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Mat_4:11. Ἄγγελοι ] Angels, without the article.
διηκόνουν ] ministered to Him. The remark of Bengel is correct: “sine dubio pro eo, ac tum opus erat, sc. allato cibo.” So Luther, Piscator, Jansen, Wolf, Hammond, Michaelis, Paulus, Fritzsche, Strauss, de Wette, Ewald, Bleek, Nebe, Keim. Concerning the use of διακονεῖν in this sense, see Wetstein, and Matthiae, ad Soph. Phil. 284; and how pragmatically does this appearance of angels, after a series of temptations that have been victoriously withstood, correspond to the appearance of Satan in Mat_4:3! Comp. 1Ki_19:5. Others, not referring it to food, say that extraordinary divine support (Joh_1:51) is intended (Calvin, Maldonatus, Kuinoel, Olshausen, Kuhn, Ammon, Ebrard), on which view the angels themselves are partly left out, partly effaced from the narrative; whilst Chrysostom (who compares the carrying of Lazarus by angels into Abraham’s bosom), Theophylact, Euth. Zigabenus, Grotius, do not enter into any more minute exposition of the διακονεῖν . But considering the appropriateness of the above definite explanation, it is not right to be satisfied with one that is indefinite and wavering.
REMARK.
According to the representation of the evangelists, the temptation of Jesus by the devil appears in the connection of the history as a real external marvellous occurrence. See Ch. F. Fritzsche in Fritzschior. Opusc. p. 122 ff. To abide by this view (Michaelis, Storr, Ebrard, P. Ewald, Graul, Könemann, Arnoldi, Schegg, Delitzsch, Nebe, Engelhardt, Hofmann, Riggenbach, Baumgarten) is a necessary consequence of the denial of any legendary elements in the canonical Gospels, and is equally justifiable with this denial in general. The evangelists were aware that they were relating a real external history in time and space (in answer to Kuhn, Lichtenstein), and the choice only remains between adopting either this view or assuming that of an ideal history in the garb of legend, gradually brought into shape by the power of the idea. All attempts at explaining away the devil and his external appearance are arbitrary contradictions or critical carpings, opposed to the design and representations of the evangelists, more or less of a rationalistic character. This holds good, not merely of the absurd, and, in relation to the third act, even monstrous view of those who, instead of the devil, introduce one or even various individuals, perhaps a member of the Sanhedrim or high priest, who wished to examine Jesus and to win Him over, or destroy Him (Herm. v. d. Hardt, Exegesis he. difficilior. quat. ev. p. 470 ff.; Basedow, Venturini, Möller, neue Ansichten, p. 20 ff.; Rosenmüller, Kuinoel, Feilmoser in the Tüb. Quartalschr. 1828, 1, 2), but also of the view which regards the event as a vision, whether this was brought about by the devil (Origen? Pseudo-Cyprian, Theodore of Mopsuestia), or by God (Farmer, Inquiry into the Nature and Design of Christ’s Temptation, London, 1761; comp. also Calvin on Mat_4:5), or by natural means (Balth. Becker, Scultetus, Clericus, Wetstein, Bolten, Bertholdt, Jahn, Gabler, Paulus, Gratz, Pfieiderer), or of those who view it as a significant morning dream (Meyer in the Stud. u. Kritik. 1831, p. 319 ff.),—which interpretations, moreover, are in contradiction with the clear repose and moral definiteness of the divine-human consciousness of Jesus, in virtue of which there never occurs in His life any condition of ecstasy, or a trace of any special manifestations in dreams. Akin to this, but equally offensive to the gospel history, and besides by no means leaving unaffected the moral character of the development of Jesus Himself, if we look to Heb_2:18; Heb_4:15, is the view which transforms the occurrence into an internal history, which took place in the thoughts and fancy of Jesus (Döderlein, Eichhorn, allg. Bibl. III. p. 283 ff.; Thaddaeus d. i. Dereser, d. Versuch. Christi, Bonn 1794; Hezel, Augusti, Bretschneider, Weisse, Kritik d. ev. Gesch. II. p. 12; Hocheisen in the Tüb. Zeitschr. 1833, 2; Kohlschütter, Pfeiffer, Rink, Ammon, Laufs, Schenkel, Held). On this view the devil has again been recently brought forward, on grounds exegetically justifiable, as the operating principle (Krabbe, Hoffmann, Schmid, bibl. Theol. I. p. 65; and very indirectly also by Ullmann); while, in a more arbitrary manner, it has been attributed to the disciples that they apprehended in an objective form the inner fact related to them by Jesus, that He had rejected the false idea of the Messiah; whilst Neander, L. J. p. 120 ff., substantially giving up the reality of the history of the temptation (“a fragmentary symbolical setting forth of the facts of His inner life,” where the manner of the devil’s co-operation is left undetermined), holds hesitatingly by its truth; and Kuhn, moreover, is divided between the historical and unhistorical view of the manner of its occurrence. To those who transfer the history into the inner life of Jesus’ spirit, belong also Hase and Olshausen, the former of whom recognises in it the whole history of His mental growth, probably externalized by Himself, with reference to Exodus 16, Deu_8:2, Psa_91:11 f, into an individual fact, but in the tradition assumed to be actual history, and who volatilizes the devil into the spirit of the world; while Olshausen, notwithstanding the ὑπὸ τοῦ πνεύματος in Mat_4:1, finds the reality of the. occurrence in this, that the soul of Jesus was exposed to the full operations of the kingdom of darkness; while Lange regards the internal temptation of Jesus as caused by the devil, but brought about by human means—that is, as an assault of the sympathetic in working of the national and world spirit upon His soul, and as the tentative representatives of this spirit, drags in, by an invention that is his own, the deputation of the Sanhedrim, which had been despatched to John (Joh_1:19), as they were on their way back to Jerusalem. With more caution and with profounder historical insight, Keim (comp. Weizsäcker, p. 239 ff.) regards the history of the temptation in the light of the victorious beginning of the struggle with Satan, Mat_12:25 ff., where the historical kernel is the heavy weight of questions and doubts which were imposed on the soul of Jesus whilst He was calmly meditating upon the obligation and the manner of His vocation to the Messiahship, and on His decision to enter upon it, which had so powerfully taken hold of Him on the banks of the Jordan; on this initial victory Jesus could not have left His disciples without some information. But however we may apprehend the narrative as an historical occurrence in the mind of Jesus, the monstrous nature of the external formation of the history remains the more inexplicable the more directly its origin is brought into connection with Jesus Himself and His circle of disciples, especially as the threefold details of the temptation were still unknown to Mark. To view the event as a parable, is in contradiction to the narrative, arbitrary in itself, and alien to the style of parabolic address employed by Jesus elsewhere. So, after older writers, who, however, endanger the sinless character of Jesus, it has been viewed as a symbolical address of Jesus or of one of His disciples directed against false Messianic hopes. See Schleiermacher, Schr. d. Lukas, 54f., and L. J. p. 157 ff.; B. Crusius, bibl. Theol. p. 303, and on Matthew, p. 82; Usteri in the Stud. u. Krit. 1829, p. 455 ff., who at a later time recanted this opinion, and regarded the narrative as a myth (1832, p. 768); Richter, formam narrat. Mat_4:1-11, parabolicam ex Judaeor. opinione de duplici Adamo esse repetend., Viteb. 1824; Schweizer, Bleek; coinp. Theile, z. Biogr. J. p. 49: “a warning directed by some adherent or another in support of the spiritually moral view, in opposition to the chief elements of the earthly Messianic hope.” Against the parabolic character, see Hasert in the Stud. u. Krit. 1830, p. 74 f.; Strauss, L. J. I. p. 444 f.; Schmid, bibl. Theol. I. p. 60; Engelhardt, Nebe.
As now, however, the history of the temptation in the first and third evangelists, viewed as an actual external occurrence, contains not merely a legendary magical scenery which is still foreign to the oldest Gospel, but also absolute impossibilities and contradictions with the moral character of Jesus as filled with the Spirit, who does not at once get rid of Satan, but allows him to proceed to the utmost extreme; as, moreover, this occurrence on the other side stands in contradiction with the devil’s cunning and craftiness (Paulus, exeget. Handb. I. p. 376), whose assaults as proceeding from the devil against the Son of man would be planned with as much clumsiness as pointlessness,—there thus remains nothing else than to explain the narrative which in Mark still exhibits its first undeveloped beginnings, the first crystallisations of its ideal contents, the subject of which the narrators deemed to be true history, and repeated as such, as a legend, the contents of which, regarded as thought, possessed historical truth, and which arose among Jewish Christians,[391] being derived from the idea of the Messiah as opposed to the devil, and the necessity and complete realization of which was exhibited in the whole life and work of Christ, placed, like a compendious programme, an “epitome omnium tentationum” (Bengel), at the beginning of the Messianic career, which commenced at the baptism. Not as if there had not been on the part of Jesus after His baptism, and before His entrance on His work, the most serious preparation and most intense concentration of thought in still retirement, in which the whole opposition of the devil, as well as the manner of His own struggles and conquests which had been peculiarly determined by God, must have presented themselves vividly before His eyes; although this alone could not have given rise to the history of the temptation. For that purpose it was necessary that His holy life, that actual victory over Satan, should first be completed. That narrative might now first have arisen in the living history-moulding power of the ideas which prevails generally throughout the preliminary history, first of all in the form in which it appears in Mark, but soon after gradually expanded into detail, yet again silently excluded by John, considering the impossibility of assigning a place to it in connection with his history. Its expanded form, however, as it lies before us in Matthew and Luke, corresponds with the highest internal truth to the main relations of the opposition directed by the power of the devil against the second Adam and His kingdom,—an opposition which is decidedly to be recognised from the very beginning onwards to the end, and victory over which was the condition of His whole work. In this way the contents of the narrative, the psychological factors of which are quite as much the temptability as the sinlessness of the Lord, certainly belong to the history, but not as a concrete occurrence with its three individual acts, but as a summary reflection of the work of Jesus in His vocation in relation to the demoniacal kingdom, without, however, our being obliged to assume as an historical foundation any internal temptation taking place in thought, and any originally symbolic representation of the same, which was transformed into actual history in the course of tradition (de Wette). This foundation is rather the complete victory of our Lord over the craft and power of the devil, as the whole course of His Messianic life is a series of temptations by the devil, with the result of the latter being conquered both in detail and in the main (Heb_2:18; Heb_4:15); comp. Joh_14:30. With profound meaning and truth (for from the very beginning must Jesus make experience of the enemy of His kingdom, begin the struggle with him, and become certain of the right victory) has the synoptic tradition unanimously assigned to the narrative the early place which it occupies; and the attempt cannot be successful to maintain a later special situation as the historical seat of its origin, as Pfleiderer does, who transposes the vision which he assumes into the time of ch. 15 16, making use, moreover, of Joh_6:26 for the first act of the temptation. That the history of the temptation in Matthew is even a later insertion derived from oral tradition (Köstlin), is a very arbitrary inference, from the circumstance that Mat_4:12 does not make any reference to the history of the temptations; Matthew follows Mark, and quotes his short notice from a special source.
The existence of Satan, as well as his personality, is attested throughout the whole of the New Testament, and is altogether independent of the view which may be taken of this individual narrative; see in answer to Hofmann, Schriftbew., Philippi, Dogm. III. p. 332 ff. ed. 2.
[391] Various conceptions from the legendary or mythical point of view, see in Theiss, Löffler, kl. Schr. II. p. 185 ff.; Fritzscho, Usteri in the Stud. ú. Krit. 1832, p. 768 ff.; Strauss, I. p. 479 f.; de Wette, Gfrörer, Gesch. d. Urchr. I. 1, p. 379 ff.; Ewald.—The locality of the temptation, the wilderness, was at once suggested as the idea gradually assumed bodily form from the sojourn of Jesus with the Baptist, and from the popular belief that demons had their dwellings in the wilderness; the forty days, however, found their venerable point of connection in the types of Moses and Elias (hardly of the forty years’ duration of the wanderings of the people in the wilderness, which Delitzsch, Baumgarten, and others drag in here as a type). They are also not excluded by the statement of Justin, c. Tr. 103, that, according to the ἀπομνημον . τ . ἀποστ , the devil came to Jesus ἅμα τῷ ἀναβῆναι αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τοῦ ποταμοῦ τοῦ Ἰορδάνου ; but this statement agrees with Mar_1:12 f. As regards the individual temptations, the first was thus connected with the forty days’ fast of Moses, Deu_9:9; Deu_9:18; the second, with the necessity which existed in the case of the Messiah of His being accredited by miracles; the third, with the certainty of the Messiah’s rule over the world, by means of which the government of the devil must come to an end.