1. Mark 1:5 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

To what does the phrase "all the country of Judea" refer?

Mark 1:5 (ESV)

5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

The phrase refers not only to Judea (in Mark 3:7, Mark 10:1, and Mark 13:14, Mark uses a geographical description, Ioudaia) but to the entire country of the Jews, of which Jerusalem is the capital (cf. John 11:55 for a similar juxtaposition of the Jewish country and the city of Jerusalem).1