Mark 9:9-13
Coming Down the Mountain
9As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus admonished them not to tell anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
10So they kept this matter to themselves, discussing what it meant to rise from the dead.
11And they asked Jesus, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”
12He replied, “Elijah does indeed come first, and he restores all things. Why then is it written that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected?
13But I tell you that Elijah has indeed come, and they have done to him whatever they wished, just as it is written about him.”
Berean Standard Bible
They are walking back down the mountain, and he tells them to say nothing about what they saw until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. He has been telling people to keep quiet since the first chapter. What is new here is the end date. Not never, but until.
So they kept this matter to themselves, discussing what it meant to rise from the dead.
Three grown men out of their depth, in one sentence. They are Jewish. They believe in a resurrection at the end of everything, when God puts the world back together. One man, rising by himself, soon, in the middle of history, is not a category any of them has, and they come down the hill getting nowhere with it.
So they change the subject. The question they land on is not a random one.
Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?
They have just watched Elijah stand on a mountain, and it has stirred up a real difficulty. The Old Testament closes with God promising to send Elijah before the great and awesome day of the LORD. Everybody knew it. If Elijah comes first, and they have just watched him arrive and leave, what happens now.
Jesus answers with two things. The second is the harder one. First, yes: Elijah does come first, and he restores all things. He does not correct their scripture or suggest they have misread it, and then he puts a question back to them, and it is the one nobody in the group wants. Why is it written that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected?
He is pointing them into another part of their own Bible, to the passage in Isaiah about a man despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, from whom people hid their faces. They knew that text too, and they had never put the two of them in the same sentence.
But I tell you that Elijah has indeed come, and they have done to him whatever they wished, just as it is written about him.
He does not name John the Baptist and does not need to. The man who came out of the wilderness dressed the way Elijah was described is dead, executed at a party, and every man on that mountain knew it. So the answer to when Elijah comes is that he already came, and they watched what was done to him. It is also the answer to a question nobody had asked out loud. If that is what happens to the messenger, what happens to the one he announced?
How We Know
The disciples' question in verse 11 rests on a specific promise without quoting it. Malachi 4:5-6, the last two verses of the Old Testament, say that God will send Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD, and that he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children.
Restores all things in verse 12 is Mark's wording rather than Malachi's, but the expectation is the one Malachi set, and it is why the question is about order.
Mark records the answer without resolving the difficulty. Jesus says Elijah has come and they did to him whatever they wished, and moves on.
Questions
1 What does Jesus tell them on the way down, and what is different about this instruction?
AnswerTo say nothing about what they saw until the Son of Man has risen from the dead. He has told people to stay quiet before: the man he healed of a skin disease at 1:44, Jairus and his wife at 5:43, the crowd after the deaf man at 7:36. This time there is an end date on it.
2 What are the three of them puzzling over as they walk?
AnswerWhat rising from the dead could mean. They believed in a resurrection at the end of everything. One man rising by himself, soon, was not a category they had.
3 Is there something about God you have believed for years and never really understood? What have you done with it so far?
AnswerThe three men coming down that hill were in the same position, and Jesus did not think less of them for it. Being confused about something is not the same as being far away from him.
4 Jesus says Elijah has already come. Who does he mean, and how would they have known?
AnswerHe does not say the name and does not need to. The man who came out of the wilderness dressed the way Elijah was described is dead, executed at a party, and everybody walking down that hill knew it.
What This Means for Us
They came down from the brightest thing they had ever seen and were immediately confused.
The order of that matters. We tend to assume a real encounter with God settles things, and that anybody still puzzled has missed something, and yet these three had seen more than anyone and walked down the hill not understanding a word he had used. He did not scold them for it. He answered the question they asked, then sent them back into their own Bible.
So when somebody here is confused about God, do not treat it as a step backward. Treat it as walking down the mountain, and go back into the text for the part that got skipped.
Prayer
Father, we can see something real and still not understand it. Thank you for answering questions instead of shaming people for having them. When we are confused, keep us reading, and show us the parts we have been walking past. Amen.