Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 4:3

προσελθὼν, another of the evangelist's favourite words, implies that the tempter is conceived by the narrator as approaching outwardly in visible form. εἰπὲ ἵνα : literally “speak in order that”. Some grammarians see in this use of ἵνα with the subjunctive a progress in the later Macedonian Greek onwards towards modern Greek, in which νά with subjunctive entirely supersedes the infinitive. Buttmann (Gram. of the N. T.) says that the chief deviation in the N. T. from classic usage is that ἵνα appears not only after complete predicates, as a statement of design, but after incomplete predicates, supplying their necessary complements (cf. Mark 6:25; Mark 9:30). εἰπὲ here may be classed among verbs of commanding which take ἵνα after them. οἱ λίθοι οὗτοι, these stones lying about, hinting at the desert character of the scene. ἄρτοι γέν., that the rude pieces of stone may be turned miraculously into loaves. Weiss (Meyer) disputes the usual view that the temptation of Jesus lay in the suggestion to use His miraculous power in His own behoof. He had no such power, and if He had, why should He not use it for His own benefit as well as other men's? He could only call into play by faith the power of God, and the temptation lay in the suggestion that His Messianic vocation was doubtful it God did not come to His help at this time. This seems a refinement. Hunger represents human wants, and the question was: whether Sonship was to mean exemption from these, or loyal acceptance of them as part of Messiah's experience. At bottom the issue raised was selfishness or self-sacrifice. Selfishness would have been shown either in the use of personal power or in the wish that God would use it.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Matthew 4:3

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