Forty Days in the Wilderness
1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’” 5 The devil, leading him up on a high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. 6 The devil said to him, “I will give you all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I want. 7 If you therefore will worship before me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’” 9 He led him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you;’ 11 and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest perhaps you dash your foot against a stone.’” 12 Jesus answering, said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” 13 When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until another time.
The three temptations, with this account's own order — and a closing line that says the tempter is coming back.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness
The three temptations and the answers given to them are treated in Matthew's account Matthew 4:1–11, where the same three appear with the same Scriptures used against them. Three things belong to this telling.
The first is the framing. He is full of the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit into the place where it happens — the same Spirit that descended two verses earlier. This is not a lapse in the protection; it is where the protection takes him. And he comes out in the power of the Spirit Luke 4:14, so the wilderness is bracketed at both ends by the same clause.
The second is the order. This account puts the temple pinnacle last, where the other puts the kingdoms last. Neither claims to be giving a sequence, and the difference is not a difficulty; each has arranged the three to serve its own argument. In this book the movement is toward Jerusalem — the journey that fills its middle chapters, the city he sets his face toward, the place where everything ends. It is fitting that the last confrontation here happens on the temple.
The third is the devil's claim about the kingdoms, which this account states more fully than the other. "I will give you all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I want" Luke 4:6.
That claim is not contradicted. It is refused, on the ground that worship belongs to God alone Deuteronomy 6:13, and the ownership question is simply left standing. Something real is being offered — the kingdoms of this world are in a hand they should not be in, and the whole story of the book is about them changing hands. What is refused is the price.
The first temptation deserves one note in this setting. "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread" Luke 4:3 comes immediately after a genealogy that ends the son of Adam, the son of God Luke 3:38, and immediately after a voice saying the same words from heaven. The attack begins at the point that was just settled.
When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until another time.
That last clause is this account's alone, and it changes the shape of what follows. Nothing was concluded in the wilderness except this round. The tempter withdraws to wait, and the book tells us when he comes back: Satan entered into Judas Luke 22:3, at the start of the last week — and in the garden the same word for temptation is used three times.
settled What this mark means