Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 3:6

"and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins." — Matthew 3:6 (ASV)

Were baptized—The Greek tense implies a continual succession. Crowd after crowd passed on, and still they came confessing their sins—that is, as the position of the word implies, in the closest possible connection with the act of immersion.

The Greek word for “confessing” always implies a public utterance. While it is sometimes used in the sense of “praising” , here it also included a specific mention of at least the more grievous individual sins, as the plural form of the noun seems to show.