Cornelius felt a gentle tug on his arm; it was Mary. “The Tetrarch is going back,” she whispered. “He’s furious at the man’s denunciation of him. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he would have had to reveal his identity in doing it, Antipas would have had him arrested. But he didn’t want those puffed toads”—she inclined her head to indicate the Jewish delegation—“carrying stories back, and he wished to avoid provoking a commotion; so he overlooked the....”
“Behold, the Lamb of God!”
Cornelius and the woman, her report to him startlingly interrupted by the prophet’s ejaculation, faced about quickly to look in the direction toward which he was pointing. In that instant the others had whirled about, too. Cornelius and Mary strained forward, trying to see above the heads of the multitude.
“He is the One of Whom I have been speaking!” shouted John. “Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Yonder is the Messiah of God!”
They saw coming along the path that led down from the road above the river, walking with long, easy stride as he descended the grade toward the clearing at the ford, a tall, sunburned young man, well-muscled but lithe, broad of shoulders, erect. He wore a plain, brown, homespun robe, belted at the waist with a length of rope, and coarse, heavy sandals. He was bareheaded; his reddish brown hair fell away from a part in the center of his head in locks that curled almost to his shoulders. In his right hand he gripped a long staff cut from a sapling. As he strode down the pathway and across the open space toward the prophet, he seemed deep in thought, almost insensible to the throng about him. He walked straight up to John. Cornelius and Mary could see the two talking in subdued tones, but they could understand nothing of what was being said by either man.
“What are they saying?” It was the bent old Jew; he still stood near-by, and he had cupped his palm to an ear lost in grizzled earlocks. “Soldier, can you hear them?”
“No, not a word,” Cornelius answered. “They aren’t talking loudly enough for us up here.”
At that moment a youth who had been down at the water’s edge standing a few feet away from the prophet approached them. He heard the old man’s question. “They are arguing about baptizing the tall one,” he explained. “He wants the desert preacher to baptize him, but the preacher claims it should be the other way around; he says he isn’t worthy to baptize the Messiah.”
“The Messiah!” The old man had been peering intently at the tall young man standing calmly beside the prophet. “Is that the one the prophet called the Lamb of God, the one long expected of Israel?”
“Yes, the tall one.”