Commentaries:
Robertson's Word Pictures (NT)
In the Jordan (eiv ton Iordanhn). So in verse Mark 1:10, ek tou udatov, out of the water, after the baptism into the Jordan. Mark is as fond of "straightway" (euquv) as Matthew is of "then" (tote).
Rent asunder (sxizomenouv). Split like a garment, present passive participle. Jesus saw the heavens parting as he came up out of the water, a more vivid picture than the "opened" in Matthew 3:16 and Luke 3:21. Evidently the Baptist saw all this and the Holy Spirit coming down upon Jesus as a dove because he later mentions it (John 1:32). The Cerinthian Gnostics took the dove to mean the heavenly aeon Christ that here descended upon the man Jesus and remained with him till the Cross when it left him, a sort of forecast of the modern distinction between the Jesus of history and the theological Christ.
Other Robertson's Word Pictures (NT) entries containing Mark 1:9:
Mark 1:4
Mark 1:12
Luke 3:21
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