Luke 4:10

γέγραπται γάρ.

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A deadly apple rotten at the heart.”

SHAKESPEARE.

“In religion

What damned error but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?”

Id.

τοῦ διαφυλάξαι σε. To guard thee (as a sentinel; comp. Acts 12:6; Acts 12:19). The inf. with the genitive article is used after verbs of commanding, designing, &c. See Acts 15:20, &c. The quotation is from Psalms 91:11, but the tempter omits “in all thy ways,” which would have defeated his object, since the “ways” referred to are only the ways of him “who dwelleth under the defence of the Most High.” But, as the next verse prophesies, Christ ‘trod upon the lion and adder’ of Satanic temptation. To yield to the Temptation would have been to presume on His Sonship and challenge that equality with God which He “thought not a prize to grasp at.” “L’homme qui n’est plus homme, le Christ qui n’est plus Christ, le Fils qui n’est plus Fils, voilà les trois degrés de la tentation.” “Les tentations se rapportent, l’une à la personne de Jésus, l’autre à la nature de son œuvre, la troisième à l’usage du secours divin.” Godet.