Mark 9:9-13 - Elijah has come

9:9,10

Jesus did not want them blabbing about their experience at this time. To do so would have got people focusing on entirely the wrong thing. They were to wait till after He had been raised from the dead before recounting this incident. At stage Jesus would have been crucified and there would have been little danger of a wrong focus. For once the disciples obeyed! They just talked about it among themselves. However, they still had no idea what Jesus was on about when He said He would rise from the dead. One of the arguments used by some against the resurrection essentially boils down to saying the people of the day were rather gullible and would believe anything, such as someone rising from the dead. As well as being rather insulting to the people of the first century. there are no ground whatsoever for giving this view any credibility. The disciples expectation of Jesus rising from the dead, or even having any idea of the concept, was precisely zero, even when Jesus had spoken about it plainly.

9:11-13

Based on Malachi 4:5,6 the view was that Elijah would come first, first here meaning coming before the Messiah, before God restored all things. The disciples asked Jesus why they taught that. Jesus gives one of His enigmatic replies. He agrees that Elijah does come first, indeed that he has come. So Jesus is saying that John the Baptist is Elijah. In fact there is an interesting point here on Biblical interpretation. We tend to either want everything in the Bible to be taken literally, or we take everything metaphorically.  This is most apparent in interpreting the first three chapters of Genesis, and in interpreting Revelation (funny that it is the beginning and the end!). But look at what is happening here. John the Baptist was not physically Elijah, but he is the Elijah figure prophesied by Malachi. So we have the metaphorical interpretation. But on the mount of transfiguration Elijah did appear, so we have a literal interpretation. God has a habit of being more balanced than we are!

Anyway, while Jesus affirmed that Elijah was involved, there was also a serious lack of understanding, mainly over suffering. Jesus points to what happened to John the Baptist, he was beheaded! They did not expect that to happen. In the same way, the suffering of Jesus, the Messiah, was not expected by the people, not even by the disciples. But note that Jesus says that Scriptures say the  Messiah must suffer (probably thinking primarily about Isaiah 53). On the road to Emmaus He told the two disciples how the Scriptures actually foretold of all that had happened.