Matthew 4:5

The order of the last two temptations is different in St. Luke, and the variation is instructive. Either St. Luke’s informant was less accurate than St. Matthew’s, or the impressions left on the minds of those to whom the mystery had been communicated were slightly different. Especially was this likely to be the case, if the trial had been (as the narratives of St. Mark and St. Luke show) protracted, and the temptations therefore recurring. St. Matthew’s order seems, on the whole, the truest, and the “Get thee behind me, Satan,” fits in better with the close of the conflict.

Taketh him up into the holy city. — The use of this term to describe Jerusalem (Luke 4:9) is peculiar to St. Matthew among the Evangelists, and is used again by him in Matthew 27:53. St. John uses it in Revelation 11:2 of the literal, in Revelation 21:2 of the heavenly, Jerusalem. The analogy of Ezekiel 37:1; Ezekiel 40:2, where the prophet is carried from place to place in the vision of God, leads us to think of this “taking” as outside the conditions of local motion. As St. Paul said of like spiritual experiences of his own (2 Corinthians 12:2), so we must say of this, Whether it was in the body, or out of the body, we know not, God knoweth.

A pinnacle of the temple. — Better, the pinnacle. The Greek has the article. The Greek word, like “pinnacle” is the diminutive of “wing,” and seems to have been applied to any pointed roof or gable. In this case, looking to the position and structure of the Temple, we may think of the point or parapet of the portico of Herod overlooking the Valley of Jehoshaphat, rising to a dizzy height of 400 cubits above it (Jos. Ant. xv. 11, 5). Our Lord’s earlier visits to Jerusalem must have made the scene familiar to Him. In past years He may have looked down from that portico on the dark gorge beneath. Now a new thought is brought before Him. Shall He test the attestation that He was the beloved Son by throwing himself headlong down? Was there not a seeming warrant for such a trial, the crucial experiment of Sonship? Had not the Psalmist declared of the chosen One of God that His angels should bear Him up? This seems a far truer view than that the point of the temptation lay in the suggestion that He should work a sign or wonder by throwing Himself, in the presence of the people, from the parapet that overlooked the court of the worshippers, and so obtain power and popularity. The answer to the Tempter shows that the suggestion tended, not to vain glory, but to distrust simulating reliance. It is a somewhat curious coincidence that James the Just, the brother of the Lord, is said to have been thrown down from “the pinnacle of the Temple” into one of its courts (Euseb. H. E. ii. 23).