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A severe test, even from the standpoint of Christ's physical nature:
v. 2. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered.
The expression indicates that it was a spontaneous, voluntary desisting from food, the severity of the trials, the mental preoccupation caused by the temptation, stifling the ordinary desire for nourishment, somewhat after the manner of Moses, Exo_34:28, and Elijah, 1Ki_19:8. But this entire abstinence from food, which possibly included also drink, was not in the nature of an ascetic exercise "That is also the reason why the evangelist at the beginning with great care sets down and says: He was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit that He fast and be tempted there, in order that no one may follow the example from his own choice and make a selfish, self-willed, and assumed fasting out of it, but wait for the Spirit; He will send him enough of fasting and temptation."