Jesus offered a second wrong answer to show what John was not. People who live in comfort and fine clothing are found in palaces, not in the desert. Barnes says the soft raiment meant light, thin clothing, the dress of people who live at ease in kings' houses, while John was hardy and plain. Gill points to what John actually wore, camel's hair and a leather girdle (Matthew 3:4), and notes that John was in such a place because of his uprightness and faithfulness in reproving Herod. The question made the crowd picture John as he really was.

Jesus answers in the same breath: "behold, they that wear soft clothing are in kings' houses" (Matthew 11:8). John was not that kind of man. Then Jesus asks a third time and gives the true answer: "A prophet? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet" (Matthew 11:9).

Matthew describes John's dress and diet: "his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey" (Matthew 3:4). The word for "soft" is malakos, meaning soft or fine. Luke's account says those who are "gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts" (Luke 7:25).

John did have a connection to a king's house, but not as a courtier. Herod had bound him and put him in prison for saying, "It is not lawful for thee to have her" (Matthew 14:3-4). Gill notes it was for his uprightness and faithfulness in reproving Herod that John was there.

God's messengers are not measured by comfort or outward show. John's plain clothing and wilderness life matched his message, "Repent ye" (Matthew 3:2, 4). Matthew Henry calls him "a self-denying man, dead to all the pomps of the world and the pleasures of sense."

The same plainness that Jesus honors here, the people of that day held against John. A few sentences later Jesus says that John "came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil" (Matthew 11:18). Jesus sees what the crowd missed: John's hardness of life was faithfulness, not strangeness.