Mark 1:6

‘And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather belt about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.’

John comes in the wilderness (compare 1 Kings 19:4; 1 Kings 19:8-9; 1 Kings 19:15) and wears camel’s hair with a wide leather belt around his waist and loins and eats locusts and wild honey. The hairy garment and leather belt indicated that John was a prophet similar to Elijah. Compare with this how in 2 Kings 1:8 Elijah ‘was a man wearing hair and with a leather belt about his loins’; and see also Zechariah 13:4 for mention of the ‘hairy cloak’ of the prophet. Locusts (see Leviticus 11:22) and wild honey were typical wilderness food. John was a man of the wilderness.

The members of the Qumran community had also fled into the wilderness as they separated themselves from an Israel that they saw as tainted and condemned, and John may well have had contact with them. But his message was essentially his own, and different from theirs, and there is no real reason, apart from the fact that both were in the wilderness, for connecting him with them. Nor did he seek to form his own separated community. He sent men and women back to live in society and to live out his teachings there.