A high school English teacher would use three words to describe how he wanted his students to write: pithy, terse and succinct. By that the students took it to mean that he didn’t want them to waste words and space on the paper. He wanted them to pack as much meaning into a few words as possible. Of course it made sense to them from a mechanical standpoint: they used typewriters and white-out. The less they had to type, the better. They imagined his motivation was less to read and less time to grade. They didn’t imagine, at age 16, that perhaps it meant that they would be better writers. Today, after the advent of the personal computer and the reality of the endless blog on the internet, word conservation is a lost art.

Mark, on the other hand, does not have a problem with word conservation. The state of his prose was less important than the scarcity of paper. Or perhaps he just doesn’t want to waste time on details that do not serve his proclamation. Whatever the reason, his story of the temptation of Jesus is much shorter than that of Matthew and Luke. Mark does not record the challenges that come in a confrontation with the devil, only that Satan tempted him. Mark has written a lot in a very few words. If we are not careful, we may miss something.