Verses 2 and 3 are a mixture of Exodus 23:20, Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. How did these three texts come together? Is this a mistake? Did Mark misremember the verses and paraphrase them? This is not a mistake made out of ignorance, but a theological purpose of the evangelist, since he wants to highlight the fulfillment of the entire Old Testament, the Law and the Prophecies.

What biblical scholars suspect in this regard is the existence of so-called “testimonia” (“testimonies”), Old Testament texts gathered/compiled into an apologetic collection that early Christians developed and disseminated in early communities, even becoming material for the catechesis of recent converts. This collection included mostly messianic texts from the Old Testament, which first-generation Christians used to argue the messiahship and divinity of Jesus of Nazareth in debates with Jewish disputants. How were these texts put together? By using the rabbinic exegetical process gezerah shawah which translates as “the rule of similarity” or “the rule of textual equivalence”. The method puts two different Old Testament texts together, joining them on the basis of common words or ideas, so that one text is explained with the help of the other. From this joining of two texts a third, self-composed quotation results. This is exactly what we have here in vv. 2-3.