Matthew 4 · Luke 4 · An Iconic Story
The Temptation in the Wilderness
After forty days without food the devil makes three offers, and Jesus answers all three with sentences out of one book — the same book Israel had already failed in the same desert.
Duccio paints the third offer, and paints it as a transaction. The kingdoms of the world are stacked at the bottom of the panel like little gold models a merchant might set on a table — small, and near enough to touch. The devil is the largest figure on the board and the only one gesturing; Christ is upright, one hand raised in refusal, and the angels are already waiting at His shoulder for the panel's next moment. A medieval painter has done what the text does: made the offer look real, and then made it look small.
Three Offers, and Three Sentences
Matthew 4:1–11 and Luke 4:1–13, told plainly
Straight from the river, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness to be tested. He ate nothing for forty days, and at the end of it He was hungry. That is when the devil came.
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.Both Gospels say it in their first sentence: He was led there. The desert was the appointment, not the accident.
If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered with a line from Deuteronomy: man shall not live by bread alone. Then the devil set Him on the highest point of the temple and quoted Scripture back at Him — He will command His angels concerning you — and told Him to jump. Jesus answered with Deuteronomy again: you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Then, from a high place, the devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and said, all this I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. And Jesus answered from Deuteronomy a third time: you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.
Then the devil left Him, and angels came and looked after Him.
Three answers from one book
the offer · the book · the reply, in its own words
Offer 1
Turn these stones into bread
Forty days without food. The first offer is aimed at a real, honest hunger — and at the word Son, spoken over Him at the river a few verses earlier.
Matthew 4:3 →His answer
He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
Deuteronomy 8:3 · open it in the reader →Offer 2
Throw Yourself down from the pinnacle
This time the tempter brings a Bible. He quotes Psalm 91 about the angels — accurately — and asks for a jump that would force God to keep it.
Matthew 4:6 →His answer
Do not test the LORD your God as you tested Him at Massah.
Deuteronomy 6:16 · open it in the reader →Offer 3
Bow once, and take every kingdom
The last offer is the crown without the cross — all the kingdoms of the world, and the only price is one act of worship pointed the wrong way.
Matthew 4:9 →His answer
Fear the LORD your God, serve Him only, and take your oaths in His name.
Deuteronomy 6:13 · open it in the reader →Matthew's order
bread → the pinnacle → the mountain
Luke's order
bread → the kingdoms → the pinnacle
The two Gospels tell the same three temptations in two different orders, and neither of them says which came first. This page shows both and picks neither.
It is written - Thus Christ answered, and thus we may answer all the suggestions of the devil. By every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God - That is, by whatever God commands to sustain him. Therefore it is not needful I should work a miracle to procure bread, without any intimation of my Father's will.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on Matthew 4:4
Six Places the Retellings Drift
what the text actually says, against what the story has become
HE WAS LED THERE
The wilderness was not an ambush. Both Matthew and Luke say in their opening sentence that the Spirit took Him into it. Whatever else the forty days were, they were an appointment God kept, not a trap the devil sprang.
EVERY ANSWER COMES FROM ONE BOOK
Deuteronomy 8:3, then 6:16, then 6:13. Not three books, not a range of proof texts — one book, three times. Jerome noticed the pattern sixteen centuries ago and thought it was the point.
THE DEVIL QUOTES THE BIBLE — ACCURATELY
Psalm 91:11–12 really does promise angelic protection, and the tempter cites it without altering a word. The problem is not a forged text; it is a true promise turned into a dare. Scripture can be quoted correctly and used wrongly.
MATTHEW AND LUKE GIVE A DIFFERENT ORDER
Matthew has the pinnacle second and the mountain third; Luke reverses them. Augustine said plainly that we cannot tell which came first and that it does not matter, since all of them really happened. This page does the same.
“IF YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD” IS A LEVER
It is not a question about who He is — the voice at the Jordan settled that a few verses earlier. It is closer to “since you are”: prove it, use it, cash it in. The temptation is not to doubt sonship but to spend it.
IT IS NOT OVER WHEN HE WINS
Luke does not write “and the devil left him.” He writes that the devil departed until an opportune time. The wilderness is round one, and Luke tells the reader so before the ministry has even begun.
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 psalm the tempter opened. It is really there, and it really says that — which is exactly what makes the second offer hard.
In the several temptations the single aim of the Devil is to find if He be the Son of God, but he is so answered as at last to depart in doubt; He says, Cast thyself, because the voice of the Devil, which is always calling men downwards, has power to persuade them, but may not compel them to fall. This verse we read in the ninetieth Psalm (Ps. 91:11.), but that is a prophecy not of Christ, but of some holy man, so the Devil interprets Scripture amiss.
Jerome· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (420), on Matthew 4:6
(De Cons. Ev. ii. 16.) Luke has not given the temptations in the same order as Matthew; so that we do not know whether the pinnacle of the temple, or the ascent of the mountain, was first in the action; but it is of no importance, so long as it is only clear that all of them were truly done.
Augustine of Hippo· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (430), on Matthew 4:8–10
Forty Days, a Rooftop, and a Real Offer
the desert, the temple, and why the third offer was not bluster
Forty days is a deliberate number in Israel's memory, and Adam Clarke lines the three of them up below. The Judean wilderness east of Jerusalem is not a symbol either — it is genuine desert: bare limestone, deep ravines, and nothing to eat. A man who has been in it for forty days is not being asked a theoretical question about bread.
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 Gods 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? Rom 14:
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1832), on Matthew 4:2
The “pinnacle” of the temple is a rare word — Greek pterygion, a little wing — and it occurs exactly twice in the whole New Testament, both times in this scene. The old commentators identified it with the high corner of the temple platform above the Kidron valley, where the drop is a long one. Whatever the exact ledge, it is a public place: the second offer is a spectacle, and a crowd was the point.
And the third offer is not empty bluster. Luke has the devil claim that the kingdoms have been handed over to him, and the New Testament elsewhere calls him the god of this age (2 Cor 4:4) and the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2). That is why it works as a temptation at all. Something was genuinely being offered, and the price was a single act of worship pointed the wrong way.
The classic map onto 1 John 2:16
Readers have long lined the three offers up with the three appetites John names — the lust of the flesh (bread), the lust of the eyes (the kingdoms), the pride of life (the leap). It is an illuminating map and an ancient one; Ambrose gives a fourth-century version of it below, in his own words. It is worth knowing, and it is worth saying plainly what it is: neither Matthew nor Luke draws that line. It is a reading laid over the scene by the church, not a claim the scene makes.
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.The verse the map is built from — written by John about the world, not by an evangelist about the wilderness.
He would not have said that all the temptation was ended, had there not been in the three temptations which have been described the materials for every crime; for the causes of temptations are the causes of desire, namely, the delight of the flesh, the pomp of vain-glory, greediness of power. You see then that the devil is not obstinate on the field, is wont to give way to true virtue; and if he ceases not to hate, he yet dreads to advance, for so he escapes a more frequent defeat.
Ambrose of Milan· Catena Aurea by Aquinas (397), on Luke 4:13
What the Gospels Refuse to Tell
the silences are named as silence, and left alone
Matthew gives the scene eleven verses and Luke thirteen. Between them they record three exchanges and almost nothing else — no description, no staging, no interior life. Painters and preachers have filled the gaps for two thousand years, and some of what they built is beautiful. It is still filling. Here is what the text does not say.
How the devil appeared, and in what form
Not a shape, not a voice, not a face. Every horned figure in every painting of this scene — Duccio's included, at the top of this page — is an artist's decision, and the artists knew it. The evangelists report what was said and skip entirely what was seen.
Whether the journeys were bodily or in vision
Was He carried to the temple and up the mountain, or shown these things? The question is ancient: Origen argued that no mountain on earth lets a man see every kingdom of the world, so the showing cannot have been a matter of eyesight. Others read it as plainly as it stands. Scripture does not settle it, and neither does this page.
What He did for the other thirty-nine days
Luke says the tempting ran through the whole forty days; three episodes are recorded. The rest is a month and a week of unwritten wilderness, and the Gospels leave it unwritten.
Which mountain
There is a mountain west of Jericho that pilgrims have visited for centuries and that carries the name of the forty days. It is a real place with a real history of devotion. It is not named in either Gospel, and the identification is tradition.
The Second Adam, Tested and Standing
what the New Testament itself makes of the wilderness
Both Gospels put the temptation immediately after a declaration of sonship, and Luke does something more deliberate still: he runs his genealogy all the way back past Abraham, past Noah, to Adam, the son of God— and then, in the very next sentence, walks Jesus into the wilderness. That is Luke's own framing, not a later invention. One man was tested in a garden where he had everything and fell; another is tested in a desert where He has nothing, and stands.
the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.The last line of Luke's genealogy — and the sentence directly before the wilderness begins.
Paul writes the apostolic version of that comparison in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, and the two Adams carries the study in full. The same scene reads a second way, and the two do not compete: Israel was brought out of water into a wilderness, tested forty years, and failed at bread, at Massah, and at the calf. Jesus comes up out of the water into a wilderness, is tested forty days, and at those same three points answers from the book written for that generation.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.The pastoral point the whole scene exists to establish — and notice what the writer says next: therefore come boldly.
That is what the wilderness is for. Not a display of strength for its own sake, but a High Priest who has been where the reader is — hungry, cornered, offered a shortcut — and who came through it without sin. The writer of Hebrews does not end that sentence with admiration; he ends it with an invitation to walk up to the throne and ask for help.
Then the devil left Him, and angels came and ministered to Him.The devil leaves. The angels arrive — and the help He would not summon by jumping off a roof comes to Him unasked.
(2.) That Christ's victories are the angels' triumphs. The angels came to congratulate Christ on his success, to rejoice with him, and to give him the glory due to his name; for that was sung with a loud voice in heaven, when the great dragon was cast out ( Rev. xii. 9, 10 ), Now is come salvation and strength.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Matthew 4:11
What the Old Teachers Saw Here
the readings that have carried this scene
Jerome: one book, and a shield
Jerome is the reason this page has the shape it has. He noticed that the answers are not scattered across the Scriptures but drawn from Deuteronomy alone, and he read the whole exchange as one text set against another:
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 Matthew 4:7
Wesley: and thus we may answer
Wesley reads the scene as a pattern handed to the reader rather than a feat to watch. His note on the first answer is quoted above in full; its first clause is the whole point — thus Christ answered, and thus we may answer. The page on answering with Scripture takes that practice up on its own.
Ambrose: why three was enough
Ambrose asked why Luke could say the temptation was ended after only three, and answered that these three contain the material of every other. His three headings — the delight of the flesh, the pomp of vain-glory, greediness of power — are the ancient form of the map discussed above. He is quoted there, in his own words.
Where the roster teaching on this subject lives
This page tells a scene; it does not re-teach a doctrine that already has its own home on the site. The teaching on the enemy, on how a believer stands, and on answering with the written Word is carried at spiritual warfare, Satan and it is written. Those are the doors.
Read the Great Books
the works that have carried this teaching — go further than this page
Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament
John Wesley · 1755
Short, plain and pastoral on every verse of Matthew 4 — the note quoted above, that we may answer the devil the way Christ did, is Wesley in one line.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Bible
Adam Clarke · 1832
Clarke is the historian of the three commentators here: the three forty-day fasts, the old identification of the pinnacle, and the geography of the Judean desert all come from his notes on this chapter.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Harmony of the Gospels
Augustine of Hippo · c. 400
The book behind the quotation on the two orders. Augustine wrote the first sustained study of how the four Gospels tell the same events differently, and his answer here — it does not matter which came first — is four hundred years older than the debate.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Commentary on the Whole Bible
Matthew Henry · 1710
Henry walks the whole chapter and does not stop at the victory — the angels arriving at verse 11 get their own paragraph, quoted above.
READ IT FREE AT CCEL →Every Answer Was a Verse
He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.The first answer, in the book it came from — a sentence about manna, written for a people who had already been hungry in a desert.
The plainest thing on this page is also the most useful. Jesus did not out-argue the devil, and He did not out-muscle him. He answered three times out of one book that any Israelite would have known — a book so ordinary that a boy could have quoted it from memory. The weapon in the wilderness was Scripture He already had, in a moment when He had nothing else, and the last word of the scene is not a rebuke but a meal: the devil left, and the angels came and fed Him.
GO ON FROM HERE
Built from MannaFest's research brief on His life scene by scene and the gate-verified quote pool for Matthew 4 and Luke 4 — public-domain commentary quoted verbatim (Jerome and Augustine as gathered in Aquinas's Catena Aurea, Ambrose of Milan, John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Matthew Henry). Greek word data floor-verified against the site's word-level text of Matthew 4 and Luke 4. Scripture BSB, fetched from the floor. Artwork: Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-1311), public domain, license-verified at Wikimedia Commons.