‘But he answered and said, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” ’

But Jesus searched the Scriptures in His mind, especially conscious that He was in the wilderness as His people had once been, and no doubt guided by the Spirit, and He found what He sought. Bread is good, and man needs bread. But bread is not the most important thing in life. More important is it to feed on and obey the words of God. The basis for the words are found in Deu 8:3. They reminded Him, and remind us all, that what must be preeminent in our lives is to hear the word of God and keep it. Here then was His first victory of these final three temptations (a threesome which sums up the whole). It would result in a mindset that would mean that He would not at any time allow any material consideration to interfere with His heeding and obeying the words of God. Like all of us, each victory would prepare Him for the next. From now on (as it had always been for Him) it would be, ‘Your will be done’.

Had Jesus failed here He would have proved that He was unsuited for what lay ahead, for it was necessary for Him to undergo the sufferings of the world to the full. He could not in any way seek to use His powers to prevent His facing up to the Father’s will and the world’s sufferings. For their sake He was enduring something of what Israel had endured in the wilderness.

No doubt important in this was the overall lesson that His powers must not be used simply for Himself. They were a trust from God, not a personal power bank. They must be used only in accordance with His direction. To do otherwise would be to sin. Personal considerations must not come into it. It would be to misappropriate what God had given Him. (It would be the equivalent, but of course at a much higher level, of His being tempted to steal the office stationery and appropriate it for His own use).

Note His words, ‘it is written.’ Because ‘it was written’ (gegraptai) in the Scriptures (graphais) He saw it as the infallible word of God.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Savior equal to the occasion:

v. 4. 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.

The most powerful and effective weapon: a simple statement of Scripture truth, Deu 8:3. Jesus readily concedes the usual order of things, the dependence of man upon food for the ordinary means to live. But He declares that God is not bound by these means, but may support life by a word of His mouth. He thus frankly puts His trust in His Father, depending for the keeping of His earthly life, not on any foolish intermeddling with God’s ways, nor on satanic device and agency, but on the power of His Word alone. And this is true in general. “All creatures are God’s masks and mummeries, whom He will permit to work with Him and help carry out various things, which He otherwise, without their assistance, can do and actually does, in order that we may depend upon His Word alone, thus: If bread be there, that we do not have the more trust; or if none be there, that we on that account do not despair the more; but use it when it is there, and do without when it is not there, in full assurance that we yet live and are nourished at either time through the Word of God, whether there be bread or no bread. With such faith avarice, gluttony, and temporal worry concerning food is vanquished. ” “He who would guard himself against such temptation may learn here from Christ that a person has two kinds of bread. The first and best bread, which comes down from heaven, is the Word of God; the other and more unimportant is the earthly bread which grows out of the ground. If, now, I have the first and best, the bread from heaven, and do not permit myself to be diverted therefrom, then the earthly bread will also not fail or remain away, the stones must rather turn to bread.”

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Mat 4:4. But by every word, &c. But by every thing which the mouth of God shall ordain. Prussian Testament. The original, to which our version is agreeable, is a Hebrew expression, taken from Deu 8:3. Whatever proceedeth out of the mouth, is the same as whatever God appoints or commands. Word is not in the Hebrew, but only in the LXX, whom the evangelist has here followed. Dr. Heylin is of opinion, that the diabolical temptation did not, perhaps could not begin, till after Jesus had fasted forty days; and then, when the first fervours in the new state he was entered upon were considerably abated; when his new abilities of body and mind were greatly exhausted by so long an abstinence; when nature languished, and hunger called for the needful repair of food; then the tempter found access to him. It should be observed, that in the style of Scripture, feeding, feasting, and fasting, are applicable to the mind as well as to the body. The mind has its hunger and thirst. It feeds and ruminates on thought; and when it fails of a due supply, it palls, and sickens, and starves for want of food. Now the forlorn wilderness was as barren of what could recreate the mind, as of what could feed the body. Here Jesus sojourned, in perpetual silence and solitude, with no entertainment of sense, no secular occupation, no external objects to employ the imagination. His fast there was total; total, I mean, as to the animal part, which, wasted with long want of necessary refreshment, at last pined with hunger; and this hunger would probably be attended with dejection of spirits, or other disorders, which debilitate the mind, and lay it open to temptation. It was then the tempter came to him, and said, if, &c. So the evangelist briefly relates the substance of this first temptation; which certainly was then displayed with all the colourings of reason; and which, by way of illustration, and only to shew what might be suggested on the occasion, may be thus represented: “If you really are the Son of God, and the voice you imagine to have heard from heaven be no delusion, assert your prerogative: do not let a Son of God starve; vindicate your sonship, and justify your Father’s goodness, who has not given you the miraculous powers you think yourself endowed with for nothing. If these powers are to be used, when so reasonablyas now? Can any one want them more? Can any one deserve them better than you do? Consider what you owe to yourself and your Father’s glory, if you be indeed his Son. His Spirit, as you deem, led you into this inhospitable wilderness;for what?To perish here?and so to frustrate all the prophesies which you conceive yourself destined to accomplish, and deprive men of the salvation you undertake to earn for them?For your own sake, for their sake, for the sake of your Father’s glory, which is so highly interested in your preservation, hearken to the just calls of nature in you: speak but the word; bid these words become bread.” Jesus answered, Man, &c. The quotation is very apposite: for it is taken from Deuteronomy, where Moses, recapitulating to the Jews the hardships and temptations with which they had been exercised in the desert, the more effectually to remind them of the great lesson that he was to inculcate, says, Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee [the original here is the same word, which, in other places, is rendered, to tempt thee,] to know what was in thine heart; whether thou wouldst keep his commandments, or no: and he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna [a food before unknown], that he might make thee know, that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord, &c.; that is to say, by whatever God appoints, or by whatever way he pleases. This answer, we see, was fully to the purpose, and so decisive as not to admit of a reply; yet the adversary, though baffled, did not desist, but renewed the attack with a second temptation: whereby it should seem, that he hoped to take advantage from the total resignation wherewith Jesus confided in the divine protection, so as to drive him into some excess. See Houbigant on Deu 8:3.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Mat 4:4 .Deu 8:3 , after the LXX., contains the words of Moses addressed to the Israelites, which have reference to the divinely-supplied manna. Note how Jesus repels each one of the three temptations, simply with the sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:17 ).

] the preservation of life does not depend upon bread alone. Examples of in Kypke, Obss . I. p. 14 f.; Markland, ad Max. Tyr. Diss . Mat 27:6 ; Bergler, ad Alciphr . p. 294, This construction is a common one in classical writers with , , or the simple dative.

] The future tense designates in Deu 1:1 , and in LXX. as well as here, simply the future , that which will happen , the case which will occur under given circumstances. So also in classical writers in general sentences. Dissen, ad Dem. de cor . p. 369.

] universal: Man . So in the original text and in the LXX.; there is the less reason to depart from this, and to explain it: de insigni illo homine , that is, Messiah (Fritzsche), as the application of the universal statement to Himself on the part of Jesus was a matter of course.

Word , in its proper sense. By every statement which proceeds from the mouth of God, that is, through every command which is uttered by God , by which the preservation of life is effected in an extraordinary, supernatural manner (without ). [388] Comp. Wis 16:26 . is not res ( ), not even in Mat 18:16 , Luk 2:15 , Act 5:32 , 1Ma 5:37 , since . . necessarily points to the meaning of word, declaration , which, however, is not to be explained, with Fritzscbe (comp. Usteri and Ullmann): omni mandato divino peragendo .

[388] Amongst the Israelites it was effected by means of the manna; therefore we must not say with Euth. Zigabenus: . Comp. Chrysostom: , Pfleiderer also refers it to the power of spiritual nourishment contained in the divine word; as also Calovius, who says: “Revocat a verbo potentiae , quo lapides erant in panem convertendi, ad verbum gratiae , cui adhaerentes vivent, etiamsi pane careant.”

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

4 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.

Ver. 4. But he answered and said, It is written ] “With his sore and great and strong sword” of the Spirit doth the Lord here “punish leviathan, that crooked piercing serpent,” Isa 27:7 . With these shafts out of God’s quiver, with these pebbles chosen out of the silver streams of the Scriptures, doth he prostrate the Goliah of hell. The word of God hath a power in it to quail and to quash Satan’s temptations, far better than that wooden dagger, that leaden sword of the Papists, their holy water, crossings, grains, dirty relics, &c. It is not the sign of the cross, but the word of the cross, that overthrows Satan. He can no more abide by it than an owl by the shining of the sun. Set therefore the word against the temptation, and the sin is laid. Say, I must not do it, I may not, I dare not; for it is forbidden in such a place, and again in such a place. And be sure to have places of Scripture ready at hand (as Saul had his spear and pitcher ready at his head even while he slept), that ye may “resist the devil,” “steadfast in the faith,” grounded on the word. Joseph overcame him by remembering the seventh commandment: and David, by hiding this word in his heart, Psa 119:11 . Wicked therefore was that advice of Dr Bristow to his agents, to labour still to get heretics out of their weak and false castle of Holy Scriptures into the plain fields of councils and fathers. The Scriptures are our armoury (far beyond that of Solomon, Son 4:4 ), whither we must resort and furnish ourselves. One savoury sentence thereof shall do us more service than all the pretty, witty sayings and sentences of fathers and philosophers, or constitutions of councils.

Man liveth not by bread alone ] Though ordinarily, as having a nourishing property inherent in it for such a purpose; yet so, as that the operation and success is guided by God’s power and goodness, whereon (as on a staff) this staff of life leaneth, Eze 4:16 ; “A wise woman buildeth her house,” Pro 14:1 . As the carpenter lays the plan of the house in his head first, and contrives it, so doth she forecast, and further the well doing of her family: and yet “except the Lord also build the house, they labour in vain that build it,” Psa 127:1 . So the diligent hand and the blessing of God (meeting) make rich, Pro 10:4 ; Pro 10:22 .

But by every word, &c. ] That is, by anything else besides bread, whatsoever God shall think good, whatsoever he shall appoint and give power unto to be nourishment. Therefore if bread fail, feed on faith, Psa 37:3 . Pascere fide: so Junius reads that text. Jehoshaphat found it sovereign when all other help failed him,2Ch 20:62Ch 20:6 . And the captive Jews lived by faith, when they had little else to live upon, and made a good living of it, Hab 2:4 . To this text the Jews seem to allude in that fiction of theirs, that Habakkuk was carried by the hair of the head, by an angel, into Babylon, to carry a dinner to Daniel in the den. (History of Bel and the Dragon, /Apc Bel 33-39) It was by faith that he “stopped the mouth of lions, and obtained promises,” Heb 11:33 ; and by faith that she answered the persecutors, “If you take away my meat, I trust God will take away my stomach.” (Eliz. Young, Acts and Monuments.) God made the ravens feed Elias, that were more likely (in that famine) to have fed upon his dead carcase; and another time caused him to go forty days in the strength of one meal, 1Ki 19:8 . Merlyn was nourished a fortnight together with one egg a day, laid by a hen that came constantly to that haymow, where he lay hidden during the massacre of Paris. (French Chronicle.) And who hath not read or heard how, by a miracle of his mercy, God relieved Rochelle in a strait siege by an innumerable company of fishes cast in upon them? Carissima semper munera sunt, author quae preciosa facit. Faith fears no famine ( fides famem non formidat ); and although it be but small in substance and in show (as the manna was), yet is it great in virtue and operation. The rabbins say, that manna had all manner of good tastes in it: so hath faith. It drinks to a man in a cup of nepenthe, and bids him be of good cheer, God will provide for him. The Bishop of Norwich kept Robert Samuel, martyr, without food and drink, whereby he was unmercifully vexed, saving that he had every day allowed him two or three morsels of bread, and three spoonfuls of water, to the end he might be reserved to further torment. How often would he have drunk his own water! But his body was so dried up with long emptiness, that he was not able to make one drop of water. After he had been famished with hunger two or three days together, he fell into a sleep, as it were one half in a slumber; at which time one clothed in white seemed to stand before him, which ministered comfort unto him by these words, “Samuel, Samuel, be of good cheer, and take a good heart unto thee; for after this day thou shalt never be either hungry or thirsty;” for speedily after this he was burned, and from that time, till he should suffer, he felt neither hunger nor thirst. And this declared he, to the end, as he said, that all men might behold the wonderful work of God. (Acts and Monuments.) He likes not to be tied to the second ordinary causes, nor that (in defect of the means) we should doubt his providence. It is true, he commonly worketh by them, when he could do without, that we may not neglect the means, as being ordained of him. (David shall have victory, but by an ambush,2Sa 5:19-242Sa 5:19-24 . Men shall be nourished, but by their labour, Psa 128:2 ) But yet so, as that he doth all in all by those means (he made grass, grain, and trees, before he made the sun, moon, and stars, by the influence whereof they are and grow). Yea, to show himself chief, he can and doth work, other whiles, without means 2Ch 14:11 , and against means, suspending the power and operation of the natural causes as when the fire burnt not, the water drowned not, the sun went back ten degrees, the rock gave water, the iron swam, &c. And then, when he works by means, he can make them produce an effect diverse from their nature and disposition; or can hinder, change, or mitigate their proper effect; at the prayer of Elias it rained not for three years and a half. “And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit,”Jas 5:17-18Jas 5:17-18 . A man would have thought that after such a long drought, the roots of trees and herbs should have been utterly dried up, and the land past recovery; but “God heard the heavens” (petitioning to him that they might exercise their influence for the fructifying of the earth), and the “heavens heard the earth, and the earth heard the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they heard Jezreel,” Hos 2:22 . Let all this keep us, as it did our Saviour here, from diffidence in God’s providence, and make us “possess our souls in patience,” Luk 21:19 , hang upon the promise, and account it as good as present pay, though we see not how it can be effected. God loves to go away by himself. “He knows how to deliver his,” saith St. Peter, 2Pe 2:9 , and he might speak it by experience, Act 12:9 , if ever any man might. “The king shall rejoice in God,” saith David of himself when he was a poor exile in the wilderness of Judah, Psa 63:11 . But he had God’s word for the kingdom, and therefore he was confident, seemed the thing ever so improbable or impossible. We trust a skilful workman to go his own way to work; shall we not God? In the sixth year of the reign of Darius Nothus was the Temple fully finished. That sacred work which the husband and son of an Esther crossed shall be happily accomplished by a bastard. The Israelites thought that Moses should presently have delivered them, and he himself thought as much, and therefore began before his time to do justice upon the Egyptian whom he slew and hid in the sand. But we see, God went another way to work; he sent Moses into a far country, and the bondage was for forty years after exceedingly increased upon them; yet all this to humble and try them, and to do them good in their latter end,Deu 8:2-3Deu 8:2-3 . He crosseth many times our likeliest project, and gives a blessing to those times and means whereof we despair. He breaks in pieces the ship that we think should bring us to shore, but casts us upon such boards as we did not expect. Lose we then any particular means? saith one; it is but the scattering of a beam, the breaking of a bucket, when the sun and the fountain is the same. But we for the most part do as Hagar did: when the bottle was spent, she falls a crying she was undone, she and her child should die; till the Lord opened her eyes to see the fountain. It was near her but she saw it not; when she saw it she was well enough. “If thou hadst been here,” said Martha, “my brother Lazarus had not died.” As if Christ could not have kept him alive, unless he had been present. So if Christ will come and lay his hands on Jairus’ daughter, Mar 5:23 , and Elisha stroke his hand over Naaman’s leprosy, they shall be cured,2Ki 5:112Ki 5:11 . So the disciples believed that Christ could feed so many thousands in the wilderness, but then he must have two hundred pennyworth of bread, Mar 6:37 . But our Saviour gave them, soon after, an ocular demonstration of this truth, “That man liveth not by bread alone,” &c. “They shall be helped with a little help,” Dan 11:34 . Why a little? that through weaker means we may see God’s greater strength.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

4. ] Our Lord does not give way to the temptation, so as to meet him with an open declaration, ‘I am the Son of God:’ thus indeed He might have asserted his Lordship over him, but not have been his Conqueror for us . The first word which He uses against him, reaches far deeper: ‘ Man shall not live, &c.’ “This, like the other text, is taken from the history of Israel’s temptation in the wilderness: for Israel represents, in a foreshadowing type, the Son of Man, the servant of God for Righteousness, the one , in whom alone that nature which in all men has degenerated into sin, . Adam stood not, Israel according to the flesh stood not, when the Lord their God tempted them: but rather, after Satan’s likeness, tempted their God: but now the second Adam is come, the true Israel, by whose obedience the way of life is again made known and opened ‘that man truly liveth on and in the eternal word of God.’ ” Stier’s Reden Jesu, vol. i. p. 16 (edn. 2). Observe also how our Lord resists Satan in His humanity; at once here numbering Himself with men , by adducing as including His own case; and not only so, but thus speaking out the mystery of his humiliation, in which He had foregone his divine Power, of his own will. By ‘ every word (or ‘ thing ,’ for is not expressed in the original) that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ,’ we must understand, every arrangement of the divine will; God, who ordinarily sustains by bread , can, if it please Him, sustain by any other means , as in the case alluded to. Compare Joh 4:32 ; Joh 4:34 .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Mat 4:4 . . : Christ’s reply in this case as in the others is taken from Deuteronomy (Mat 8:3 , Sept [14] ), which seems to have been one of His favourite books. Its humane spirit, with laws even for protecting the animals, would commend it to His mind. The word quoted means, man is to live a life of faith in and dependence on God. Bread is a mere detail in that life, not necessary though usually given, and sure to be supplied somehow , as long as it is desirable. is unusual, but good Greek (De Wette).

[14] Septuagint.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

It is written = It standeth written. This is the Lord’s first ministerial utterance; three times. Compare the last three (Joh 17:8, Joh 17:14, Joh 17:17). The appeal is not to the spoken voice (Mat 3:17) but to the written Word. Quoted from Deu 8:3. See App-107 and App-117.

Man. Greek. anthropos. App-123.

by = upon. Greek. epi. App-104.

alone = only.

word = utterance. out of = by means of, or through. Greek. dia. App-104. Mat 4:1. Note the connection of the “hunger” and the “forty” days here, and the same in Deu 8:3.

God. See App-98.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

4.] Our Lord does not give way to the temptation, so as to meet him with an open declaration, I am the Son of God: thus indeed He might have asserted his Lordship over him, but not have been his Conqueror for us. The first word which He uses against him, reaches far deeper: Man shall not live, &c. This, like the other text, is taken from the history of Israels temptation in the wilderness: for Israel represents, in a foreshadowing type, the Son of Man, the servant of God for Righteousness, the one , in whom alone that nature which in all men has degenerated into sin, . Adam stood not,-Israel according to the flesh stood not,-when the Lord their God tempted them: but rather, after Satans likeness, tempted their God: but now the second Adam is come, the true Israel, by whose obedience the way of life is again made known and opened-that man truly liveth on and in the eternal word of God. Stiers Reden Jesu, vol. i. p. 16 (edn. 2). Observe also how our Lord resists Satan in His humanity; at once here numbering Himself with men, by adducing as including His own case; and not only so, but thus speaking out the mystery of his humiliation, in which He had foregone his divine Power, of his own will. By every word (or thing, for is not expressed in the original) that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, we must understand, every arrangement of the divine will; God, who ordinarily sustains by bread, can, if it please Him, sustain by any other means, as in the case alluded to. Compare Joh 4:32; Joh 4:34.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Mat 4:4. , it is written) Jesus does not appeal to the Voice from heaven: He does not reply to the arguments of the Tempter: against those arguments He employs the Scripture alone, and simply cites its assertions. He declines to state whether He be the Son of God or not. When addressing mankind, our Lord seldom quoted Scripture, but said, I say unto you. He says that only in answer to Satan, It is written; i.e., Whoever I am, I assuredly keep to that which is written. All the statements winch He thus advanced were in themselves indisputable: and yet He keeps to that, it is written. By doing which, He declares that He is the Destined One who should fulfil Scripture; and at the same time shows the high authority of Scripture itself, irrefragable even to Satan.- , , Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God) The LXX. (Deu 8:3) prefix the definite article to (man), and repeat after (of God) (shall man live). Even in the wilderness, the Israelites had felt the force of these words. The sixth chapter of the same book is cited in Mat 4:7; Mat 4:10 : so that the two paraschae,[135] and , contain the three sayings propounded to the Israelites in the wilderness, and in the wilderness employed by Christ as a sword against the tempter. At the same season of the year[136] at which Moses had uttered them, Jesus employed these sayings against the tempter.-, shall live, etc.) Jesus had experienced this during these forty days. It is equally easy to live without bread, or to make bread out of stone. This is truly ,[137] constant tranquillity of mind (prsens animi quies), to require nothing besides life. Jesus knew that He should live.-, man. He does not reply to the tempter with reference to the appellation, Son of God, but speaks as if one of many, who were bound to the Written Word. And already in the time of Moses, Divine Wisdom had expressed all this testimony in those words with which the Saviour was to smite the tempter. Jerome says, Propositum erat Domino humilitate Diabolum vincere, non potenti,-The Lord had determined to overcome the Devil, not by power, but by humility.- , by every word that proceedeth out through the mouth of God) Thus in Psalms 89(88):34, the LXX. have, concerning a Divine promise, -the things which proceed out through My lips. Cf. concerning vows: S. V. of Num 30:13, and Deu 23:23 : Cf. also Jer 17:16, and Num 32:24.-That which goeth forth out of the mouth (exitus oris), is put by Metonomy for that which is uttered by the mouth.- , through the mouth) and, therefore, from the heart.

[135] The Pentateuch is divided into 50 or 54 Paraschioth, or larger sections, according as the Jewish lunar year is simple or intercalary; one of which sections was read in the synagogue every Sabbath-day. This division many of the Jews suppose to have been appointed by Moses; but it is by others attributed, and with greater probability, to Ezra. These paraschioth were, as in the instances referred to by Bengel, called by the Hebrew words with which they happened to begin; they were further subdivided into smaller sections, termed Siderim, or orders.-(I. B.)

[136] GRESWELL gives, as the date of our Lords being led up into the wilderness (v. 1), Sebat 28, Jan. 24, Fer. 1 (i.e. Sunday); and of Satans coming to Him (v. 3), Veader 9, Martii 5, Fer. 6 (i.e. Friday).-See his Harmonia Evangelica.-(I. B.)

[137] Literally, self-sufficingness-a word which sometimes signifies independence, at other times has the force of entire contentedness.-(I. B.)

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

A Question of Life

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 4:4.

1. The Temptation Story.Our Lords temptation, next to His death and passion, is the greatest event recorded of Him in the Gospels. The reason of this is evident. It was the Messiahs first encounter with His great enemy, Satan. Viewed aright, the scene so simply and briefly described in Scripture is the most terrific that can be imagined, as well as the most sublime; for we cannot forget that it is none other than a contest, on the issue of which depended the salvation of all mankind. On the one side was the Eternal Son, made flesh; sinless indeed, yet compassed with all the infirmity of mans fallen nature: on the other, the chief of the fallen angels, Satan; that old serpent who, in the beginning by deceiving our first parents, had brought death and sin and sorrow into the world. Satan knows his rival, and yet he knows Him but partially. He strides out to meet Him in desperate duel, as Goliath did the stripling whom he despised; and both hosts pause and gaze.

(1) In all probability the temptation of our Lord followed immediately upon the baptism, for St. Mark uses the word straightway, and St. Luke states that Jesus returned from Jordan full of the Spirit and was led by Him into the wilderness. It was, moreover, the natural counterpart of the baptism, which had ended with the declaration of the Divine Sonship of Jesus. From this the tempter takes his first occasion of evil suggestion, while Jesus takes the next step in the fulfilment of all righteousness by meeting the attacks of evil on the same footing as all men since the first temptation. That was the ordering of His Father in Heaven, to fit Him more perfectly for His work, by giving Him an experimental acquaintance with the force of our temptations day by day. But probably His own reason for going away from the crowds into a desert place was to have more undisturbed communion with His Father and to meditate upon the great work given Him to do. Yet into these holy hours the tempter came; and what He expected would be a time of calm and hallowed intercourse with Heaven was turned into a time of dire conflict with all the subtlety of hell.

(2) Our Lord was in the wilderness alonein St. Marks graphic description, with the wild beasts. There were none but heavenly witnesses of the mysterious experiences of those forty days; no human eyes witnessed them; and their record, therefore, is due to no human observation. The ultimate source of information must have been our Lord Himself, as the most rigorous criticism admits. His disciples would not have been likely to think that He could be tempted to evil; and, if they had supposed that He could, they would have imagined quite different temptations for Him, as various legends of the saints show. The form, therefore, in which the temptations are described is probably our Lords, chosen by Him as the best means of conveying the essential facts to the minds of His followers.

(3) It does not follow, because the temptations are described separately, that they took place separately, one ceasing before the next began. Temptations may be simultaneous or interlaced; and, in describing these three, Matthew and Luke are not agreed about the order. Nor does it follow, because the sphere of the temptation changes, that the locality in which Christ was at the moment was changed. We need not suppose that the devil had control over our Lords Person and took Him through the air from place to place: he directs His thoughts to this or that. The change of scene is mental. From no high mountain could more than a small fraction of the world be seen; but the glory of all the kingdoms of the world could be suggested to the mind. Nor again do the words, The tempter came and said unto him, imply that anything was seen by the eye or heard by the ear; any one might describe his own temptations in a similar way. What these words do imply is that the temptations came to Christ from the outside; they were not the result, as many of our temptations are, of previous sin.

2. The First Temptation.The temptation was real. The mystery of His humanitya humanity real in soul as in bodymade Him capable of temptation; made temptation a conflict and a suffering; made victory a thing to be fought forthe victory not of an insensible, impassive Divinity, but of a manhood indwelt by the Spirit.

(1) For forty days and nights He had been alone in the wilderness. St. Mark and St. Luke inform us that during the whole of that time He was tempted of the devil; and the former perhaps indicates one method of temptation which may have been tried, in adding and he was with the wild beasts. It may have been attempted by terror to shake the Redeemers firmness of purpose. But of this Scripture leaves us in uncertainty; and it is not till the end of the forty days that we are permitted to witness the forms which His temptation assumed. At that time we find Him exhausted with His long abstinence from food.

He was hungry, grievously hungry. He was experiencing to the full extent that strong craving of our nature which sometimes turns men into brutes. His tongue was parched and blackened with the terrible heat of the wilderness. He was worn out with hunger. Every circumstance conspired to render the allurement of food as strong as possible. The pitiless blue, like brass above; the barren wilderness around Him, where roam the prowling beasts. Son of God? Did He look like the Son of God, without accompaniment of angel or of glory? Was it not a fancy and a dream?

(2) The wilderness in which He kept His lonely vigil for forty days, the hunger and exhaustion which He felt after His long fast and travail of soul, were all symbols and evidences of the curse of man. Satan came to Him while He was suffering from these effects of Adams sin, and suggested to Him an easy method by which they might be removed. By a miracle, the curse would be neutralized and His wants supplied. The food which the wilderness like a miser refused could be wrung by force from its grasp. Faithful to the just and wise law of barrenness imposed upon it by God, it could be made conveniently disobedient by the arbitrary exercise of Divine power. If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Use Thy Divine power to procure comfort; choose a life of ease and abundance, instead of the bare hard stones of the wilderness.

(3) Jesus overcomes the solicitation of evil as a pious man and as a believing Israelite. His mind is saturated with the Bible, and a word of it which meets the case leaps instinctively to His tongue. The passage which Jesus quotes is from the Book of Deuteronomy, in which the spiritual lessons of the leadings of Israel as Gods Son in the wilderness are drawn out. In Deu 8:1-3 the hunger suffered during forty years in the wilderness, and its relief by the gift of manna, was to teach the people that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

The bearing of the words on Christs hunger is twofold: first, He will not use His miraculous powers to provide food, for that would be to distrust God, and so to cast off His filial dependence; second, He will not separate Himself from His brethren and provide for Himself by a way not open to them, for that would really be to reverse the very purpose of His incarnation and to defeat His whole work.

I

Life by Bread

How shall we live? Multitudes of people are asking that question to-day with peculiar earnestness. The man who could give a satisfactory practical answer would be regarded as the greatest of all public benefactors. Sometimes a kindly providence apparently shapes all for a man at the moment of his birth. Not till some sudden calamity overwhelms him is he roused into a conscious necessity of deciding for himself what he will do and become. But to most men there comes early in life the occasion and the necessity for deliberation and decision. Towards what goal in the future, he then asks, shall I now direct my steps, and by what route and methods shall it be reached? To these questions he is forced to give some kind of answers.

1. What is covered by the word Bread?Bread we call the staff of life. This familiar imagery is as ancient at least as the time of Abraham. To the three angels, one of them the mysterious angel of the covenant, who appeared to him as he sat at the door of his tent in the plains of Mamre, the hospitable patriarch said, I will fetch a morsel of bread, and stay ye your hearts. Moses, when he threatened the people with famine in punishment of their sins, described it as the breaking of their staff. Isaiah also warns the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah that the Lord of hosts will take away the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water. Bread was what the famished Bedouin craved when he caught up so eagerly the bag he found lying by a fountain in the desert, and flung it down again so quickly in despair, exclaiming, Alas! it is only diamonds.

But bread, as we have it in the text, means more than this. It covers the whole visible economy of lifeall that range of supplies, helps, and supports upon which men depend to keep themselves alive, and to make life comfortable and enjoyable. It covers the whole economy of food and drink, clothing, shelter, ministry to the senses, to power, respectability, and worldly honour. The worlds commonly accepted theory is, By these things we live. We cannot get on without them.

If it be urged that these views of Mr. Hinton [on sacrifice] are very uncomfortable views of life, I might suggest that Christianity itself, with its fundamental axiom, He that loveth his life shall lose it, cannot strictly be defined as a comfortable religion. I would ask whether our modern worship of the comfortable has given us a life that really satisfies even the most worldly amongst us; whether, on the contrary, it has not bound down the free play and joyous movement of life under a weight of custom, heavy as frost, deep almost as life, debarring us from the healthy joys of plain living and high thinking, from the lofty enterprise and joyous heroism that feeds the high tradition of the world, and from the deeper blessedness of sacrifice,

That makes us large with utter loss

To hold divinity?1 [Note: Ellice Hopkins, Life and Letters of James Hinton, 293.]

2. The peril of Bread.Possessed as we are of a physical nature, with its clamorous appetites and its innumerable bodily needs, we are tempted at times to believe that man is merely a superior kind of animal, living by bread alone, and with no interest in anything save what he can see and touch and taste. On this view, man becomes and remains a mere instrument, in one way or another living only for bread, living only for an end out of himself, living merely in subservience to that class of things which bread represents. There is the great evil in this world, and there spring up temptations similar in character to those which assailed Christ in the wilderness.

(1) There is danger for the individual. In that first conception of himself as a responsible and solitary being, every young man meets the same devil as Jesus met. And the temptation is the samethe assurance given in some form or other that bread is all that a man needs, that everything else is a delusion, that to live a life of physical comfort is the only solid wish for a mans soul. Perhaps it is a business which he knows is wrong, but sees must be profitable. Perhaps it is the abandonment of those he ought to care for, so that he may himself get rich. Perhaps it is the hiding of his sincere convictions in order to keep his place in some social company. Perhaps it is connivance at a wicked mans sin in order to preserve his favour. Perhaps it is the postponing of charity to some future day when it shall be easier. Perhaps it is a refusal to acknowledge Christ, the Master, out of fear, or because some easy, foolish friendship would be sacrificed. Perhaps it is simply the giving up of ambitions, intellectual or spiritual, for the sake of quiet, unperturbed respectability. These are real struggles.

Now, manifestly, it must lead to the most disastrous results when the lower elements of a mans nature are treated as if they were the only, or at any rate the most important, elements. The soul of the sensualist is like a State in which the ignorant, vulgar and stupid mob has usurped the reins of government, and is proceeding to destroy everything better than itself. Enjoyment, which is the proper satisfaction for the sensuous part of our being, is no satisfaction at all for the mind and heart and spirit. The unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted to pleasure may be proved, not only by abstract considerations, but by the fact that those who have lived in this fashion invariably speak of their existence with disappointment and disgust.

I have seen the silly rounds of business and pleasure and have done with them all. I have enjoyed all the pleasures of the world and consequently know their futility, and do not regret their loss. Their real value is very, very low; but those who have not experienced them always overrate them. For myself, I by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose.1 [Note: Lord Chesterfield.]

In one of his Hebrew Melodies Byron speaks in a similar strain

Fame, wisdom, love, and power were mine,

And health and youth possessd me;

My goblets blushd from every vine,

And lovely forms caressd me;

I sunnd my heart in beautys eyes,

And felt my soul grow tender;

All earth can give, or mortal prize,

Was mine of regal splendour.

I strive to number oer what days

Remembrance can discover,

Which all that life or earth displays

Would lure me to live over.

There rose no day, there rolld no hour

Of pleasure unembitterd;

And not a trapping deckd my power

That galld not while it glitterd.

The serpent of the field, by art

And spells, is won from harming;

But that which coils around the heart,

Oh! who hath power of charming?

It will not list to wisdoms lore,

Nor musics voice can lure it;

But there it stings for evermore

The soul that must endure it.

(2) There is a national menace. In these modern days one finds oneself rummaging the pages of Gibbon and Tacitus and Juvenal. Look at those old empires which lived by bread alone; by riches so enormous that it seems as if God had determined to give money a chance to do its best; living by power so vast that there were no more worlds to conquer; living by pleasure so prodigal and so refined and varied that the liveliest invention was exhausted, and the keenest appetite surfeited. Babylon, Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Carthage,to-day we dare not open to our children the records of the inner life of these communities. We almost hesitate to read its fearful summary in the first chapter of St. Pauls Epistle to the Romans. The old empires have gone down in ruin, and their pleasures have turned to a corruption which is an offence in the worlds nostrils. The old city which rang with the cry of Bread and the Circus! is only a monument now. The tourist wanders over the Palatine, and peers down into the choked vaults of the Csars palaces; and the antiquarian rummages where Neros fish-ponds gleamed, and climbs along the broken tiers of the Coliseum, from which the culture and beauty and fashion of Rome looked down with delight upon Christian martyrs in the fangs of tigers.

Not in material progress then, nor in art and science, nor in the stoicism of absolute duty, is the law of human nature found to lie. We fall back upon the immemorial truthMan shall not live by bread alone.

The most helpful and sacred work, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how to better themselves, but how to satisfy themselves. It is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and not be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. And as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hungerthe bread of justice, or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, v. (Works, vii. 426).]

3. Christs attitude to Bread.But the subject has another side. There are people who try to get rid altogether of the lower elements. They attempt to eradicate desire, to extinguish instinct, to suppress and annihilate the bodily nature. Principal Caird says, If the spiritual self is essentially greater than the lower tendencies, why should it not exist without them? If desire and passion drag me down from my ideal life, why should I not escape from their thraldom, and live as if I were a disembodied spirit? Snap the ties that bind me to the satisfactions of the moment, that absorb me in the transient and perishable, and will not my spirit gain at a bound its proper sphere? But, he answers, the ties cannot be snapped, and even if they could, the end proposed would not be gained. The violent self-suppression at which the ascetic aims can never be effected; and if it could, it would be, not the fulfilment, but the extinction, of a moral life. In our self-development the lower natural tendencies have an indispensable part to play. Apart from them, the realization of our ideal nature would be utterly impossible. In the life of our Lord we find no encouragement for this ascetic theory. The Son of man came eating and drinking. Very precious to Christian hearts are those brief, those thrilling records which make Him like unto us, one with us, in all things: Jesus wept. Jesus was wearied with His journey. Jesus said, I thirst. Jesus was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. He afterward hungered. The Maker of our bodies never speaks scornfully of their normal, innocent necessities. Human life, in the lowest sphere of its merely animal functions and wants, is invested with a sort of sacredness as the workmanship and husbandry of God.

How utterly opposed to the thought of Jesus Christ is all asceticism, all religious isolation and retreat from the world. Society, not solitude, is the natural home of Christianity. The Christian is not to flee from the contagion of evil, but to meet it with the contact of health and holiness. The Church is not to be built on glass posts for moral insulation, but among the homes of common men for moral transformation. What use is a light under a bushel? It must shine where there is darkness. The place of need is the field of duty, and though we are not to be of the world, we are to be first and last in the world and for the world.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 42.]

In a letter to the Rev. W. P. Wood, who was thinking of introducing some criticism of Benthamism into his Oxford Sermons, Dean Hook wrote: If you have had time to look into Benthams work you will find that he assumes that there are only three principles of action, (1) asceticism, (2) sympathy, (3) utility. There is a misplaced attempt at facetiousness involving a gross misstatement of the first of these principles at the outset of the book; for it is a bad introduction to a work professing strict philosophy to lay down that the principle of asceticism consists in supposing the misery of His creatures to be gratifying to the Creator. The principle, though carried to an excess, was in itself good and true, namely, the subduing of sensual appetites as a means of freeing the mind from their bias. Like every other device of man, this principle failed with the monks as it had failed with the Stoics, and I think that on inquiry it would be found the radical vice of the system was its leading men to dwell too exclusively on self, by which in the first place pride, and in the next indifference to the happiness of others, became gradually engendered in the ascetic.1 [Note: W. R. W. Stephens, The Life and Letters of Walter Farquhar Hook, i. 246.]

II

Life by the Word of God

When Christ says that men shall live by Gods word, He means by life far more than the little span of years, with their eating and drinking and pleasure and gain-getting. This utterance of the worlds Redeemer assumes the fact of immortality. If not, the theory of life by God is condemned; and there is nothing for us but the bread-theory: Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die. To live by the word of God is to share the eternal life of God. The bread-life is but the prelude and faint type of this.

1. The first point to be attained by man is to rise to the true conception of life. When he does this he has a different standard of value from that of the mere bread standard. The standard of value with him is whatever elevates and perfects his personality; not what he gets, not what he accumulates, not what feeds only one part of his nature, but what makes him great and good, strong and beautiful, and assimilates him to God and Christ. He values everything that comes from the mouth of God, and lives by itthat is, all things that God gives, not merely to the body, but to the soul.

Every word of God contains a revelation and a commandment. Whenever God speaks by any of His voices, it is first to tell us some truth which we did not know before, and second to bid us do something which we have not been doing. Every word of God includes these two. Truth and duty are always wedded. There is no truth which has not its corresponding duty. And there is no duty which has not its corresponding truth. We are always separating them. We are always trying to learn truths, as if there were no duties belonging to them, as if the knowing of them would make no difference in the way we lived. That is the reason why our hold on the truths we learn is so weak. And we are always trying to do duties as if there were no truths behind them; that is, as if they were mere arbitrary things which rested on no principles and had no intelligible reasons. That is why we do our duties so superficially and unreliably. When every truth is rounded into its duty, and every duty is deepened into its truth, then we shall have a clearness and consistency and permanence of moral life which we hardly dream of now.

The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor experience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, order, and the pulchrum. Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas; and even though the eternal priesthood throughout the Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle would remain, and would have a sway.1 [Note: Cardinal Newman.]

2. Man cannot be satisfied with bread, with anything materialhe cannot live upon it; there are portions of his nature which it will not nourish, cravings which it will not satisfy. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. If man is to live, he must satisfy the deeper cravings first. This is shown both in consciousness and in experience.

(1) The appeal to consciousness.Man discovers within himself certain powerspowers of work, powers of study, powers of sacrifice, powers of suffering for others; what is to become of these powers if he lives by bread alone, if he makes material comfort his one and only object? Undoubtedly they will dwindle and decay. We know that we have a reason and a conscience which ought to be our guide; and we are all conscious, at least at times, of feelings, wishes, aspirations which material things can never satisfy. We all feel that we are capable of and meant for a higher and nobler life than that of an animal: even for a life guided by reason and conscience, a life of faith, love, righteousness, holiness, a life of self-denial and self-sacrifice for our own good and for the good of our brethren; and we all somehow or other have a belief that no life can be at its best or worthiest which is not after this pattern.

(2) The appeal to experience.Again by a survey of human history we find that other men, in other days, have lived not for the flesh, but for the Spirit. The testimony of devout men at many times and in many regions of the earth to the capacity of the human spirit for communion with the Divine Spirit, which is the very breath of the Godhead, is as sure and strong as any testimony to any essential fact of human nature. Their history confirms man in his study of himself. He reads his duty in their stories. It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.

A second man I honour, and still more highly [than the toilworn Craftsman]: Him who is seen toiling for the spirituality indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist: not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality?these two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of mans wants is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.1 [Note: Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Bk. iii. chap. iv.]

3. To live this higher life is to be obedient to the word of God. Jesus, the author of Christian faith, lived from beginning to end, without deviation or exception, by the words proceeding from the mouth of God. In His passion-baptism He bore the penalty of the disobedience of the race, and in His resurrection He took again His life, that He might communicate it to sinful men, that in its energy they also might obey the law of God. He conquered at the last, as He conquered at the first, by obeying every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God; overcame by His human faith and obedience, and not by His Divine power; made Himself known in His highest glory to men, not by exempting Himself from the lot of humanity, but through a fellowship with their miseries.

(1) Obedience is the secret of manhood.The supreme duty of every man is that he should discover and obey these words. If he live from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, and from year to year without reference to that law, hoping that, after being regardless of, if not rebellious against, it, he will at last slip into some happy state, then surely he must indeed be blind and foolish. Self-control and a willing humiliation of self to the Will that rules the universe is mans first and hardest lesson. This teaches him at the outset how helpless and hopeless he is in himself. Such knowledge drives a man out of himself hungry and thirsty for every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. When once he has learned to lay hold of the Power which alone can help him, then begins the process which ends in the mastery of self and in the consummation of a life which alone is worth living.

How is the soul free? Not, as has been excellently put, when it is at the mercy of every random impulse, but when it is acted upon by congenial forces, when it is exposed to spiritual pressure, to constraint within itself. Let us take a concrete instance. Take a high-souled man who is injured or insulted by his fellow. How will he act? What will be here the next thing? The natural reaction, the instinctive movement, will be one of revolt, of paying back in like coin. That lies nearest to the animal in him, and he feels it all. But will it determine his action? Will that actually come next? There is a beautiful story which DAguesseau, a French Advocate-General of the seventeenth century, tells of his father: Naturally of a quick temper, his son says of him, when under provocation one saw him redden and become silent at the same moment; the nobler part of his soul allowing the first fire to pass without word said, in order to re-establish straightway that inner calm and tranquillity which reason and religion had combined to make the habit of his soul. There you have the thing taken from the life; the trained soul caught in the entire fineness of its action. The whole philosophy of the spirit is there; the higher nature constructing its next thing, not from the grosser impulses, but from the free obedience it pays to the highest that is in it.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 143.]

(2) Obedience is the proof of sonship.It was by His obedience to the word of God that Christ proved His Sonship. As there is no doubt, neither is there any wavering in His decision. The life of man is the life of obedience to God. He has bidden me be His son here. The life of a son is the life of obedience, and He has bidden me prove that the life of sonship and the life of man are one, and that I must prove. My sonshipnot by claim from the heavens; not by being exalted with twelve legions of angels; not with flare of trumpetI must prove my sonship through obedience. I must prove my sonship by working out the will and carrying out the word of my Father. There is a long, long, fierce struggle before the man who says he will not live by bread alone. But by obedience to the word of God the victory will ultimately be ours, and our title, sons of God, be approved.

You must yield yourselves to be led along by the Spirit, with that leading which is sure to conduct you always away from self and into the will of God. You must welcome the Indweller to have His holy way with your springs of thought and will. So, and only so, will you truly answer the idea, the description, sons of Godthat glorious term, never to be satisfied by the relation of mere creaturehood, or by that of merely exterior sanctification, mere membership in a community of men, though it be the Visible Church itself. But if you so meet sin by the Spirit, if you are so led by the Spirit, you do show yourselves nothing less than Gods own sons. He has called you to nothing lower than sonship; to vital connexion with a Divine Fathers life, and to the eternal embraces of His love. For when He gave and you received the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of promise, who reveals Christ and joins you to Him, what did that Spirit do, in His heavenly operation? Did He lead you back to the old position, in which you shrunk from God, as from a Master who bound you against your will? No, He showed you that in the Only Son you are nothing less than sons, welcomed into the inmost home of eternal life and love.2 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, The Epistle to the Romans, 223.]

Francis had conquered, one by one, his love of company, of fine clothes, of rank and wealth; his aversion to squalor, disease, and misery; his daintiness in food and surroundings. All were laid upon the altar of obedience, and for all God gave him a thousandfold of their antitypes in the spiritual lifefor parents and friends, His own continual presence; for rank, sonship of the King of kings; for garments, the robe of righteousness; for wealth, all things; for personal fastidiousness, a purity, tenderness, and joy which lifted him above the annoyances of daily experience. The weapons marked with the cross were gaining him the victory. His vision was in course of fulfilment.1 [Note: A. M. Stoddart, Francis of Assisi, 91.]

A Question of Life

Literature

Alford (H.), Sermons, i. 152.

Archibald (M. G.), Sundays at the Royal Military College, 73.

Brooks (P.), The Spiritual Man, 47.

Burgon (J. W.), in The Expositors Library, i. 202.

Chapin (E. H.), Gods Requirements, 173.

Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 117.

Eyton (R.), The Temptation of Jesus, 12.

Ford (H.), Sermons with Analyses, 93.

Gibbons (J. C.), Discourses and Sermons, 143.

Hitchcock (R. D.), Eternal Atonement, 169.

Jowett (J. H.), Things that Matter Most, 183.

Knight (G. H.), Full Allegiance, 83.

Lewis (F. W.), The Master of Life, 3.

MConnell (S. D.), Sons of God, 203.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: St. Matthew i.viii., 76.

Macmillan (H.), Sun-Glints in the Wilderness, 22.

Massillon (J. B.), Sermons, 242.

Momerie (A. W.), The Origin of Evil, 135.

Morgan (G. C.), The Ten Commandments, 6.

Mursell (W. A.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 233.

Plummer (A.), Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, 35.

Vaughan (C. J.), The Two Great Temptations, 113.

Vincent (M. R.), God and Bread, 3.

Welldon (J. E. C.), The Spiritual Life, 140.

Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., iii. 96 (H. Wace).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

It is: Mat 4:7, Mat 4:10, Luk 4:4, Luk 4:8, Luk 4:12, Rom 15:4, Eph 6:17

Man: Deu 8:3, Luk 4:4

but: Mat 14:16-21, Exo 16:8, Exo 16:15, Exo 16:35, Exo 23:15, 1Ki 17:12-16, 2Ki 4:42-44, 2Ki 7:1, 2Ki 7:2, Hag 2:16-19, Mal 3:9-11, Mar 6:38-44, Mar 8:4-9, Joh 6:5-15, Joh 6:31-59, Joh 6:63

but: That is, as Dr. Campbell renders, “by every thing which God is pleased to appoint;” for [Strong’s G4487], which generally signifies a word, is, by a Hebraism, here taken for a thing, like davar in Hebrew.

Reciprocal: Gen 42:2 – that we 1Ki 17:4 – I have commanded Psa 17:4 – word Isa 38:16 – General Dan 1:15 – their Mat 4:6 – for Mat 6:11 – General Mat 6:31 – What shall we eat

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

4:4

In quoting the statement that is in Deu 8:3, Jesus showed his respect for the inspired word of God and set a worthy example for others. He ignored the challenging phase of the preceding verse and based his reply on the principle that physical satisfaction is not the only thing that should interest a person in this life. One might be abundantly supplied and contented physically and yet lack the more important food which is for the inner man and is found in the words of God.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Mat 4:4. It is written. It has been and still is written, is the full meaning of this phrase. Each suggestion was answered by a passage from Scripture. A hint to honor the Old Testament, which is rendered emphatic by this particular quotation. Jesus, who was fulfilling the law, answers Satan from the law (Deu 8:3). The connection is strikingly appropriate: Jehovah 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, etc. The quotation is very slightly varied from the Greek of the Septuagint

Man. Feeling so keenly His human needs, our Lord does not exert his Divine power, nor assert His Divine dignity, but overcomes the temptation by identifying Himself with man, conquering Satan for us men.

By, lit., upon, bread alone, i.e., ordinary bread procured in the ordinary way, but by every word, etc. Many authorities read in. Accepting this, we explain: we live ordinarily upon bread, but one who lives upon what God provides, lives in it, as an atmosphere. Whoso depends on the mouth of God, his mouth shall not want bread, and thus depending, most truly lives. Outward means cannot sustain us, but God by outward means. Some have taken word as meaning thing, because it is not expressed in the Hebrew (Deu 8:3), but this is not strictly correct. The word may be a promise, command, which results in the thing needed. The reference is not to spiritual food. The simple meaning is: Man is ordinarily sustained by bread, but if it pleases God, under whose Providential care he stands, to sustain him by other means, this will be done, and was done for Israel in the desert, all done according to the word proceeding out of the mouth of God.Thus the temptation was overcome. The needed supply doubtless came, and the hungering nature was satisfied, without the miracle the tempter suggested. We are here taught to overcome Satan with Scripture; to trust God for extraordinary help in extraordinary circumstances; as He suffered thus, sharing our needs, we may believe that we can triumph thus, partaking of His fulness.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, The weapon which our Savior made use of to repel the temptation, and to vanquish the tempter and that is the word of God, It is written.

Learn, That the scripture, or the written word of God, is the only sure weapon wherewith to vanquish Satan, and to beat back all his fiery temptation.

Satan himself has not the impudence to oppose scripture: What monsters of impiety then are they who ridicule and deride it! They not only run counter to the practice of Christ, but outdo the devil himself in impudence.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Mat 4:4. It is written There is no better way of answering the tempter, than by opposing the word of God to his temptations. This is that sword of the Spirit that must put him to flight. The Church of Rome, therefore, by taking from the people the word of God, disarm them as to the spiritual combat. Man shall not live by bread alone These words are quoted from Deu 8:3, and signify that bread, or ordinary sustenance, is not necessary to support the life of man; that God can feed and sustain him by other means: but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live That is, by whatsoever he shall appoint for his sustenance; or even by his bare word. Therefore, it is not needful that I should work a miracle to procure bread, without any intimation of my Fathers will. He can support me without bread, as he fed the Israelites in the wilderness; and, on the other hand, even bread itself, if these stones were turned into it, could not nourish me without his blessing; which I could not expect, were I to attempt a miracle of this kind merely in compliance with thy suggestions. Here we are taught, in imitation of Christ, always to maintain such an humble dependance on the divine blessing, as never to venture out of the way of it, be our necessity ever so urgent.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Verse 4

It is written; Deuteronomy 8:3.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament