They asked him, "What then? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" He answered, "No."

 (iii) There are two great pictures of the lamb in the prophets. Jeremiah writes: "But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter" ( Jeremiah 11:19). And Isaiah has the great picture of the one who was brought "like a lamb to the slaughter" ( Isaiah 53:7). Both these great prophets had the vision of one who by his sufferings and his sacrifice, meekly and lovingly borne, would redeem his people. Maybe John is saying: "Your prophets dreamed of the one who was to love and suffer and die for the people; that one is come." It is certainly true that in later times the picture of Isaiah 53:1-12 became to the church one of the most precious forecasts of Jesus in all the Old Testament. It may be that John the Baptist was the first to see it so. 