Luke 4:2

forty days The number was connected in the Jewish mind with notions of seclusion, and revelation, and peril; Moses on Sinai, Exodus 34:18; Elijah, 1 Kings 19:8; the wanderings of the Israelites, Numbers 14:34; Judges 13:1.

tempted The present participle implies that the temptation was continuous throughout the forty days, though it reached its most awful climax at their close.

of the devil The Jews placed in the wilderness one of the mouths of Gehenna, and there evil spirits were supposed to have most power (Numbers 16:33; Matthew 12:43). St Mark uses the Hebrew form of the word -Satan." Both words mean -the Accuser," but the Greek Diabolosis 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 (1 Chronicles 21:1; 2 Corinthians 12:7; 1 Thessalonians 2:18). This usage is far more apparent in the original, where the word rendered -adversary" is often Satan, Numbers 22:22; 1Sa 29:4; 1 Kings 11:14, &c. On the other hand, the Greek word Diabolosis comparatively rare in the N. T. (The word rendered -devils" for the - evil spirits" of demoniac possession is daimonia.) 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 modesin 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 akinto ours (Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 2:10; Hebrews 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 - possibilityof notsinning" (posse non peccare) or 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 like as we are, yet without sin" (see Hebrews 5:8).

he did eat nothing St Matthew says more generally that -He fasted," and St Luke's phrase probably implies no more than this (see Matthew 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 resistit (non consentire tentationi). Temptation only merges into sinwhen man consents to it.

"Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,

Another thing to fall." Shakespeare.

The temptation must be feltor 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 examination of this subject in Ullmann's treatise On the Sinlessness of Jesus(Engl. Transl.).