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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Luke 4:2 - 4:2
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2. ἡμέρας τεσσεράκοντα. The number was connected in the Jewish mind with notions of seclusion, and revelation, and peril;—Moses on Sinai, Exo 34:18; Elijah, 1Ki 19:8; the wanderings of the Israelites, Num 14:34; Jdg 13:1.
πειραζόμενος. The present participle implies that the temptation was continuous throughout the forty days, though it reached its most awful climax at their close.
ὑπὸ τοῦ διαβόλου. The Jews placed in the wilderness one of the mouths of Gehenna, and there evil spirits were supposed to have most power (Num 16:33; Mat 12:43). St Mark uses the Hebrew form of the word—‘Satan.’ Both words mean ‘the Accuser,’ but the Greek Διάβολος is far more definite than the Hebrew Satan, which is loosely applied to any opponent, or opposition, or evil influence in which the evil spirit may be supposed to work (1Ch 21:1; 2Co 12:7; 1Th 2:18). This usage is more apparent in the original, where the word rendered ‘adversary’ is often Satan, Num 22:22; 1Sa 29:4; 1Ki 11:14, &c. On the other hand, the Greek word διάβολος is comparatively rare in the N.T. (The word rendered ‘devils’ for the ‘evil spirits’ of demoniac possession is δαιμόνια). St Matthew also calls Satan “the tempter.” Few suppose that the devil came incarnate in any visible hideous guise. The narrative of the Temptation could only have been communicated to the Apostles by our Lord Himself. Of its intense and absolute reality we cannot doubt; nor yet that it was so narrated as to bring home to us the clearest possible conception of its significance. The best and wisest commentators in all ages have accepted it as the symbolic description of a mysterious inward struggle. Further speculation into the special modes in which the temptations were effected is idle, and we have no data for it. Of this only can we be sure, that our Lord’s temptations were in every respect akin to ours (Heb 4:15; Heb 2:10; Heb 2:18); that there was “a direct operation of the evil spirit upon His mind and sensibility;” that, as St Augustine says, “Christ conquered the tempter, that the Christian may not be conquered by the tempter.” All enquiries as to whether Christ’s sinlessness arose from a ‘possibility of not sinning’ (posse non peccare), or from an ‘impossibility of sinning’ (non posse peccare), are rash intrusions into the unrevealed. The Christian is content with the certainty that He “was in all points tempted (tried) like as we are, yet without sin” (see Heb 5:8). It is at least doubtful whether our Lord in any way referred to His own temptation in Luk 11:21-22.
οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδέν. St Matthew says more generally that ‘He fasted,’ and St Luke’s phrase probably implies no more than this (see Mat 11:18). The Arabah at any rate supplied enough for the bare maintenance of life (Jos. Vit. 2), and at times of intense spiritual exaltation the ordinary needs of the body are almost suspended. But this can only be for a time, and when the reaction has begun hunger asserts its claims with a force so terrible that (as has been shewn again and again in human experience) such moments are fraught with the extremest peril to the soul. This was the moment which the Tempter chose. We rob the narrative of the Temptation of all its spiritual meaning unless in reading it we are on our guard against the Apollinarian heresy which denied the perfect Humanity of Christ. The Christian must keep in view two thoughts: 1. Intensely real temptation. 2. Absolute sinlessness. It is man’s trial ‘to feel temptation’ (sentire tentationem); Christ has put it into our power to resist it (non consentire tentationi). Temptation only merges into sin when man consents to it.
“’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall.”—SHAKESPEARE.
The temptation must be felt or it is no temptation; but we do not sin until temptation really sways the bias of the heart, and until delight and consent follow suggestion. The student will find the best examition of this subject in Ullmann’s treatise On the sinlessness of Jesus (Engl. Transl.).