Chapter II: Baptism and Temptation of Jesus (2)

With respect to the difference between Matthew and Luke in the arrangement of the several temptations, we must equally abide by Schleiermacher’s criticism and verdict, namely, that Matthew’s order seems to be the original, because it is founded on the relative importance of the temptations, which is the main consideration,—the invitation to worship Satan, which is the strongest temptation, being made the final one; whereas the arrangement of Luke looks like a later and not very happy transposition, proceeding from the consideration—alien to the original spirit of the narrative—that Jesus could more readily go with the devil from the wilderness to the adjacent mountain and from thence to Jerusalem, than out of the wilderness to the city and from thence back again to the mountain. [653] While the first two Evangelists close their narrative of the temptation with the ministering of angels to Jesus, Luke has a conclusion peculiar to himself, namely, that the devil left Jesus for a season, ἄχρι καιροῦ (v. 13), apparently intimating that the sufferings of Jesus were a farther assault of the devil; an idea not resumed by Luke, but alluded to in John xiv. 30.

§ 54.

THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION CONCEIVED IN THE SENSE OF THE EVANGELISTS.

Few evangelical passages have undergone a more industrious criticism, or more completely run through the circle of all possible interpretations, than the history in question. For the personal appearance of the devil, which it seems to contain, was a thorn which would not allow commentators to repose on the most obvious interpretation, but incessantly urged them to new efforts. The series of explanations hence resulting, led to critical comparisons, among which those of Schmidt, [654] Fritzsche, [655] and Usteri, [656] seem to have carried the inquiry to its utmost limits.

The first interpretation that suggests itself on an unprejudiced consideration of the text is this; that Jesus was led by the Divine Spirit received at his baptism into the wilderness, there to undergo a temptation by the devil, who accordingly appeared to him visibly and personally, and in various ways, and at various places to which he was the conductor, prosecuted his purpose of temptation; but meeting with a victorious resistance, he withdrew from Jesus, and angels appeared to minister to him. Such is the simple exegesis of the narrative, but viewed as a history it is encumbered with difficulties.

To take the portions of the narrative in their proper order: if the Divine Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness with the design of exposing him to temptation, as Matthew expressly says, ἀνήχθη εἰς τὴν ἔρημον ὑπὸ τοῦ Πνεύματος, πειρασθῆναι (iv. 1), of what use was this temptation? That it had a vicarious and redeeming value will hardly be maintained, or that it was necessary for God to put Jesus to a trial; neither can it be consistently shown that by this temptation Jesus was to be made like us, and, according to Heb. iv. 15, tempted in all things like as we are; for the fullest measure of trial fell to his share in after life, and a temptation, effected by the devil in person, would rather make him unlike us, who are spared such appearances.

The forty days’ fast, too, is singular. One does not understand how Jesus could hunger after six weeks of abstinence from all food without having hungered long before; since in ordinary cases the human frame cannot sustain a week’s deprivation of nourishment. It is true, expositors [657] console themselves by calling the forty days a round number, and by supposing that the expression of Matthew, νηστεύσας, and even that of Luke, οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν, are not to be taken strictly, and do not denote abstinence from all food, but only from that which is customary, so that the use of roots and herbs is not excluded. On no supposition, however, can so much be subtracted from the forty days as to leave only the duration of a conceivable fast; and that nothing short of entire abstinence from all nourishment was intended by the Evangelists Fritzsche has clearly shown, by pointing out the parallel between the fast of Jesus and that of Moses and Elias, the former of whom is said to have eaten no bread and drunk no water for forty days (Exod. xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9, 18), and the latter to have gone for the same period in the strength of a meal taken before his journey (1 Kings xix. 8). But such a fast wants the credentials of utility, as well as of possibility. From the context it appears, that the fast of Jesus was prompted by the same Spirit which occasioned his journey to the wilderness, and which now moved him to a holy self-discipline, whereby men of God, under the old dispensation, purified themselves, and became worthy of divine visions. But it could not be hidden from that Spirit, that Satan, in attacking Jesus, would avail himself of this very fast, and make the hunger thence arising an accomplice in his temptation. And was not the fast, in this case, a kind of challenge to Satan, an act of presumption, ill becoming even the best warranted self-confidence? [658]

But the personal appearance of the devil is the great stumbling-block in the present narrative. If, it is said, there be a personal devil, he cannot take a visible form; and if that were possible, he would hardly demean himself as he is represented to have done in the gospels. It is with the existence of the devil as with that of angels—even the believers in a revelation are perplexed by it, because the idea did not spring up among the recipients of revelation, but was transplanted by them, during exile, from a profane soil. [659] Moreover, to those who have not quite shut out the lights of the present age, the existence of a devil is become in the highest degree doubtful.

On this subject, as well as on that of angels, Schleiermacher may serve as an interpreter of modern opinion. He shows that the idea of a being such as the devil, is an assemblage of contradictions: that as the idea of angels originated in a limited observation of nature, so that of the devil originated in a limited observation of self, and as our knowledge of human nature progresses, must recede farther into the background, and the appeal to the devil be henceforth regarded as the resource of ignorance and sloth. [660] Even admitting the existence of a devil, a visible and personal appearance on his part, such as is here supposed, has its peculiar difficulties. Olshausen himself observes, that there is no parallel to it either in the Old or New Testament. Farther, if the devil, that he might have some hope of deceiving Jesus, abandoned his own form, and took that of a man, or of a good angel; it may be reasonably asked whether the passage, 2 Cor. xi. 14, Satan is transformed into an angel of light, be intended literally, and if so, whether this fantastic conception can be substantially true? [661]

As to the temptations, it was early asked by Julian, how the devil could hope to deceive Jesus, knowing, as he must, his higher nature? [662] And Theodore’s answer that the divinity of Jesus was then unknown to the devil, is contradicted by the observation, that had he not then beheld a higher nature in Jesus, he would scarcely have taken the trouble to appear specially to him in person. In relation to the particular temptations, an assent cannot be withheld from the canon, that, to be credible, the narrative must ascribe nothing to the devil inconsistent with his established cunning. [663] Now the first temptation, appealing to hunger, we grant, is not ill-conceived; if this were ineffectual, the devil, as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more alluring temptation at hand; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, proposing to Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the pinnacle of the temple—a far less inviting experiment than the metamorphosis of the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows, as a crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe, every true Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence—to fall down and worship the devil. So indiscreet a choice and arrangement of temptations has thrown most modern commentators into perplexity. [664] As the three temptations took place in three different and distant places, the question occurs: how did Jesus pass with the devil from one to the other? Even the orthodox hold that this change of place was effected quite naturally, for they suppose that Jesus set out on a journey, and that the devil followed him. [665] But the expressions, the devil takes him—sets him, παραλαμβάνει—ἵστησιν αὐτὸν ὁ διάβολος, in Matthew: taking, ἀναγαγών, brought, ἤγαγεν, set, ἔστησεν, in Luke, obviously imply that the transportation was effected by the devil, and moreover, the particular given in Luke, that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, points to something magical; so that without doubt the Evangelists intended to convey the idea of magical transportations, as in Acts viii. 29, a power of carrying away, ἁρπάζειν, is attributed to the Spirit of the Lord. But it was early found irreconcilable with the dignity of Jesus that the devil should thus exercise a magical power over him, and carry him about in the air; [666] an idea which seemed extravagant even to those who tolerated the personal appearance of the devil. The incredibility is augmented, when we consider the sensation which the appearance of Jesus on the roof of the temple must have excited, even supposing it to be the roof of Solomon’s Porch only, in which case the gilded spears on the holy of holies, and the prohibition to laymen to tread its roof, would not be an obstacle. [667] The well-known question suggested by the last temptation, as to the situation of the mountain, from whose summit may be seen all the kingdoms of the world, has been met by the information that κόσμος here means no more than Palestine, and βασιλείας, its several kingdoms and tetrarchies; [668] but this is a scarcely less ludicrous explanation than the one that the devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world on a map! No answer remains but that such a mountain existed only in the ancient idea of the earth as a plain, and in the popular imagination, which can easily stretch a mountain up to heaven, and sharpen an eye to penetrate infinity.

Lastly, the incident with which our narrative closes, namely, that angels came and ministered to Jesus, is not without difficulty, apart from the above-mentioned doubts as to the existence of such beings. For the expression διηκόνουν can signify no other kind of ministering than that of presenting food; and this is proved not only by the context, according to which Jesus had need of such tendance, but by a comparison of the circumstances with 1 Kings xix. 5, where an angel brings food to Elijah. But of the only two possible suppositions, both are equally incongruous: that ethereal beings like angels should convey earthly material food, or that the human body of Jesus should be nourished with heavenly substances, if any such exist.

§ 55.

THE TEMPTATION CONSIDERED AS A NATURAL OCCURRENCE EITHER INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL; AND ALSO AS A PARABLE.

The impossibility of conceiving the sudden removals of Jesus to the temple and the mountain, led some even of the ancient commentators to the opinion, that at least the locality of the second and third temptations was not present to Jesus corporeally and externally, but merely in a vision; [669] while some modern ones, to whom the personal appearance of the devil was especially offensive, have supposed that the whole transaction with him passed from beginning to end within the recesses of the soul of Jesus. Herewith they have regarded the forty days’ fast either as a mere internal representation [670] (which, however, is a most inadmissible perversion of the plainly historic text: νηστεύσας ἡμέρας τεσσαράκοντα ὕστερον ἐπείνασε, Matt. iv. 2), or as a real fact, in which case the formidable difficulties mentioned in the preceding section remain valid. The internal representation of the temptations is by some made to accompany a state of ecstatic vision, for which they retain a supernatural cause, deriving it either from God, or from the kingdom of darkness: [671] others ascribe to the vision more of the nature of a dream, and accordingly seek a natural cause for it, in the reflections with which Jesus was occupied during his waking moments. [672] According to this theory, Jesus, in the solemn mood which the baptismal scene was calculated to produce, reviews his messianic plan, and together with the true means for its execution, he recalls their possible abuses; an excessive use of miracles and a love of domination, by which man, in the Jewish mode of thinking, became, instead of an instrument of God, a promoter of the plans of the devil. While surrendering himself to such meditations, his finely organized body is overcome by their exciting influence; he sinks for some time into deep exhaustion, and then into a dream-like state, in which his mind unconsciously embodies his previous thoughts in speaking and acting forms.

To support this transference of the whole scene to the inward nature of Jesus, commentators think that they can produce some features of the evangelical narrative itself. The expression of Matthew (iv. 1), ἀνήχθη εἰς τὴν ἔρημον ὑπὸ τοῦ Πνεύματος, and still more that of Luke (iv. 1), ἤγετο ἐν τῷ Πνεύματι, correspond fully to the forms: ἐγενόμην ἐν πνεύματι, Rev. i. 10, ἀπήνενκέ με εἰς ἔρημον ἐν πνεύματι, xvii. 3, and to similar ones in Ezekiel; and as in these passages inward intuition is alone referred to, neither in the evangelical ones, it is said, can any external occurrence be intended. But it has been with reason objected, [673] that the above forms may be adapted either to a real external abduction by the Divine Spirit (as in Acts viii. 39; 2 Kings ii. 16), or to one merely internal and visionary, as in the quotation from the Apocalypse, so that between these two possible significations the context must decide; that in works replete with visions, as are the Apocalypse and Ezekiel, the context indeed pronounces in favour of a merely spiritual occurrence; but in an historical work such as our gospels, of an external one. Dreams, and especially visions, are always expressly announced as such in the historical books of the New Testament: supposing, therefore, that the temptation was a vision, it should have been introduced by the words εἶδεν ἐν ὁράματι, ἐν ἔκστάσει, as in Acts ix. 12, x. 10; or ἐφάνη αὐτῷ κατ’ ὄναρ, as in Matt. i. 20, ii. 13. Besides, if a dream had been narrated, the transition to a continuation of the real history must have been marked by a διεγερθεὶς, being awaked, as in Matt. i. 24, ii. 14, 21; whereby, as Paulus truly says, much labour would have been spared to expositors.

It is further alleged against the above explanations, that Jesus does not seem to have been at any other time subject to ecstasies, and that he nowhere else attaches importance to a dream, or even recapitulates one. [674] To what end God should have excited such a vision in Jesus, it is difficult to conceive, or how the devil should have had power and permission to produce it; especially in Christ. The orthodox, too, should not forget that, admitting the temptation to be a dream, resulting from the thoughts of Jesus, the false messianic ideas which were a part of those thoughts, are supposed to have had a strong influence on his mind. [675]

If, then, the history of the temptation is not to be understood as confined to the soul of Jesus, and if we have before shown that it cannot be regarded as supernatural; nothing seems to remain but to view it as a real, yet thoroughly natural, event, and to reduce the tempter to a mere man. After John had drawn attention to Jesus as the Messiah (thinks the author of the Natural History of the Prophet of Nazareth), [676] the ruling party in Jerusalem commissioned an artful Pharisee to put Jesus to the test, and to ascertain whether he really possessed miraculous powers, or whether he might not be drawn into the interest of the priesthood, and be induced to give his countenance to an enterprise against the Romans. This conception of the διάβολος is in dignified consistency with that of the ἄγγελοι, who appeared after his departure, to refresh Jesus, as an approaching caravan with provisions, or as soft reviving breezes. [677] But this view, as Usteri says, has so long completed its phases in the theological world, that to refute it would be to waste words.

If the foregoing discussions have proved that the temptation, as narrated by the synoptical Evangelists, cannot be conceived as an external or internal, a supernatural or natural occurrence, the conclusion is inevitable, that it cannot have taken place in the manner represented.

The least invidious expedient is to suppose that the source of our histories of the temptation was some real event in the life of Jesus, so narrated by him to his disciples as to convey no accurate impression of the fact. Tempting thoughts, which intruded themselves into his soul during his residence in the wilderness, or at various seasons, and under various circumstances, but which were immediately quelled by the unimpaired force of his will, were, according to the oriental mode of thought and expression, represented by him as a temptation of the devil; and this figurative narrative was understood literally. [678] The most prominent objection to this view, that it compromises the impeccability of Jesus, [679] being founded on a dogma, has no existence for the critic: we can, however, gather from the tenor of the evangelical history, that the practical sense of Jesus was thoroughly clear and just; but this becomes questionable, if he could ever feel an inclination corresponding to the second temptation in Matthew, or even if he merely chose such a form for communicating a more reasonable temptation to his disciples. Further, in such a narrative Jesus would have presented a confused mixture of fiction and truth out of his life, not to be expected from an ingenuous teacher, as he otherwise appears to be, especially if it be supposed that the tempting thoughts did not really occur to him after his forty days’ sojourn in the wilderness, and that this particular is only a portion of the fictitious investiture; while if it be assumed, on the contrary, that the date is historical, there remains the forty days’ fast, one of the most insurmountable difficulties of the narrative. If Jesus wished simply to describe a mental exercise in the manner of the Jews, who, tracing the effect to the cause, ascribed evil thoughts to diabolical agency, nothing more was requisite than to say that Satan suggested such and such thoughts to his mind; and it was quite superfluous to depict a personal devil and a journey with him, unless, together with the purpose of narration, or in its stead, there existed a poetical and didactic intention.

Such an intention, indeed, is attributed to Jesus by those who hold that the history of the temptation was narrated by him as a parable, but understood literally by his disciples. This opinion is not encumbered with the difficulty of making some real inward experience of Jesus the basis of the history; [680] it does not suppose that Jesus himself underwent such temptations, but only that he sought to secure his disciples from them, by impressing on them, as a compendium of messianic and apostolic wisdom, the three following maxims: first to perform no miracle for their own advantage even in the greatest exigency; secondly, never to venture on a chimerical undertaking in the hope of extraordinary divine aid; thirdly, never to enter into fellowship with the wicked, however strong the enticement. [681] It was long ago observed, in opposition to this interpretation, that the narrative is not easily recognized as a parable, and that its moral is hard to discern. [682] With respect to the latter objection, it is true that the second temptation would be an ill-chosen image; but the former remark is the more important one. To prove that this narrative has not the characteristics of a parable, the following definition has been recently given: a parable, being essentially historical in its form, is only distinguishable from real history when its agents are of an obviously fictitious character. [683] This is the case where the subjects are mere generalizations, as in the parables of the sower, the king, and others of a like kind; or when they are, indeed, individualized, but so as to be at once recognized as unhistorical persons, as mere supports for the drapery of fiction, of which even Lazarus, in the parable of the rich man, is an example, though distinguished by a name. In neither species of parable is it admissible to introduce as a subject a person corporeally present, and necessarily determinate and historical. Thus Jesus could not make Peter or any other of his disciples the subject of a parable, still less himself, for the reciter of a parable is pre-eminently present to his auditors; and hence he cannot have delivered the history of the temptation, of which he is the subject, to his disciples as a parable. To assume that the history had originally another subject, for whom oral tradition substituted Jesus, is inadmissible, because the narrative, even as a parable, has no definite significance unless the Messiah be its subject. [684]

If such a parable concerning himself or any other person, could not have been delivered by Jesus, yet it is possible that it was made by some other individual concerning Jesus; and this is the view taken by Theile, who has recently explained the history of the temptation as a parabolic admonition, directed by some partisan of Jesus against the main features of the worldly messianic hope, with the purpose of establishing the spiritual and moral view of the new economy. [685] Here is the transition to the mythical point of view, which the above theologian shuns, partly because the narrative is not sufficiently picturesque (though it is so in a high degree); partly because it is too pure (though he thus imputes false ideas to the primitive Christians); and partly because the formation of the mythus was too near the time of Jesus (an objection which must be equally valid against the early misconstruction of the parable). If it can be shown, on the contrary, that the narrative in question is formed less out of instructive thoughts and their poetical clothing, as is the case with a parable, than out of Old Testament passages and types, we shall not hesitate to designate it a mythus.

§ 56.

THE HISTORY OF THE TEMPTATION AS A MYTHUS.

Satan, the evil being and enemy of mankind, borrowed from the Persian religion, was by the Jews, whose exclusiveness limited all that was good and truly human to the Israelitish people, viewed as the special adversary of their nation, and hence as the lord of the heathen states with whom they were in hostility. [686] The interests of the Jewish people being centred in the Messiah, it followed that Satan was emphatically his adversary; and thus throughout the New Testament we find the idea of Jesus as the Messiah associated with that of Satan as the enemy of his person and cause. Christ having appeared to destroy the works of the devil (1 John iii. 8), the latter seizes every opportunity of sowing tares among the good seed (Matt. xiii. 39), and not only aims, though unsuccessfully, at obtaining the mastery over Jesus himself (John xiv. 30), but continually assails the faithful (Eph. vi. 11; 1 Pet. v. 8). As these attacks of the devil on the pious are nothing else than attempts to get them into his power, that is, to entice them to sin; and as this can only be done by the indirect suggestion or immediate insinuation of evil, seductive thoughts, Satan had the appellation of ὁ πειράζων, the tempter. In the prologue to the book of Job, he seeks to seduce the pious man from God, by the instrumentality of a succession of plagues and misfortunes: while the ensnaring counsel which the serpent gave to the woman was early considered an immediate diabolical suggestion. (Wisdom ii. 24; John viii. 44; Rev. xii. 9.)

In the more ancient Hebrew theology, the idea was current that temptation (נִסָּה, LXX. πειράζειν) was an act of God himself, who thus put his favourites, as Abraham (Gen. xxii. 1), and the people of Israel (Exod. xvi. 4, and elsewhere), to the test, or in just anger even instigated men to pernicious deeds. But as soon as the idea of Satan was formed, the office of temptation was transferred to him, and withdrawn from God, with whose absolute goodness it began to be viewed as incompatible (James i. 13). Hence it is Satan, who by his importunity obtains the divine permission to put Job to the severest trial through suffering; hence David’s culpable project of numbering the people, which in the second book of Samuel was traced to the anger of God, is in the later chronicles (1 Chron. xxii. 1) put directly to the account of the devil; and even the well-meant temptation with which, according to Genesis, God visited Abraham, in requiring from him the sacrifice of his son, was in the opinion of the later Jews, undertaken by God at the instigation of Satan. [687] Nor was this enough—scenes were imagined in which the devil personally encountered Abraham on his way to the place of sacrifice, and in which he tempted the people of Israel during the absence of Moses. [688]

If the most eminent men of piety in Hebrew antiquity were thus tempted, in the earlier view, by God, in the later one, by Satan, what was more natural than to suppose that the Messiah, the Head of all the righteous, the representative and champion of God’s people, would be the primary object of the assaults of Satan? [689] And we find this actually recorded as a rabbinical opinion, [690] in the material mode of representation of the later Judaism, under the form of a bodily appearance and a personal dialogue.

If a place were demanded where Satan might probably undertake such a temptation of the Messiah, the wilderness would present itself from more than one quarter. Not only had it been from Azazel (Lev. xvi. 8–10), and Asmodeus (Tobit viii. 3), to the demons ejected by Jesus (Matt. xii. 43), the fearful dwelling-place of the infernal powers: it was also the scene of temptation for the people of Israel, that filius Dei collectivus. [691] Added to this, it was the habit of Jesus to retire to solitary places for still meditation and prayer (Matt. xiv. 13; Mark i. 35; Luke vi. 12; John vi. 15); to which after his consecration to the messianic office he would feel more than usually disposed. It is hence possible that, as some theologians [692] have supposed, a residence of Jesus in the wilderness after his baptism (though not one of precisely forty days’ duration) served as the historical foundation of our narrative; but even without this connecting thread, both the already noticed choice of place and that of time are to be explained by the consideration, that it seemed consonant with the destiny of the Messiah that, like a second Hercules, he should undergo such a trial on his entrance into mature age and the messianic office.

But what had the Messiah to do in the wilderness? That the Messiah, the second Saviour, should like his typical predecessor, Moses, on Mount Sinai, submit himself to the holy discipline of fasting, was an idea the more inviting, because it furnished a suitable introduction to the first temptation which presupposed extreme hunger. The type of Moses and that of Elias (1 Kings xix. 8), determined also the duration of this fast in the wilderness, for they too had fasted forty days; moreover, the number forty was held sacred in Hebrew antiquity. [693] Above all, the forty days of the temptation of Jesus seem, as Olshausen justly observes, a miniature image of the forty years’ trial in the wilderness, endured by the Israelitish people as a penal emblem of the forty days spent by the spies in the land of Canaan (Num. xiv. 34). For, that in the temptations of Jesus there was a special reference to the temptation of Israel in the wilderness, is shown by the circumstance that all the passages cited by Jesus in opposition to Satan are drawn from the recapitulatory description of the journeyings of the Israelites in Deut. vi. and viii. The apostle Paul too, 1 Cor. x. 6, enumerates a series of particulars from the behaviour of the Israelites in the wilderness, with the consequent judgments of God, and warns Christians against similar conduct, pronouncing, v. 6 and 11, the punishments inflicted on the ancients to be types for the admonition of the living, his cotemporaries, on whom the ends of the world were come; wherefore, he adds, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. It is not probable that this was merely the private opinion of the apostle—it seems rather to have been a current notion that the hard trials of the people led by Moses, as well as of Moses individually, were types of those which awaited the followers of the Messiah in the catastrophe which he was to usher in, and still more emphatically the Messiah himself, who here appears as the antitype of the people, gloriously overcoming all the temptations under which they had fallen.

The Israelites were principally tempted by hunger during their wanderings in the wilderness; [694] hence the first temptation of the Messiah was determined beforehand. The rabbins, too, among the various temptations of Abraham which they recount, generally reckon hunger. [695] That Satan, when prompting Jesus to seek relief from his hunger by an exertion of his own will instead of awaiting it in faith from God, should make use of the terms given in our Evangelists, cannot be matter of surprise if we consider, not only that the wilderness was stony, but that to produce a thing from stones was a proverbial expression, denoting the supply of an object altogether wanting (Matt. iii. 9; Luke xix. 40), and that stone and bread formed a common contrast (Matt. vii. 9). The reply of Jesus to this suggestion is in the same train of ideas on which the entire first act of temptation is constructed; for he quotes the lesson which, according to Deuteronomy viii. 3, the people of Israel tardily learned from the temptation of hunger (a temptation, however, under which they were not resigned, but were provoked to murmur): namely, that man shall not live by bread alone, etc.

But one temptation would not suffice. Of Abraham the rabbins enumerated ten; but this number was too large for a dramatic narrative like that in the gospels, and among lower numbers the sacred three must have the preference. Thrice during his spiritual contest in Gethsemane Jesus severed himself from his disciples (Matt. xxvi.); thrice Peter denied his Lord, and thrice Jesus subsequently questioned his love (John xxi.). In that rabbinical passage which represents Abraham as tempted by the devil in person, the patriarch parries three thrusts from him; in which particular, as well as in the manner in which Old Testament texts are bandied by the parties, the scene is allied to the evangelical one. [696]

The second temptation (in Matthew) was not determined by its relation to the preceding; hence its presentation seems abrupt, and the choice fortuitous or capricious. This may be true with respect to its form, but its substantial meaning is in close connexion with the foregoing temptation, since it also has reference to the conduct of the Jewish people in the wilderness. To them the warning was given in Deut vi. 16 to tempt God no more as they had tempted him at Massah; a warning which was reiterated 1 Cor. x. 9 to the members of the new covenant, though more in allusion to Num. xxi. 4. To this crying sin, therefore, under which the ancient people of God had fallen, must the Messiah be incited, that by resisting the incitement he might compensate, as it were, for the transgression of the people. Now the conduct which was condemned in them as a tempting of the Lord, ἐκπειράζειν Κύριον, was occasioned by a dearth of water, and consisted in their murmurs at this deprivation. This, to later tradition, did not seem fully to correspond to the terms; something more suitable was sought for, and from this point of view there could hardly be a more eligible choice than the one we actually find in our history of the temptation, for nothing can be more properly called a tempting of God than so audacious an appeal to his extraordinary succour, as that suggested by Satan in his second temptation. The reason why a leap from the pinnacle of the temple was named as an example of such presumption, is put into the mouth of Satan himself.

It occurred to the originator of this feature in the narrative, that the passage Ps. xci. 11 was capable of perversion into a motive for a rash act. It is there promised to one dwelling under the protection of Jehovah (a designation under which the Messiah was pre-eminently understood), that angels should bear him up in their hands, lest at any time he should dash his foot against a stone. Bearing up in their hands to prevent a fall, seemed to imply a precipitation from some eminence, and this might induce the idea that the divinely-protected Messiah might hurl himself from a height with impunity. But from what height? There could be no hesitation on this point. To the pious man, and therefore to the head of all the pious, is appropriated, according to Ps. xv. 1, xxiv. 3, the distinction of going up to Jehovah’s holy hill, and standing within his holy place: hence the pinnacle of the temple, in the presumptuous mode of inference supposed, might be regarded as the height whence the Messiah could precipitate himself unhurt.

The third temptation which Jesus underwent—to worship the devil—is not apparent among the temptations of God’s ancient people. But one of the most fatal seductions by which the Israelites were led astray in the wilderness was that of idolatry; and the apostle Paul adduces it as admonitory to Christians. Not only is this sin derived immediately from the devil in a passage above quoted; [697] but in the later Jewish idea, idolatry was identical with the worship of the devil (Baruch iv. 7; 1 Cor. x. 20). How, then, could the worship of the devil be suggested to the Messiah in the form of a temptation? The notion of the Messiah as he who, being the King of the Jewish people, was destined to be lord of all other nations, and that of Satan as the ruler of the heathen world [698] to be conquered by the Messiah, were here combined. That dominion over the world which, in the christianized imagination of the period, the Messiah was to obtain by a long and painful struggle, was offered him as an easy bargain if he would only pay Satan the tribute of worship. This temptation Jesus meets with the maxim inculcated on the Israelites, Deut. vi. 13, that God alone is to be worshipped, and thus gives the enemy a final dismissal.

Matthew and Mark crown their history of the temptation with the appearance of angels to Jesus, and their refreshing him with nourishment after his long fast and the fatigues of temptation. This incident was prefigured by a similar ministration to Elijah after his forty days’ fast, and was brought nearer to the imagination by the circumstance that the manna which appeased the hunger of the people in the wilderness was named, ἄρτος ἀγγέλων, angels’ food (Ps. lxxviii. 25, LXX.; Wisdom xvi. 20). [699]