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As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, 'Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way.' Skeptic Dennis McKinsey says, "The problem with this prophecy lies in the fact that there is no such comment in Isaiah." This is the same issue that is found with Matt. 27:9-10, namely more than one prophet is cited, yet only one is mentioned.

In this case, the portion that McKinsey quotes comes from Exodus 23:20a and Mal. 3:1. Mark 1:3 actually comes from Isaiah. There is a third case of this in scripture in 2 Chron. 36:21. The first part of the verse is drawn from Lev. 26:34-35, the second is from Jer. 25:12, yet only Jeremiah is listed. So, there are three cases in scripture where more than one prophet is cited, and in each case only one is mentioned. There are no cases where more than one is mentioned. What does this tell us? Well, we can either believe it was an accepted practice to list the prophet who was making the main point, or we can believe that all three writers made a ridiculously careless mistake, and no one noticed it. However, composite attributions suit a common practice of Jewish exegetes. Z. H. Chages in The Student's Guide to the Talmud [172ff] relates a practice of the rabbis of quoting various persons under one and the same name. The rabbis "adopted as one of their methods that of calling different personages by one and the same name if they found them akin in any feature of their characters or activities or if they found a similarity between any of their actions." Thus for example Malachi and Ezra are said to be the "same person" (Meg. 15a) because they both say similar things (Mal. 2:2, Ez. 10:2). Chages gives examples of as many as three people being treated as one person because of such similarities.

The purpose of this collapsing down of identifies was to enact a principle of praising the righteous and pious, and honoring those due such praise. Thus when Mark attributes the words of Malachi to Isaiah, he is enacting this principle by essentially melding the two prophets and giving attribution to the one who is the most deserving of honor and praise.