Luke 4:6

For that is delivered unto me. — Better, hath been delivered unto me. The specific assertion of the usurped dominion, though implied in St. Matthew, is in its form peculiar to St. Luke. (See Note on Matthew 4:9.) The notion that any such delegated sovereignty had been assigned to the Tempter, either before or after his fall from his first estate, has, it need hardly be said, no foundation in Scripture. It asserts that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof” (Psalms 24:1); and the claim of the Tempter was a lying boast, resting only on the permitted activity and temporary predominance of evil in the actual course of the world’s history.