Why did John Baptize at the Jordan?

Mark 1:5-6 reports, “all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” 

Many Bible readers know that John the Baptist was the forerunner of Jesus the Messiah. He called upon the people of Israel to repent of their sins and to purify their hearts in preparation for the arrival of God’s Kingdom (Mk 1:15).  But why did he summon the Jewish people to the Judean wilderness to be baptized in the Jordan River? It was a long walk from Jerusalem to the Jordan.  Jerusalem, after all, was filled with many mikvaot (ritual purification pools). Why didn’t John just baptize the people who lived in Jerusalem there?

The answer to that question has to with the fact that John wasn’t simply the herald of the Messiah’s arrival — he was also the prophet of the eschatological New Exodus. The Hebrew prophets foretold that the Lord would save His people in the future just as had in the past by raising up a new Moses to the lead the nation in a new Exodus back to the Promised Land.

John’s appearance in the wilderness baptizing people in the Jordan River points back to Exodus event in two important ways:  After their release from Egypt, God sent the Israelites into the wilderness.  It was here that He purified the Israelites and it was here that he prepared them to become a nation.  Secondly, the Exodus ended at the Jordan River. The Promised Land was the next stop!

A first-century Jewish reader would have made these connections and understood the point. John was preparing Israel for the Messiah’s arrival.  And he did that by inviting the Jewish people to symbolically reenact the Exodus journey. He called on them to venture into the wilderness, wade into the waters of the Jordan River, repent of their sins and then reenter the Promised Land as members of the purified remnant of Israel. John was calling the nation back to a life of covenant faithfulness!

Today, Qasr al Yahud (“The Crossing of the Jews”) marks the spot where, according to tradition, the Israelites crossed the Jordan and entered the Promised Land. And it is here that Jesus identified with the righteous remnant and presented himself to John to be baptized in order to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matt 3:15).