Jesus Christ · On the Scriptures
It Is Written
Before He preaches a single sermon, Jesus is alone in the wilderness, weak with forty days’ hunger, facing the accuser directly — and His only weapon, three times over, is a bare citation formula: “It is written.” No argument of His own added, no appeal to His own authority as God’s Son. Every single answer comes from one short run of Deuteronomy. Under the greatest pressure of His life, He reaches for the written word as settled, standing authority — and the same reach shows up again and again, whenever Scripture itself needs defending from a bad reading, His own included.
The Wilderness
— Matthew 4:1-11 — forty days, three attacksJesus has just been baptized. The Father’s own voice has just named Him “My beloved Son.” Then, led by the Spirit, He is driven into the wilderness and fasts forty days. When the hunger is at its worst, the tempter comes — three times, three different angles of attack. Each time, Jesus answers the same way: not with an argument of His own, not with a display of power, but with a bare quotation from Scripture, introduced by the same two words.
Then - After this glorious evidence of his Father's love, he was completely armed for the combat. Thus after the clearest light and the strongest consolation, let us expect the sharpest temptations.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), Matt 4:1
Three Thrusts, Three Answers
— the same short run of Deuteronomy, three times overTHE THRUST
THE ANSWER
THE SOURCE
Matt 4:3 — forty days without food — the hunger is real
Matt 4:6 — Satan quotes Scripture back at Him — Psalm 91:11-12, minus its own qualifying context
Matt 4:9 — every kingdom of the world, shown at once, for one act of worship
What He Is Saying
— Scripture as settled authority“It is written” was the ordinary way Jesus’s own contemporaries cited Scripture — a formula that treats the text as a closed, settled matter, already on the record, not a matter of opinion to be argued. Jesus never adds a case for why Deuteronomy should be trusted. He simply cites it, as though the citation itself ends the exchange. That He does this at the point of greatest personal weakness in the Gospels — starving, alone, directly opposed by the accuser — is itself the argument: this is not a convenient tool reached for in comfort, but the place He actually stands when everything else is stripped away.
“It is written” — again
The second round is the one place in the Gospels the devil himself quotes Scripture — Psalm 91:11-12, promising angelic protection. He drops the psalm’s own qualifying words, “in all thy ways” (a life lived in obedience, not a staged leap to force God’s hand). Jesus answers “It is written again” — Scripture correctly read, set directly against Scripture misapplied. The full psalm He is being misquoted from:
For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.the verse Satan quotes — read here in full, with the words he leaves out.
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. This testimony is from the Old Testament, from the words of Moses (Deut 8:3). The Hebrews, too, had …
Theophylact of Ohrid· Commentary on Matthew (1107), on Matt 4:4
But he answered and said, it is written,.... The passage referred to, and cited, is in Deu 8:3 the manner of citing it is what was common and usual with the Jews; and is often to be met with in the Talmudic writings; who, when they produce any passage of scripture, say דכתיב, "as it is written".
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament (1746-1748), on Matt 4:4
The false Scripture darts of the Devil He brands with the true shield of Scripture. It should be noted, that the required texts are taken from the book of Deuteronomy only, that He might show the sacraments of the second Law.
Jerome· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (420), on Matt 4:7
Jesus said unto him, It is written again - Again the Saviour replied to Satan by a text of Scripture - a passage which expressly forbade an act like this. Thou shall not tempt the Lord thy God - This is quoted literally from Deu 6:16. The meaning is, thou shalt not try him; or, thou shalt not, by throwing thyself into voluntary and uncommanded dangers, appeal to God for protection, or trifle with the promises made to those who are thrown into danger by his providence.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments (1832-1869), on Matt 4:7
Once more the word "only," in the second clause--not expressed in the Hebrew and the Septuagint--is here added to bring out emphatically the negative and prohibitory feature of the command.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Matt 4:10
(Verse 10.) Then Jesus said to him: Go, Satan: for it is written. Not as many think, Satan and the apostle Peter are condemned with the same sentence. For to Peter it is said: Get behind me, Satan (Matt. XVI, 23), that is, follow me, who are contrary to my will: but here he hears, go, Satan: and it is not said to him, behind me, so that it may be understood, go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for you, and your angels. You shall worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 4:10
“Have Ye Not Read”
— the same reach, aimed at scribes who claimed Scripture was theirsThe wilderness is not the only place Jesus reaches for “it is written.” When His disciples are accused of breaking the sabbath by plucking grain, and again when Sadducees try to trap Him on the resurrection, His answer both times opens with the same confrontation formula: “Have ye not read” — Scripture used to correct people who claimed Scripture was on their side.
Matthew 12:3-5 — David and the showbread
Two precedents in one breath, both drawn from within Scripture itself, against scribes who claimed Scripture was on their side: David eating the consecrated bread when he was hungry (1 Sam 21:1-6), and the priests’ own sabbath temple-work.
Jesus replied, “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to eat, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are innocent?Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And when Ahimelech met David, he trembled and asked him, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?” “The king has given me a mission,” David replied. “He told me no one is to know about the mission or charge. And I have directed my young men to meet me at a certain place. Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” “There is no common bread on hand,” the priest replied, “but there is some consecrated bread—provided that the young men have kept themselves from women.” David answered, “Women have indeed been kept from us, as is usual when I set out. And the equipment of the young men is holy, as it is even on common missions, and all the more at this time.” So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there but the Bread of the Presence, which had been removed from before the LORD and replaced with hot bread on the day it was taken away.the precedent Jesus cites
But he said unto them, Have ye not read--or, as Mark (Mr 2:25) has it, "Have ye never read." what David did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him-- (1Sa 21:1-6)
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Matt 12:3
(Verse 5.) Have you not read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple violate the Sabbath and yet are without guilt? But I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. If you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath. (Matthew 12:5-8) However, the Laws of God are never contradictory to themselves.
Jerome· Commentary on Matthew (420), on Matt 12:5
Matthew 22:31-32 — the Sadducees and the resurrection
“Have ye not read” introduces an argument built on grammatical tense: God does not say “I was” the God of Abraham, but “I am,” present tense, of men centuries dead — therefore the God of the living, not the dead. Worth noticing: the Sadducees held only the Torah as Scripture, which is exactly why Jesus argues from Exodus rather than a resurrection text elsewhere they would have rejected as non-canonical. He tailors which Scripture He cites to whom He is answering.
But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.the tense the argument turns on
Have ye not read - This quotation is taken from Exo 3:6, Exo 3:16; and as the five books of Moses were the only part of Scripture which the Sadducees acknowledged as Divine, our Lord, by confuting them from those books, proved the second part of his assertion, Ye are ignorant of those very scriptures which ye profess to hold sacred.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matt 22:31
I am the God of Abraham - The argument runs thus: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living: (for that expression, Thy God, implies both benefit from God to man, and duty from man to God) but he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead, but living.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Matt 22:32
Two more places, named but not rebuilt herethe fuller ledger
Jesus reaches for “have ye not read” two more times in Matthew’s Gospel — once reaching behind Moses’s divorce concession to the creation ordinance (Matt 19:4), once quoting a psalm back at the chief priests displeased at children’s praise (Matt 21:16). The full source ledger, sorted by which Old Testament book Jesus draws from each time, lives at the hub.
Not One Letter Passes
— Matthew 5:18 — the smallest claim, at its own pageIf Scripture is settled authority strong enough to answer the devil himself, it is worth asking how far Jesus thinks that settledness reaches. His own answer, elsewhere, is startling in its smallness: not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the Law until everything is fulfilled. That claim already has its own dedicated exhibit, inspecting it letter by letter — not rebuilt here.
For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.the smallest possible claim about the largest possible permanence.
Where It Points
— Scripture, and the One it answers toJesus does not treat Scripture as a resource He is above using when convenient. In His weakest hour, it is the ground He stands on — and He says elsewhere that the whole of it, Law, Prophets, and Psalms together, is written about Him. The same settled authority He leans on in the wilderness is the authority He says, on the road to Emmaus, was pointing to Him all along.
Closing
Three attacks answered from one short passage of Deuteronomy; a repeated challenge met the same way whenever Scripture is misread against Him or His own. “It is written” is not a device Jesus reaches for once. It is where He lives.