In parallel questions, Jesus begins by affirming what John was not. First, he was not a moral weakling, easily blown about by public opinion or human authority (contrast his persecutor in 14:5; compare 21:46; 22:46). People who proved too weak for the test that awaited them were compared to papyrus reeds, easily moved by the wind (1 Kings 14:15; 2 Kings 18:21; 3 Macc 2:22; compare Is 42:3; Mt 12:20). (On the banks of the Jordan, the site of John's baptism, reeds grew as high as five meters.) John was no easily bent reed.

Second, John was no pampered prince or court prophet who might be tempted to prophesy for hire. Some prophets had found a home in royal courts, but only in those few generations when kings were godly enough to welcome their counsel (or when rare kings themselves met the ideal of being prophetically empowered themselves: compare 1 Sam 10:1, 5-6; 2 Sam 23:2-3). In most generations false prophets outnumbered true prophets; even when they claimed to prophesy for Yahweh, they were really the king's prophets (1 Kings 22:22-23). In times when true prophets were severely persecuted, some of them lived in the wilderness, as in the days of Elijah (1 Kings 17:3; 18:13; compare 2 Kings 4:38-44; 6:1-3). John was a prophet in that mold, with nothing to gain from his prophesying except the approval of his God.