Matthew 4:2

_ _ First Stage:

_ _ And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights — Luke says “When they were quite ended” (Luke 4:2).

_ _ he was afterward an hungered — evidently implying that the sensation of hunger was unfelt during all the forty days; coming on only at their close. So it was apparently with Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:8) for the same period. A supernatural power of endurance was of course imparted to the body, but this probably operated through a natural law — the absorption of the Redeemer’s Spirit in the dread conflict with the tempter. (See on Acts 9:9). Had we only this Gospel, we should suppose the temptation did not begin till after this. But it is clear, from Mark’s statement, that “He was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan” (Mark 1:13), and Luke’s, “being forty days tempted of the devil” (Luke 4:2), that there was a forty days’ temptation before the three specific temptations afterwards recorded. And this is what we have called the First Stage. What the precise nature and object of the forty days’ temptation were is not recorded. But two things seem plain enough. First, the tempter had utterly failed of his object, else it had not been renewed; and the terms in which he opens his second attack imply as much. But further, the tempter’s whole object during the forty days evidently was to get Him to distrust the heavenly testimony borne to Him at His baptism as THE SON OF GOD — to persuade Him to regard it as but a splendid illusion — and, generally, to dislodge from His breast the consciousness of His Sonship. With what plausibility the events of His previous history from the beginning would be urged upon Him in support of this temptation it is easy to imagine. And it makes much in support of this view of the forty days’ temptation that the particulars of it are not recorded; for how the details of such a purely internal struggle could be recorded it is hard to see. If this be correct, how naturally does the Second Stage of the temptation open! In Mark’s brief notice of the temptation there is one expressive particular not given either by Matthew or by Luke — that “He was with the wild beasts” (Mark 1:12), no doubt to add terror to solitude, and aggravate the horrors of the whole scene.