Matthew 4:11

Angels came and ministered unto him. — The tenses of the two verbs differ, the latter implying continued or repeated ministrations. Here also we are in the region of the spiritual life, and must be content to leave the nature of the ministration undefined, instead of sensualising it as poets and artists have done. What is instructive is, that the help of their service, the contrast between the calm and beauty of their presence and that of the wild beasts and of the Tempter, comes as the reward of the abnegation which refused to make their ministry the subject of an experimental test. In this case, also, we find strange coincidences. The fact recorded by St. Matthew explains the words recorded by St. John (John 1:51) as uttered but a few days later, and which speak of “the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” The words with which St. Luke ends his record of the Temptation may well be noticed here: “And having finished every temptation, the devil departed from him for a season” (literally, till a season). The conflict was not yet ended, and was from time to time renewed — now in the passionate prayer of the disciple (Matthew 16:22), now in the open enmity of the prince of this world (John 12:31; John 14:30).