Sonship Tested Before the Crowds Arrive

“Led up” is literal geography: from the Jordan, well below sea level, into the Judean wilderness on the heights above it. In 1611 “of” regularly meant “by”, so the Spirit leads and the devil tempts, two agents in one sentence. The same Spirit had just come down on him at the Jordan (3:16).

Only Matthew says “forty days and forty nights”, the exact phrase used of Moses on the mountain without bread or water (Exodus 34:28). “An hungred” is an old English form meaning simply hungry. The hunger comes “afterward”, which is the moment the tempter chooses.

The Greek “if” here assumes the point for argument’s sake: since thou art the Son of God. The tempter does not dispute the voice from heaven; he tries to put it to work. Stones have been in the book before, when John said God could raise children to Abraham from them (3:9).

Jesus answers with Deuteronomy 8:3, and the setting of that line is exact: the LORD “suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna”. In Moses’ sermon the hunger itself was part of the lesson. “Proceedeth” is present and continuous, a word still coming out of God’s mouth.

The Greek tells this in the present tense, “taketh” and “setteth”, as the King James keeps it, which makes the scene vivid. “Pinnacle” is literally a “little wing” of the temple. Many place it at the southeast corner above the Kidron valley, where Josephus says the drop made a watcher dizzy; that location is an inference, not stated.

The devil quotes Psalm 91:11–12, and he trims it: the Psalm promises angels “to keep thee in all thy ways”, and that phrase is gone. He also stops one line short. The next verse of the Psalm promises that the one God protects will tread on the lion and the adder.

“Again” in the Greek carries the sense of “on the other hand”: Scripture set beside Scripture, not a verse swapped for a better one. Deuteronomy 6:16 points back to Massah, where Israel’s question was “Is the LORD among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7). A leap from the temple would ask the same thing with a body.

No mountain on earth shows every kingdom, so the height works as more than a vantage point. Moses was taken up Pisgah and shown the whole land (Deuteronomy 34:1–4). Matthew keeps returning to mountains, and on the last one Jesus says “All power is given unto me” (28:18), without having bowed to anyone.

“Fall down and worship” are the same two verbs used of the wise men before the child in 2:11. The devil asks for what strangers from the east gave freely to Jesus. Matthew records no claim here that the kingdoms are his to give; the offer is simply made.

“Get thee hence” uses the same verb Jesus will turn on Peter in 16:23, “Get thee behind me, Satan”. Deuteronomy 6:13 in Hebrew says “fear the LORD thy God”; the quotation reads “worship”, meeting the devil’s own word head on. This is also the first time Matthew uses the name Satan, the adversary.

Luke adds that the devil departed “for a season”; Matthew simply lets him go. “Ministered” is the verb for waiting at table, and after forty days without food it likely means the angels fed him, as an angel twice fed Elijah on his forty day walk to Horeb (1 Kings 19:5–8).

“Cast into prison” is in Greek “handed over”, the verb Matthew later uses of the Son of man being delivered up (17:22; 26:2). The reason for the arrest waits until 14:3–4. “Departed” is Matthew’s word for withdrawing from danger, used of Joseph taking the child away in 2:14 and 2:22.

Capernaum, on the northwest shore, becomes “his own city” by 9:1. It sat in the old tribal lot of Naphtali, near the line with Zebulun, and Matthew names both tribes because Isaiah does. Nazareth is left behind here and does not welcome him when he returns in 13:54–58.

“Esaias” is the Greek spelling of Isaiah, the form the King James keeps throughout the New Testament. This is the fifth time Matthew has stopped the account to say a prophet’s word was fulfilled, after four such notices in the infancy chapters.

“Galilee of the Gentiles” translates Isaiah’s galil haggoyim, literally the ring or district of the nations. Zebulun and Naphtali were the first tribes stripped away when Tiglath-pileser of Assyria took Galilee (2 Kings 15:29). “The way of the sea” was the trade road running through that country toward Damascus.

Isaiah 9:2 says the people “walked” in darkness; Matthew’s form has them “sat”, twice, which is the posture of Psalm 107:10, “such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death”. “Sprung up” is the Greek verb for sunrise, kin to the word for the east where the wise men saw the star (2:2).

“From that time Jesus began” appears here and once more, at 16:21, where Jesus begins to show that he must suffer. Many readers take the two as hinges dividing the book. The perfect tense in “is at hand” means the kingdom has drawn near and stands close.

Simon is “called Peter” from his first appearance, though the name will be explained only in 16:18. The net here is a circular casting net, weighted at the rim and flung from the shore or shallows, a different word from the nets being mended in verse 21.

“Follow me” is in Greek “come behind me”, the place a disciple walked, behind his teacher. Disciples of the rabbis usually sought out a master; here the teacher does the choosing. The promise is phrased in their own trade, and the verb “make” puts the skill in his hands, not theirs.

Matthew does not say whether the brothers had met Jesus before. John 1:40–42 records Andrew bringing Simon to him in Judea earlier, which may explain why two working men could drop their nets on a word. “Straightway” leaves no gap in the Greek between the call and the leaving.

“Mending” is katartizo, a word for restoring something to working order, used later for mending a fallen brother (Galatians 6:1). Zebedee owns the boat, and Mark 1:20 adds that he had hired servants, so the family had a business, not a subsistence living.

“Left the ship and their father”: the father is named as part of what was left. In 8:21–22 a would-be follower asks first to bury his father and is refused. Zebedee himself fades from the book, but “the mother of Zebedee’s children” follows Jesus all the way to the cross (27:56).

Matthew nearly repeats this summary word for word at 9:35, and the two verses frame everything between: the sermon of chapters 5 to 7 and the ten mighty works of 8 and 9. “Their synagogues” is Matthew’s habit, a small pronoun that keeps some distance.

Syria was the Roman province to the north; report outruns the man. “Lunatick” renders a Greek verb meaning “moonstruck”, used again only of the boy thrown into fire and water in 17:15. “Torments” first meant a touchstone for testing gold, then the rack.

Decapolis was a league of ten Greek cities, most of them east of the Jordan, Gentile ground with pagan temples and pig farms. The list runs north, east, south and across the river, and leaves out Samaria. These are the multitudes Jesus sees when he goes up the mountain in 5:1.