--- title: "Matthew 4 - Study King James Bible with ellicotts commentary for english readers" description: "Read Matthew 4 with ellicotts commentary for english readers commentary. 1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwa" image: "/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg" url: "https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4" --- [ Read](/kjv/matthew/4)[ Commentary](/study/matthew/4)[ Interlinear](/interlinear/matthew/4) Audio 1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 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. 5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in *their* hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. 12 ¶ Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee; 13 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: 14 That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, *by* the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; 16 The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. 17 ¶ From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. 18 ¶ And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 19 And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. 20 And they straightway left *their* nets, and followed him. 21 And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James *the son* of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. 22 And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him. 23 ¶ And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. 24 And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. 25 And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and *from* Decapolis, and *from* Jerusalem, and *from* Judaea, and *from* beyond Jordan. [Matthew 3](/study/matthew/3) [Matthew 5](/study/matthew/5) ## Commentary To verse 1 **IV.** (1) The narrative of the Temptation is confessedly one of the most mysterious in the Gospel records. In one respect it stands almost, if not altogether, alone. It could not have come, directly or indirectly, from an eye-witness. We are compelled to look on it either as a mythical after-growth; as a supernatural revelation of facts that could not otherwise be known; or, lastly, as having had its source in our Lord’s own report of what He had passed through. The first of these views is natural enough with those who apply the same theory to all that is marvellous and supernatural in our Lord’s life. As a theory generally applicable, however, to the interpretation of the Gospels, that view has not been adopted in this Commentary, and there are certainly no reasons why, rejecting it elsewhere, we should accept it here. Had it been based upon the narrative of the temptation of the first Adam, in [Genesis 3:0](/kjv/genesis/3/0), we should have expected the recurrence of the same symbolism, of the serpent and the trees. Nothing else in the Old Testament, nothing in the popular expectations of the Christ, could have suggested anything of the kind. The ideal Christ of those expectations would have been a great and mighty king, showing forth his wisdom and glory, as did the historical son of David; not a sufferer tried and tempted. The forms of the Temptation, still more the answers to them, have, it will be seen, a distinct individuality about them, just conceivable in the work of some consummate artist, but utterly unlike the imagery, beautiful or grand, which enters into most myths. Here, therefore, the narrative will be dealt with as the record of an actual experience. To assume that this record was miraculously revealed to St. Matthew and St. Luke is, however, to introduce an hypothesis which cannot be proved, and which is, at least, not in harmony with their general character as writers. They are, one by his own statement, the other by inference from the structure and contents of his Gospel, distinctly compilers from many different sources, with all the incidental variations to which such a process is liable. There is no reason to look on this narrative as an exception to the general rule. The very difference in the order of the temptations is, as far as it goes, against the idea of a supernatural revelation. There remains, then, the conclusion that we have here that which originated in some communication from our Lord’s own lips to one of His disciples, His own record of the experience of those forty days. So taken, it will be seen that all is coherent, and in some sense (marvellous as the whole is), natural, throwing light on our Lord’s past life, explaining much that followed in His teaching. **Led up of the spirit.**—Each narrator expresses the same fact in slightly different language. St. Luke ([Luke 4:1](/kjv/luke/4/1)) “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, was led in the wilderness.” St. Mark ([Mark 1:12](/kjv/mark/1/12)), more vividly, “Immediately the Spirit driveth Him into the wilderness.” What is meant by such language? The answer is found in the analogous instances of seers and prophets. St. John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” ([Revelation 1:10](/kjv/revelation/1/10)). The Spirit “lifted up” Ezekiel that from his exile by the banks of Chebar he might see the secret sins of Jerusalem ([Ezekiel 8:3](/kjv/ezekiel/8/3)). The “Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip” ([Acts 8:39](/kjv/acts/8/39)). Those who spake with tongues spake “by the Spirit” ([1 Corinthians 14:2](/kjv/1-corinthians/14/2)). The result of this induction leads us to think of the state so described as one more or less of the nature of ecstasy, in which the ordinary phenomena of consciousness and animal life were in great measure suspended. That gift of the Spirit had on the human nature of the Son of Man something of the same overpowering mastery that it has had over others of the sons of men. A power mightier than His own human will was urging Him on, it might almost be said He knew not whither, bringing Him into conflict “not with flesh and blood,” but with “principalities and powers in heavenly places.” **To be tempted of the devil.**—We are brought, at the outset of the narrative, face to face with the problem of the existence and personality of the power of evil. Here that existence and personality are placed before us in the most distinct language. Whatever difficulties such a view may be thought to present, whatever objections may be brought against it, are altogether outside the range of the interpreter of Scripture. It may be urged that the writers of what we call the Scriptures have inherited a mistaken creed on this point (though to this all deeper experience is opposed), or that they have accommodated themselves to the thoughts of a creed which they did not hold (though of such an hypothesis there is not a particle of evidence), but it would be the boldest of all paradoxes to assert that they do not teach the existence of an evil power whom they call the Enemy, the Accuser, the Devil. Whence the name came, and how the belief sprang up, are, on the other hand, questions which the interpreter is bound to answer. The name, then, of devil (*diabolos,* accuser or slanderer) appears in the LXX. version of [1 Chronicles 21:1](/kjv/1-chronicles/21/1), [Job 1:6](/kjv/job/1/6); [Job 2:1](/kjv/job/2/1), as the equivalent for the Hebrew, Satan (the adversary). He appears there as a spiritual being of superhuman but limited power, tempting men to evil, and accusing them before the Throne of God when they have yielded to the temptation. In [Zechariah 3:1-2](/kjv/zechariah/3/1-2), the same name appears in the Hebrew and the LXX. connected with a like character, as the accuser of Joshua the son of Jozedek. In Wis. 2:24, the name is identified with the Tempter of [Genesis 3:0](/kjv/genesis/3/0), and as that book belongs to the half-century before, or, more probably, the half-century after, our Lord’s birth, it may fairly be taken as representing the received belief of the Jews in His time. Into conflict with such a Being our Lord was now brought. The temptations which come to other men from their bodily desires, or from the evils of the world around them, had had no power over Him, had not brought even the sense of effort or pain in overcoming them. But if life had passed on thus to the end, the holiness which was inseparable from it would have been imperfect at least in one respect: it would not have earned the power to understand and sympathise with sinners. There was, as the Epistle to the Hebrews teaches, a divine fitness that He too should suffer and be tempted even as we are, that so He might “be able to succour them that are tempted” ([Hebrews 2:18](/kjv/hebrews/2/18)). The scene of the Temptation was probably not far from that of the Baptism, probably, too, as it implies solitude, on the eastern rather than the western side of the Jordan. The traditional Desert of Quarantania (the name referring to the forty days’ fast) is in the neighbourhood of Jericho. The histories of Moses and Elijah might suggest the Wilderness of Sinai, but in that case it would have probably been mentioned by the Evangelists. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com","name":"Real Bible Believers","description":"RBB","publisher":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/search?q={search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/_app/immutable/assets/missing.C7wGMEZ6.jpg","width":672,"height":448,"caption":"Real Bible Believers"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4#webpage","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4","name":"Matthew 4 - Study King James Bible with ellicotts commentary for english readers","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4#primaryimage"},"author":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509"},"description":"Read Matthew 4 with ellicotts commentary for english readers commentary. 1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterwa","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/","name":"Home"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study","name":"Study Bible"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers","name":"ellicotts commentary for english readers"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":4,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew","name":"Matthew"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":5,"item":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/study/ellicotts-commentary-for-english-readers/matthew/4","name":"4"}}]},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#/schema/person/e966585dde703268e7f6ae890ea98509","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","contentUrl":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/android-chrome-512x512.png","width":512,"height":512},"logo":{"@id":"https://realbiblebelievers.com/#personlogo"},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/RBiblebeliever","https://www.facebook.com/RBibleBelievers"]}]} ```