John 1:31

John 1:31. "And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel," etc. This may seem strange that John did not know Jesus, seeing the families were so related; Elisabeth, his mother, being cousin to the Virgin Mary, and they were intimately acquainted one with another, and at the very time of their pregnancy, when the child of each had been already conceived, and both were thoroughly acquainted with the miraculous circumstances of each other's conception, and what the children were that they had conceived, and to what end they were to come into the world; and conversed together of these things. Soon after Christ's birth, he was conveyed away privately by his parents into Egypt, for fear of Herod, and probably nobody knew where they were gone, or what was become of them. There it is supposed that he remained in Egypt until the death of Herod; and Archelaus his son, reigning in his stead in the province of Judea, and manifesting by some bloody acts in the beginning of his reign, the like tyrannical disposition with his father, Joseph and Mary returned from Egypt, we may suppose, as privately as they could, into Nazareth, an obscure city in Galilee the province of Herod Antipas. And as to John the Baptist, when Herod massacred the infants at Bethlehem, his malice proceeded as far as the hill-country; for having heard great things of John, the son of Zechariah, he sent one of his messengers of death to dispatch him. The care of his mother prevented the design. By flying with him into the wilderness, or unfrequented parts of the country, on the north side of the river Jordan. It is recorded by Nicephorus, lib. 1, cap. 14, that he was about eighteen months old when he was conveyed into this sanctuary, that forty days after his mother died, and near the same time his father Zechariah was killed in the court of the temple. [There is an account of these things in Reading's Evangelical History of Christ, chap. 7, 8, 9, and 10.] However, thus much seems manifest from the Scripture, that John's parents were both old when he was born, and therefore we may well suppose that they did not live long after, so that he could not be led by them into personal acquaintance with Jesus; and it is also manifest that John was from his infancy in the desert, in a hidden, secret state of life, even unto the day when he began his public ministry; Luke 1:80, and that there he lived so much separated from the rest of the Jews, and from the society of mankind, that he lived on the spontaneous productions of the uncultivated desert, his meat being locusts and wild honey, and his garment nothing but camels' hair, girt about him with a girdle of skin, Matthew 3:4, and Mark 1:6. And so when he began to preach it was in the borders of the wilderness, where he had lived all his days, Matthew 3:1; Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:4, and Luke 3:2; Luke 3:4. Therefore Christ says to the multitudes concerning John, "What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?" Matthew 11:7 and Luke 7:24.

Things being thus, it is not to be wondered at that John had never seen Jesus, who lived obscurely so remote from him, and that he knew not where he was, or how to find him, till God showed him to him.

John 2:1-2