Luke 4:1-2

1 st. Luke 4:1-2.

By these words, full of the Holy Ghost, this narrative is brought into close connection with that of the baptism. The genealogy is therefore intercalated.

While the other baptized persons, after the ceremony, went away to their own homes, Jesus betook Himself into solitude. This He did not at His own prompting, as Luke gives us to understand by the expression full of the Holy Ghost, which proves that the Spirit directed Him in this, as in every other step The two other evangelists explicitly say it. Matthew, He was led up of the Spirit; Mark, still more forcibly, Immediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness. Perhaps the human inclination of Jesus would have been to return to Galilee and begin at once to teach. The Spirit detains Him; and Matthew, who, in accordance with his didactic aim, in narrating the fact explains its object, says expressly: “He was led up of the Spirit... to be tempted. ”

The complement of the verb returned would be: from the Jordan (ἀπό) into Galilee (εἰς). But this complex government is so distributed, that the first part is found in Luke 4:1 (the ἀπό without the εἰς), and the second in Luke 4:14 (the εἰς without the ἀπό). The explanation of this construction is, that the temptation was an interruption in the return of Jesus from the Jordan into Galilee. The Spirit detained Him in Judaea.

The T. R. reads εἰς, “led into the wilderness;” the Alex. ἐν, “led (carried hither and thither) in the wilderness.” We might suppose that this second reading was only the result of the very natural reflection that, John being already in the desert, Jesus had not to repair thither. But, on the other hand, the received reading may easily have been imported into Luke from the two other Syn. And the prep. of rest (ἐν) in the Alex. better accords with the imperf. ἤγετο, was led, which denotes a continuous action.

The expression, was led by, indicates that the severe exercises of soul which Jesus experienced under the action of the Spirit absorbed Him in such a way, that the use of His faculties in regard to the external world was thereby suspended. In going into the desert, He was not impelled by a desire to accomplish any definite object; it was only, as it were, a cover for the state of intense meditation in which He was absorbed. Lost in contemplation of His personal relation to God, the full consciousness of which He had just attained, and of the consequent task it imposed upon Him in reference to Israel and the world, His heart sought to make these recent revelations wholly its own.

If tradition is to be credited, the wilderness here spoken of was the mountainous and uninhabited country bordering on the road which ascends from Jericho to Jerusalem. On the right of this road, not far from Jericho, there rises a limestone peak, exceedingly sharp and abrupt, which bears the name of Quarantania. The rocks which surround it are pierced by a number of caves. This would be the scene of the temptation. We are ignorant whether this tradition rests upon any historical fact. This locality is a continuation of the desert of Judaea, where John abode.

The words forty days may refer either to was led or to being tempted; in sense both come to the same thing, the two actions being simultaneous. According to Luke and Mark, Jesus was incessantly besieged during this whole time. Suggestions of a very different nature from the holy thoughts which usually occupied Him harassed the working of His mind. Matthew does not mention this secret action of the enemy, who was preparing for the final crisis. How can it be maintained that one of these forms of the narrative has been borrowed from the other?

The term devil, employed by Luke and Matthew, comes from διαβάλλειν, to spread reports, to slander. Mark employs the word Satan (from שָׂטָן, H8477, to oppose; Zechariah 3:1-2; Job 1:6, etc.). The first of these names is taken from the relation of this being to men; the second from his relations with God.

The possibility of the existence of moral beings of a different nature from that of man cannot be denied à priori. Now if these beings are free creatures, subject to a law of probation, as little can it be denied that this probation might issue in a fall. Lastly, since in every society of moral beings there are eminent individuals who, by virtue of their ascendency, become centres around which a host of inferior individuals group themselves, this may also be the case in this unknown spiritual domain. Keim himself says: “We regard this question of the existence of an evil power as altogether an open question for science.” This question, which is an open one from a scientific point of view, is settled in the view of faith by the testimony of the Saviour, who, in a passage in which there is not the slightest trace of accommodation to popular prejudice, John 8:44, delineates in a few graphic touches the moral position of Satan. In another passage, Luke 22:31, “ Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,” Jesus lifts the veil which hides from us the scenes of the invisible world; the relation which He maintains between the accuser Satan, and Himself the intercessor, implies that in His eyes this personage is no less a personal being than Himself. The part sustained by this being in the temptation of Jesus is attested by the passage, Luke 11:21-22. It was necessary that the strong man, Satan, the prince of this world, should be vanquished by his adversary, the stronger than he, in a personal conflict, for the latter to be able to set about spoiling the world, which is Satan's stronghold. Weizsäcker and Keim acknowledge an allusion in this passage to the fact of the temptation. It is this victory in single combat which makes the deliverance of every captive of Satan possible to Jesus.

Luke mentions Jesus' abstinence from food for six weeks as a fact which was only the natural consequence of His being absorbed in profound meditation. To Him, indeed, this whole time passed like a single hour; He did not even feel the pangs of hunger. This follows from the words: “And when they were ended, He afterward hungered. ” By the term νηστεύσας, having fasted, Matthew appears to give this abstinence the character of a deliberate ritual act, to make it such a fast as, among the Jews, ordinarily accompanied certain seasons devoted specially to prayer. This shade of thought is not a contradiction, but accords with the general character of the two narrations, and becomes a significant indication of their originality.

The fasts of Moses and Elijah, in similar circumstances, lasted the same time. In certain morbid conditions, which involve a more or less entire abstinence from food, a period of six weeks generally brings about a crisis, after which the demand for nourishment is renewed with extreme urgency. The exhausted body becomes a prey to a deathly sinking. Such, doubtless, was the condition of Jesus; He felt Himselt dying. It was the moment the tempter had waited for to make his decisive assault.