Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Matthew 4:2
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward hungry.
2. he was afterward a hungred ] The words imply that the temptation was not throughout the forty days, but at the end of the forty days.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Had fasted – Abstained from food.
Forty days and forty nights – It has been questioned by some whether Christ abstained wholly from food, or only from the food to which he was accustomed. Luke says Luk 4:2 that he ate nothing. This settles the question. Mark says Mar 1:13 that angels came and ministered unto him. At first view this would seem to imply that he did eat during that time. But Mark does not mention the time when the angels performed this office of kindness, and we are at liberty to suppose that he means to say that it was done at the close of the 40 days; and the rather as Matthew, after giving an account of the temptation, says the same thing Mat 4:2. There are other instances of persons fasting 40 days recorded in the Scriptures. Thus, Moses fasted 40 days, Exo 34:28. Elijah also fasted the same length of time, 1Ki 19:8. In these cases they were no doubt miraculously supported.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Mat 4:2
Fasted.
Temptation
I. Satan has the worst designs under the most friendly appearances.
II. When Satan tempts, he can appear to be invisible, as suits him best, He tempted Christ invisibly, and then appeared (Luk 4:2, and text, vers. 2, 3).
III. Satan tempts us to doubt some things most plain and certain.
IV. When temptations are well suited, they are sometimes very plausible. To Jesus-to prove His Sonship; for food, being hungry.
V. Things lawful themselves become sinful by circumstances.
VI. It is an encouragement to the tempted to see now God has appeared for others. To Jesus, to Elijah, etc. (Deu 8:3-4).
VII. He that would prevail against temptation must stand on scripture ground. (Skeletons of Sermons.)
Sundry motives for religious fasting
1. Shall Christ fast for us and net we for ourselves?
2. Shall the Pharisees fast twice a week in hypocrisy, and we not once in our lives in sincerity?
3. Can we cheerfully take us for our bodily health to fasting, and will we do nothing for our souls health?
4. Can worldly men, for a good market, fast from morning to evening, and can Christians be so careless as to dedicate no time to the exercising of fasting and prayer, to increase the gain of godliness?
5. Is not this a seasonable exhortation? hath not God sounded the trumpet to fasting? (Mat 9:16.) When the bridegroom is taken away it is time to fast. (T. Taylor, D. D.)
This was the true, the model fast. Fulness of bread, abundance of luxury, makes Gods work impossible; but look to it that the fasting be not the substitute for, but the handmaid of, the devotion-not the end, but the means. (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)
The fast
I. The limits of Christs fast. His fast lasted the same length of time as that of Moses and Elias; thus we may see in Christ the end and explanation of the Old Testament. How often in Scripture this number forty occurs. But not simply the length but to the limit of Christs fast we direct attention. We are not told that our Lord practised austerities, except in the desert. The universality and perfectness of Christs life did not admit of its being contracted into a single idea or type of holiness. He too would thus have lent support to the idea that holiness is in external practices; whereas it was His great purpose to point to states of mind and heart as the pith of perfection. Christianity must not in all cases be modelled upon a forbidding asceticism; we must remember the limits of the fast, and that He who sanctioned austerity was present at the marriage festival.
II. The purposes of Christs fast.
1. Its purpose in reference to the past. The first sin was the violation of the law of abstinence; His fast was an expression of sorrow for that transgression, and for the sins of intemperance which have resulted. Fasting may be a natural effect of sorrow, but this of rare occurrence in a soul burdened with grievous sin.
2. Christs fast had also relation to the present. He fasted as aa example to teach us one of the means for vanquishing the tempter.
3. Christs fast sanctified fasting also in relation to the future, as a means for increasing illumination. Coming before His public ministry He sanctioned it as calculated to produce an accession of light in the soul. It will be seen that light springs from mortification if we observe how darkness is the result of self-indulgence.
III. The conditions of Christs fast.
1. It must be a real self-denial. The first degree of mortification is the ceasing to gratify fallen inclinations; then the surrender of superfluities; then the withdrawal from the concerns of life; finally it touches even the necessaries of life.
2. It was in secret, in the depths of the desert. It should not be vainglorious.
3. With the enlargement of the motives of fasting, there was also an importation of brightness into the practice. Our Lord was led by the Spirit, and where the Spirit is, there is joy, peace, etc. There is danger of losing sweetness of temper unless the fast be sustained by the Spirit. (W. H. Hutchings, M. A.)
Storming the inward city of sin
The root of sin is within. You may take a city by siege as well as by direct attack; fasting is the weakening of the enemy by the former process-by the withdrawal of supplies. (W. H. Hutchings, M. A.)
An hungred.–
Temptation through the bodily appetites
In warm weather vast numbers of wasps and other insects are caught by bottles of syrup, into which they are easily enticed by the sweet and tempting fluid, but are unable to escape, and so are drowned. Temptation often assails us through our lawful appetites. Christ, whose temptations were types of ours, was invited by Satan to make bread to satisfy His hunger As a cunning fowler sets his limed ears of corn to catch sparrows in a hard frost or great snow, when they are ready to starve. (Diez.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 2. And when he had fasted forty days] It is remarkable that Moses, the great lawgiver of the Jews, previously to his receiving the law from God, fasted forty days in the mount; that Elijah, the chief of the prophets, fasted also forty days; and that Christ, the giver of the New Covenant, should act in the same way. Was not all this intended to show, that God’s kingdom on earth was to be spiritual and Divine? – that it should not consist in meat and drink, but in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost? Ro 14:17. Relative to the forty days’ fast of Moses, there is a beautiful saying in the Talmudists. “Is it possible that any man can fast forty days and forty nights? To which Rabbi Meir answered, When thou takest up thy abode in any particular city, thou must live according to its customs. Moses ascended to heaven, where they neither eat nor drink therefore he became assimilated to them. We are accustomed to eat and drink; and, when angels descend to us, they eat and drink also.” Moses, Elijah, and our blessed Lord could fast forty days and forty nights, because they were in communion with God, and living a heavenly life.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
He was in the wilderness, a place of solitude, and so fitter for Satans purpose, and he was
an hungred, which was another advantage Satan had. But he was not an hungred till he had fasted forty days and forty nights. Here was the Divine power miraculously seen, in upholding the human nature of Christ without any thing to eat: this was a miracle. The like did Moses before the law, Elijah under the law. Christ doth the same in the beginning of the gospel; nor did he fast as the Jews were wont, of whom we sometimes read that they kept fasts several days; they only fasted in the day time, but ate their food at night; or sometimes only forbare pleasant bread, as Daniel did, Dan 10:2,3, for three full weeks. But Christ fasted from all food, and that not only forty days, but forty nights also; from whence may easily be gathered, how idly, if not impiously, the papists found their fasting forty days in Lent. Here all Christs acts (most certainly his miraculous works) are not recorded for our imitation; some of them are only for our adoration; all his miraculous acts are so. There can be nothing more sottish than for us to think that because Christ (supported by the Divine nature) fasted forty days, therefore we are obliged to do it; and because we cannot fast forty days and forty nights, without eating something, therefore we may eat fish, though no flesh (when all know that to some palates there is no more delicate food than fish); or we are obliged to fast in the day time, though not at night. And because Christ once in his lifetime fasted forty days and forty nights, therefore we must do so every year; or that the church hath any power to enjoin any such thing. If papists think Christs fast of forty days and forty nights obliges them to imitation, let them keep them as he did, (with such a fasting I mean), and try whether they be able to do it, or whether four days or nights, instead of forty, will not convince them of their folly. Christ fasted forty days and forty nights, and thereby showed he was God man, the Divine nature supported the human; afterward he was hungry, to show that he was truly man, touched with the feeling of our infirmities, in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin, Heb 4:15.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And when he had fasted forty days….. As Moses did, when he was about to deliver the law to the Israelites, Ex 34:28 and as Elijah did, when he bore his testimony for the Lord of hosts,
1Ki 19:8 so did Christ, when he was about to publish the Gospel of his grace, and bear witness to the truth. “Forty nights” as well as days, are mentioned; partly to show that these were whole entire days, consisting of twenty four hours; and partly to distinguish this fast of Christ from the common fastings of the Jews, who used to eat in the night, though they fasted in the day: for according to their canons z, they might eat and drink as soon as it was dark, and that till cock crowing; and others say, till break of day. Maimonides a says, they might eat and drink at night, in all fasts, except the ninth of Ab. What is very surprising in this fasting of our Lord, which was made and recorded, not for our imitation, is, that during the whole time he should not be attended with hunger; for it is added,
he was afterwards an hungered; that is, as Luke says, “when” the “forty” days “were ended”, Lu 4:2 which seized upon him, and is related, both to express the reality of his human nature, which though miraculously supported for so long a time without food, and insensible of hunger, yet at length had appetite for food; and also that very advantageous opportunity Satan had to attack him in the manner he did, with his first temptation.
z T. Bab. Taanith, fol. 12. 1, 2. Misn. Taanith, c. 1. sect. 5. a Hilch. Taanith, c. 5. sect. 5.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Had fasted (). No perfunctory ceremonial fast, but of communion with the Father in complete abstention from food as in the case of Moses during forty days and forty nights (Ex 34:28). “The period of the fast, as in the case of Moses was spent in a spiritual ecstasy, during which the wants of the natural body were suspended” (Alford). “He afterward hungered” and so at the close of the period of forty days.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “And when he had fasted,” (kai nesteusas) “And after he had fasted,” not partially, but completely fasted. Luk 4:2 describes it, “Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those (40) days, he did eat nothing.”
2) “Forty days and forty nights,” (hemeras husteron eplinasen) “For a period of forty days,” (kai tesserakonta nuktas) “And forty nights,” in succession, without breaking fast by eating anything.
This is the same period of time that Moses engaged in a total fast with the Lord in the Sinai desert when he received the law of the Lord to guide Israel, Exo 34:27-28. And Elijah was sustained as a prophet of God through a similar fast, 1Ki 19:8.
3) “He was afterward an hungered.” (husteron eplinasen) “Afterward (after that time had past) he hungered,” as a man hungers for food and drink, Luk 4:22. After being miraculously or supernaturally sustained for forty days and nights He existed in a state of hunger, when the fasting period was ended. It appears that He was sustained without hunger pains during the time of the fast.
He was tempted or tested in lonely solitude, alone, with no friends around, without food or water, with wild beasts around, (Mr 1:13) in “all points” as we are tempted or tested, yet without sin, Heb 2:18; Heb 4:15.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(2) Forty days and forty nights.Here we have an obvious parallelism with the fasts of Moses (Exo. 34:28) and Elijah (1Ki. 19:8), and we may well think of it as deliberately planned. Prolonged fasts of nearly the same extent have been recorded in later times. The effect of such a fast on any human organism, and therefore on our Lords real humanity, would be to interrupt the ordinary continuity of life, and quicken all perceptions of the spiritual world into a new intensity. It may be noted that St. Luke describes the Temptation as continuing through the whole period, so that what is recorded was but the crowning conflict, gathering into one the struggles by which it had been preluded. The one feature peculiar to St. Mark (who omits the specific history of the temptations), that our Lord was with the wild beasts (Mar. 1:13). suggests that their presence, their yells of hunger, their ravening fierceness, their wild glaring eyes, had left, as it were, an ineffable and ineffaceable impression of horror, in addition to the terrors and loneliness of the wilderness as such.
He was afterward an hungred.The words imply a partial return to the common life of sensation. The cravings of the body at last made themselves felt, and in them, together with the memory of the divine witness that had been borne forty days before, the Tempter found the starting-point of his first attack. Of that attack there may well have been preludes during the previous time of trial. Now it came more distinctly.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. Had fasted forty days Just so Moses fasted forty days at Sinai, (Deu 9:9,) and so Elijah fasted forty days. Moses was founder of a dispensation; Elijah was restorer; and Christ was both founder and restorer. And as Christ was led by the Spirit, so it was the divine will and order that he should pass this ordeal as an induction to his office. As Adam and Eve in the garden were, by the divine order, made to fast from a particular food, so Christ in the wilderness was required, by the same divine order, to fast for a particular season. He was ahungered He hungered.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered.’
Throughout His forty days and nights, (that is, for over a moon period), Jesus fasted, His body weakened but His spirit intensified, and during it He prayed and thought and planned, and during it He was conscious of thoughts being continually fed into His mind seeking to direct Him in the wrong ways. And as His resolution grew stronger, and His resistance greater, so did the temptations, as the Tempter gathered for his final assault. We do not know exactly what form it took. Certainly it was largely in the mind, for what is described went beyond the possibility of literal human fulfilment (there is no mountain from which the whole world can be seen, except in the mind). It is, of course, always possible that Satan arranged for a desert dweller, even possibly one connected with Qumran, to approach and feed His mind with false ideas. It is even possible that Satan himself appeared in human form. But this is a mystery into which Jesus did not permit His disciples to enter. All they knew was that He had met him in ‘face to face’ combat.
‘Forty days and forty nights.’ This phrase probably means ‘for longer than a moon period’. It was the period of initial judgment at the Flood when the rains were unceasing. It was the time spent twice by Moses in the Mount as he received the Law of God and enjoyed the ecstasy of His veiled presence (Exo 24:18; Exo 34:28: Deu 9:9; Deu 9:18). It was the time spent by Elijah in the wilderness (1Ki 19:8) when he was supernaturally sustained. It was the time for which Israel trembled in front of Goliath before David emerged victorious (1Sa 17:16). It spoke of crucial encounters with God, and with God’s enemies. It possibly also has in mind the forty years of Israel’s hunger and thirst in the wilderness (Deu 8:2-3), preparatory to establishing the Kingly Rule of God in Canaan, a period that in a way Jesus was now duplicating.
It would seem that over the period Jesus was so taken up with His time with His Father that He was not conscious of weakness or hunger, and it was not therefore until He came out of that state that He ‘became hungry’. As His period of meeting with His Father was coming to an end He became conscious of a great need for food.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
A severe test, even from the standpoint of Christ’s physical nature:
v. 2. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungered. The expression indicates that it was a spontaneous, voluntary desisting from food, the severity of the trials, the mental preoccupation caused by the temptation, stifling the ordinary desire for nourishment, somewhat after the manner of Moses, Exo 34:28, and Elijah, 1Ki 19:8. But this entire abstinence from food, which possibly included also drink, was not in the nature of an ascetic exercise “That is also the reason why the evangelist at the beginning with great care sets down and says: He was driven into the wilderness by the Spirit that He fast and be tempted there, in order that no one may follow the example from his own choice and make a selfish, self-willed, and assumed fasting out of it, but wait for the Spirit; He will send him enough of fasting and temptation.”
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Mat 4:2. And when he had fasted forty days So much greater was Jesus than Adam. Jesus, worn down by fasting and hunger, oppressed with want, and in a wild howling wilderness, overcame the devil; by whom Adam was overcome in full strength, and abounding with all things. It was usual for persons to prepare themselves for any sacred office by fasting, and prayers so intense, as to cause a neglect of common food. See Act 13:3; Act 14:23. The number forty is remarkably distinguished in Scripture: Moses and Elijah fasted forty days. See also Gen 50:3. Jon 3:4. Eze 4:6. It is a very just remark of Dr. Whitby, that to institute, or pretend to keep a fast for forty days, in imitation of this example of our Lord, is to place morality in numbers, and introduce an endless heap of superstitious follies; for it is certain, that so great and so long abstinence is inconsistent with the frailty of our nature, and so can be no duty. Better is the note of Theophylact and others, that “we are then especially to expect temptations, when we are in straits and exigencies, from which we see no ordinary way of deliverance;” which was here the case with Christ.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Mat 4:2 . ] to be taken absolutely . Luk 4:2 . Comp. Deu 9:9 ; Exo 34:28 ; 1Ki 19:8 . It is explained, without reason, by Kuiuoel, Kuhn, and many others in the sense of deprivation of the usual means of nourishment. This relative meaning, which, if presented by the context, would be admissible (Kuhn, L. J. I. p. 364 ff.), is here, however, where even the nights are mentioned as well as the days, contradicted by the context, the supernatural character of the history, the intentionally definite statement of Luke (Mat 4:2 ), and the types of Moses and Elijah. It is just as irrelevant to change the forty days as a sacred number into an indefinite measure of time (Kster); or, as a round number, into several days (Neander, Krabbe). That, moreover, the forty days’ fast became the occasion of the temptation , cannot appear as out of keeping (Strauss, de Wette) with the object , but, according to Mat 4:1 , was contained in the design of the Spirit .
] of itself superfluous, indicates, however, the circumstance that the hunger did not attack Him until He had fasted. Bengel: “Hactenus non tarn fuerat tentatio, quam ad eam praeparatio.” Comp. the similar usage of and after participles by classical writers, Stallbaum, ad Plat. Phaed . p. 70 E.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
It is remarkable in the Old Testament Scripture, of those that were types of CHRIST, concerning fasting, that they observed such seasons: Moses, Exo 34:1 . What a sweet thought is it, that the LORD JESUS was in all points as his people are, yet without sin! Precious LORD! was it not intended to prompt thy redeemed to come to thee with more confidence from fellow feeling?
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Ver. 2. And when he had fasted forty days, &c. ] All Christ’s actions are for our instruction, not all for our imitation. We may not imitate the works miraculous of Christ, and proper to him as mediator. The ignorance of this caused some to counterfeit themselves Christ’s: as one Moor in King Edward VI’s time, and one Hacker in Queen Elizabeth’s time, David George, and various others; according to Mat 24:24 . Neither need we seek to imitate him in his infirmities, which (though they were not sinful, but only natural, and therefore unblamable) yet import a weakness (as that he was hungry, weary, sleepy, &c.), and so, though they be in us, yet we need not strive the attainment of them. But we must imitate the Lord Christ in all his imitable graces and actions: showing forth the praises or virtues of him that hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light. ( , 1Pe 2:9 ) The word signifies to preach them abroad; for we should practise those virtues so clearly, that our lives may be as so many sermons upon the life of Christ. It is a dishonour to a dear friend to hang his picture in a dark hole and not in a conspicuous place, that it may appear we rejoice in it as an ornament to us; think the same of Christ’s image and graces, show them forth we must, and express them to the world; walking in Christ,Col 2:6Col 2:6 , yea, as Christ, 1Jn 2:6 , who therefore left us a copy that we might write after it, a sampler that we might work by it, a pattern that we should follow his steps, 1Pe 2:21 ; ( . Exemplar quod oculo conspicitur ), And although we cannot follow him passibus aequis, yet we must show our goodwills, stretching and straining our utmost, as St Paul did; , Php 3:14 striving what we can to resemble him, not as a picture doth a man in outward lineaments only; but as a son doth his father (for he is the Father of eternity, Isa 9:6 ) in nature and disposition; and as servants, labouring to do as our Lord, Joh 13:15 , who therefore washed his disciples’ feet, to give us an example of humility; as he did likewise of meekness, Mat 11:29 ; patience,1Pe 2:211Pe 2:21 ; obedience, Heb 12:2 ; diligence and fidelity in his function, Heb 3:1-2 ; fewness of words, yet boldness of speech, going about and doing all possible good; beneficence to the poor saints,2Co 8:92Co 8:9 ; constancy in profession, 1Ti 6:13 ; forgiveness of others and love to the brethren,Eph 5:2Eph 5:2 ; “Be ye therefore followers herein of Christ, as dear children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation,”1Pe 1:14-151Pe 1:14-15 .
He was afterward an hungred ] Our Saviour was tempted all that forty days’ time, saith St Luke; but these three worst assaults were reserved to the last. So deals the devil with the Church (which is Christ mystical, 1Co 12:12 ). He never ceaseth tempting, though never so often repulsed; and is therefore called Beelzebub, as some will have it, the lord of flies, because the fly is noted for an impudent creature, that will soon return to the bait, though beaten away but erewhile. ( ponitur apud Homerum pro valde impudente; quia muscae pervicaces sunt, &c. ) Hence those many bickerings and buffetings we meet with all our life long: and hence those sharpest encounters and terrible conflicts many times at the hour of death. The Israelites met with many trials and troubles in the wilderness, Amalek and the Amorites, sore thirst, and fiery serpents, &c., but were never so put to it as when they came to take possession of the promised land; for then all the kings of Canaan combined to keep them out. So the devil, furious enough at all times, most of all bestirs him at last cast, because he knows his time is but short, Rev 12:12 , for death sets a saint out of his gunshot ( ). Satan may compass the earth, but not enter the borders of heaven. He tempted Adam in the earthly Paradise; he cannot tempt in the heavenly: hence his malice, while he may. Morientium nempe bestiaram violentiores sunt morsus (ut ille olim de semidiruta Carthagine): beasts that have their death’s wound, bite cruelly, convulse exceedingly.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
2. ] Not in the wider ecclesiastical sense of the word, but its strict meaning, of abstaining from all food whatever; , Luk 4:2 . Similarly Moses, Exo 34:28 , . . . . , , and Elias . . . ., 3 Kings Mat 19:8 .
. ] Then probably not during the time itself . The period of the fast, as in the case of Moses, was spent in a spiritual ecstasy, during which the wants of the natural body were suspended.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Mat 4:2 . . The fasting was spontaneous, not ascetic, due to mental preoccupation. In such a place there was no food to be had, but Jesus did not desire it. The aorist implies that a period of fasting preceded the sense of hunger. The period of forty days and nights may be a round number. , He at last felt hunger. This verb like contracts in rather than in later Greek. Both take an accusative in Mat 5:6 .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
forty. The number of probation (App-10).
nights. Joined thus with “days”, are complete periods of twenty-four hours. See App-144.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
2. ] Not in the wider ecclesiastical sense of the word, but its strict meaning, of abstaining from all food whatever; , Luk 4:2. Similarly Moses, Exo 34:28, . . . . , , and Elias . . . ., 3 Kings Mat 19:8.
.] Then probably not during the time itself. The period of the fast, as in the case of Moses, was spent in a spiritual ecstasy, during which the wants of the natural body were suspended.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Mat 4:2. , when He had fasted) no doubt by virtue of His baptism. Fasting implies also abstinence from drink.-, days) In these days, during this retirement, matters of the greatest importance passed between God and the Mediator.-, forty) A celebrated measure of time, also, in the lives of Moses and Elijah. But the condition of Moses, when without food, was one of glory; that of Christ (which is more to be wondered at), one of humiliation. An angel brought food to Elijah before his fast commenced; many angels ministered to Christ after His fast ended. Jesus passed forty days before He appeared in public: forty days, as if for the sake of preparation before His ascension.-, afterwards) up to this point it had not been so much a temptation as a preparation for it: cf. the beginning of the following verse.-, He hungered) Hunger is a very bitter temptation; thirst He experienced in His passion. This temptation may be compared with that which is described in Genesis 3 : the Tempter employed the same arts; but that cause, which the first-formed pair of the human race had lost, Christ restored.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
fasted: Exo 24:18, Exo 34:28, Deu 9:9, Deu 9:18, Deu 9:25, Deu 18:18, 1Ki 19:8, Luk 4:2
he was: Mat 21:18, Mar 11:12, Joh 4:6, Heb 2:14-17
Reciprocal: Gen 7:12 – forty 1Sa 17:16 – forty days Psa 95:6 – O come Psa 109:24 – knees Mar 8:2 – and have Act 1:3 – forty Act 10:10 – he became
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE ATTACK ON DIVINE SONSHIP
And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to Him, he said, If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Mat 4:2-4
Herein Christ and Satan represent two great antagonistic principles. The whole object of Christ is to unite God and the sinner; but Satan is always doing the reverse.
I. The attack on sonship.At our Saviours baptism, only a few days before the Temptation, there had been a voice from heaven, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased! If Satan heard those words, he heard them with bitterness; and by a bold and wondrous stratagem, he made that very voice, which assured the world of its restoration, the base of the plan by which His own truth should be frustrated: If Thou be the Son of God. Observe the depth of the intention of that question. It opens at once a dilemma. Canst Thou be thus without bread, and yet be the Son of God? Or, Art Thou indeed the Son of God? Make these stones bread. On that same fulcrum, Satan will very often apply his fatal lever to your soul. His great aim is to cut off the sense of sonship. Therefore, he does everything in the world to check that confidence in a mans soul. He will disparage baptism; he will deny your conversion; he will darken your evidences; he will make light of still, small heavenly voices; he will misrepresent the character of the Father; he will arm against you external circumstances; or, he will try to attain the same ultimate end by a directly opposite method of attack. You are a child of God. Enjoy your liberty; take your fling: command that these stones be made bread.
II. The sin of yielding.What would have been the result? Where would have been the sin of it? It would have been (a) to do what Christ never did, to work a miracle for Himself, and exert His omnipotence only for His own gratification; (b) it would have been distrustful of the Divine Providence; (c) it would have placed the material above the spiritual.
III. Ample provision made by God.It was chiefly to this last part of the sin of the compliance that our Lord directed His reply. He reminded Satan of whit God said respecting Israel, when Israel, in another part of the same wilderness, was in an exactly parallel position. Then, there was no natural bread. But hear what God said: He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna; which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word,word is not in the original; it is largerby everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. Therefore the manna was evidently, in the first instance, part of the everything which proceeded out of the mouth of God. The manna came at the simple word of God; so that those who ate it, fed at Gods mouth. But that manna was itself the emblem and the type, both of the Written and the Living Word. How this sublime answer fits our necessity!
The Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustrations
To bring in here His Divine power, or to suppose that He fasted otherwise than as a man, is to rob the transaction of its whole meaning. Upborne and upholden above the common needs of the animal life by the great tides of spiritual gladness, in the strength of that recent Baptism, in the solemn joy of that salutation and recognition from His Father: He found and felt no need for all these forty days.
(2) The second Adam, no less than the first, had to pass through His probation. That probation of the Incarnate Son is by no means easy to understand. It is clear that Christ could not sin, being a Divine Person. But his very Divinity made it possible for Him more fully than for others to taste the ingredients of human life. And though by His freedom from original sin He had none of the vicious and depraved desires which are congenital to us, and could only think of such with an instinctive abhorrence, yet, being human, He could not fail to be tempted by the same things which had tempted our first parents. The crafts and assaults of the Tempter were more artfully and persistently concentrated upon Him than any other.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
4:2
A man would not have to go forty days without food to become hungry in the ordinary sense or degree. The meaning is that by the end of that period the pangs of hunger became severe.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Mat 4:2. Fasted. Entire abstinence from food; comp. Luk 4:2.
Forty days and forty nights. Not fasting by day and feasting by night. The length of the fast is not incredible. Comp. the fasts of Moses (Exo 34:28) and Elijah (1Ki 19:8), Absorption in intellectual pursuits, but especially in spiritual contemplation, will render any one for a time independent of ordinary food or nourishment. If necessary, supernatural support would be granted. There is nothing here to encourage asceticism, however. Our Lord was enduring for us, not prescribing fasts to us. He neither practised nor enjoined monastic habits.
He afterward hungered. The wants of His human body were no longer overborne. Here for the first time the Gospel presents our Lord as sharing our physical needs. The glorious attestation to His Sonship preceded, the victory over Satan followed. Sent by God to triumph for us. He appears identified with us. Even when weakest physically, when the temptation would be strongest, He overcame in our nature what enslaves our unaided nature.
The tempter came. Luke (Luk 4:2) says that Jesus had been tempted during the forty days of fasting. Tempter, the one tempting, implying that this was his office or business. Actual approach is suggested by the literal meaning, And the one tempting coming said to him.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, How the divine power upheld the human nature of Christ without food. What Moses did at the giving of the law, Christ doth at the beginning of the gospel namely, fast forty days and forty nights.
Christ hereby intended our admiration, not our imitation: or, if our imitation, of the action only, not of the time. Christ teaches us, by fasting and prayer to prepare ourselves for a conflict with our spiritual enemies; as he prepared himself by fasting to grapple with the tempter, so shall we.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Mat 4:2. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights As Moses, the giver, and Elias, the restorer of the law, had done before: he was afterward a hungered That is, he was as sharply assaulted with hunger, as any man is at any time for want of food. Thus he was fitted for the ensuing trial of his trust in God. And, as an ancient writer observes, We are then especially to expect temptations, when we are alone, and when we are in straits and exigencies, from which we see no ordinary way of deliverance, which was the case with Christ. For he was hungry, and in a wild wilderness, where was no food, and was at last fed miraculously by angels ministering unto him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Verse 2
Fasted. It is not certain that this implies entire abstinence from food, but only an abstinence from all except such casual and uncertain sustenance as the wilderness afforded.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
4:2 And when he had fasted {a} forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
(a) A full forty days.