Matthew 3:4

4. Raiment of camel’s hair Of the finer hair of the camel an elegant kind of cloth is manufactured in the East called camlet. Of this our European and American camlet is an imitation, made of wool. But John’s garment was a coarse stuff, woven of the long and shaggy hair of the camel, such as was anciently worn by monks and anchorites. It was not, therefore, as some imagine, the camel’s skin. So his type Elijah was a hairy man in his dress. 2 Kings 1:8. So the false prophets imitated him by wearing a rough garment to deceive. Zechariah 13:4. Elijah also was girt with a leathern girdle about his loins. 2 Kings 1:8. It was customary to wear a girdle around the waist, in order to confine the loose dress to its place.

Meat Food. This sense of the word, like most of the peculiarities of phrase in the Scripture, is the old English mode in use when the Bible was translated. Locusts The law of Moses gave permission to eat locusts. “These may ye eat, of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four… the locust after his kind, and the bald locust,” etc. Leviticus 11:21. The Eastern locust is a food of a poor kind. On this subject Dr. Thomson says: “Do you suppose that the meat of John the Baptist was literally locusts and wild honey? Why not? by the Arabs they are eaten to this day. The perfectly trustworthy Burckhardt thus speaks on this subject: ‘ All the Bedouins of Arabia, and the inhabitants of towns in Nejd and Hedjaz are accustomed to eat locusts.’ ‘I have seen at Medina and Tayf locust shops where these animals were sold by measure. In Egypt and Nubia they are only eaten by the poorest beggars.’ ‘The Arabs, in preparing locusts as an article of food, throw them alive into boiling water with which a good deal of salt has been mixed. After a few minutes they are taken out and dried in the sun; the head, feet, and wings are then torn off; the bodies are cleansed from the salt and perfectly dried, after which process whole sacks are filled with them by the Bedouin. They are sometimes eaten boiled in butter, and they often contribute materials for a breakfast when spread over unleavened bread mixed with butter.’ Thus far Burckhardt. Locusts are not eaten in Syria by any but the Bedouin on the extreme frontiers, and it is always spoken of as a very inferior article of food, and regarded by most with disgust and loathing tolerated only by the very poorest people. John the Baptist, however, was of this class, either from necessity or election. He also dwelt in the desert, where such food was and is still used, and therefore the text states the simple truth. His ordinary ‘meat’ was dried locusts; probably fried in butter and mixed with honey, as is still frequently done. This honey, too, was the article made by bees, and not dibs from grapes, nor dates from the palm, nor anything else which ingenious commentators have invented. Wild honey is still gathered in large quantities from trees in the wilderness, and from rocks in the wadies, just where the Baptist sojourned, and where he came preaching the baptism of repentance.” Wild honey The chance honey produced by wild bees in hollow trees or clefts of rocks. So 1 Samuel 14:25: “All they of the land came to a wood; and there was honey upon the ground. And when the people came into the wood, behold the honey dropped.”

This coarse and wild diet was intended by John, as well as by Elijah, to represent a perpetual fast.

John here presents the symbols of the repentance he preaches, according to ancient customs. The hair or sackcloth, the fasting and the solitude, were the ordinary outward signs of deepest humiliation. The whole process was a mode of saying: “We confess ourselves by sin unworthy of every blessing, even of food and raiment, and deserving to be sunk into humiliation and woe.” And John did not this for himself, but for the people. He was their representative. He was showing them by sign, as well as by word, what they ought to be and do. At the same time, by retreating from all society, he was protesting against the unutterable apostacy of the whole social system.