchs in repentance (Malachi 4:6 cp. 1 Kings 18:37), so that Christ comes to an Israel who have turned away from unGodliness (Is. 59:20). John being a mini-Elijah prophet, it is to be expected that the broad features of his ministry will be repeated in the work of the final Elijah prophet. John was called &quot;the Baptist&quot;, so evident was his emphasis on water baptism. Indeed, the name 'John' and the image of water baptism are hard to separate. There is fair reason to think that 'Elijah' will also literally baptize. &quot;That (Christ) should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water&quot; (Jn. 1:31) seems to make baptism a pre-requisite for accepting Christ. Indeed, Jewish theology expects baptism to be associated with the coming of Messiah and the Elijah prophet. Therefore the Jews asked John: &quot;Why do you baptize then, if you are not that Christ, nor Elijah?&quot; (Jn. 1:25).</p><p><em>And restores all things- </em>The restoration of the Kingdom is ultimately Messiah&rsquo;s work (Acts 1:9-11). The restoring referred to here would therefore mean spiritual restoration. Mark&rsquo;s account of John&rsquo;s activities clearly alludes to the Malachi passages about the Elijah prophet, and the descriptions of Elijah&rsquo;s clothing, appearance and diet are clearly intended to help us identify him with a prophet like Elijah. The LXX in Mal. 4:5 speaks of how the prophet will&nbsp;<em>restore</em>&nbsp;the hearts of the fathers to the children. This confirms that the restoration to be achieved by the Elijah prophet is largely spiritual, psychological and internal. The more physical restoration of the Kingdom on earth is Messiah&rsquo;s work. But the Lord is placing Elijah&rsquo;s work in the future- because Israel had failed to respond to it. And yet what are we to make of the repeated descriptions in the Gospels of &ldquo;all&rdquo; Israel going out to John and repenting? My suggestion is that they were eager for a Messiah to come and save them from the Romans; John appeared looking like and alluding to Elijah, and so they were eager to accept him as an Elijah prophet, knowing that this heralded Messiah. They &lsquo;repented&rsquo; because there was a clear connection made in Judaism between Jewish repentance, and the Elijah prophet and Messiah&rsquo;s coming. Thus: &ldquo;Israel will fulfil the great repentance when the Elijah of blessed memory comes&rdquo; (Pirqe R. Eliezer 43 25a); and many other examples are quoted by Walter Wink (<em>John the Baptist in the Gospel Tradition</em>&nbsp;(Cambridge: C.U.P. 2006) p. 3). The Qumran documents even claim that the faithful would go out into the wilderness to the Elijah prophet and separate themselves from the unholy in Israel (1 QS 8:12-16) (More examples are given in Carl Kazmierski,&nbsp;<em>John the Baptist: Prophet and Evangelist&nbsp;</em>(Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999) p. 26). Hence the intended sarcasm of the idea that in fact &ldquo;all&rdquo; Israel went out to the wilderness to John Therefore their repentance was as it were self-induced and merely symbolic, because they believed it was part of a sequence of events which would lead to Messiah&rsquo;s coming and liberation from Rome. This would be a classic example of surface level spirituality and response to God&rsquo;s word, when in fact the response was motivated by selfish and unspiritual motives. No wonder John appealed to them to&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;repent. The Lord says that Elijah comes &ldquo;first&rdquo;,&nbsp;<em>proton</em>, above all, most importantly, to achieve this restoration- the implication being that the fact John&rsquo;s ministry had failed to bring &ldquo;all&rdquo; Israel to this position, meant that there must therefore be another Elijah ministry which would succeed before Messiah could come in glory. And this would indeed &ldquo;restore&rdquo; the&nbsp;<em>hearts</em>&nbsp;of Israel, as Mal. 4:5 LXX requires.</p><p><em>And how is it written of the Son of Man, that he should suffer many things and be set at nothing?</em>- Significantly, the same Greek word is used in Lk. 23:11 to describe how Herod &ldquo;set at nought&rdquo; Jesus at His trial; and it was the same Herod who had John the Baptist murdered.</p>