As I’ve said many times here, my brain is wired a little funny. I’m just curious if anyone else noticed this little … oddity … from one of the options for the readings this past Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus. The alternate reading comes from Isaiah 40, and in Is 40:3 we read:
A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
As Catholics, and I’d assume most good Bible Christians, we make the direct correlation to the description of John the Baptist, e.g. in Mark 1:3:
A voice of one crying out in the desert: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’
Now I recognize that Hebrew does not use the punctuation style we take for granted in English, but it does leave me to wonder – just what can we get out of the difference between “a voice of one crying out in the desert” and “a voice cries out: in the desert”? In one the voice crying out is in the desert; in the other the one spoken to is in the desert.
So…am I over-thinking this, or just maybe is this a providential difference from which we can glean some additional insight? Let me know what you think. Please. The comboxes are lonely. 😉
