Order of Temptations. — In Mt. and Lk. the order of the second and third temptations is inverted, while the substance of them remains identical. The order followed by Mt. is generally accepted as correct. There seems to be an ascending scale in the temptations as recoi'ded in the First Gospel, though Plummer (Lk 4-') says : ' The reasons given for preferring one order to the other are subjective and unconvincing. Perhaps neither Evangelist professes to give any chronological order.'
Source of the stori/. — As, according to all the "accounts, Jesus was not accompanied by anyone during His temjDtation, the question naturally arises, How did the knowledge of what took place become public property ? To this there can be but one answer : Our Lord informed His disciples of what had taken place. That He should have done so is probable. At flrst, perhaps, they might not be prepared to understand the incident ; but after they had acknowledged Him as Messiah many questions as to His procedure must have arisen in their minds, and to these questions an account of His initial temptations was the best answer.
Character of the incident. — The more clearly the aieality of the Temptation is grasped, the less need does there seem for supposing that the tempter took a visible shape, or that any bodily transport to ' the high mountain ' or ' the wing of the temple ' took place. It is more diflicult to determine whether such bodily transport was thought of by the Evangelists or is implied in their words. In Lk. the ' high mountain ' is omitted except in so far as reference may be found to it in the word dvayayuii'. In the Gospel of the Hebrews there occurs a characteristic apocryphal embellishment : 'Forthwith my Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of the hairs of my head and carried me away to the liigh mountain of Tabor.'
Its connexion. — In all the Synoptic Gospels and in the development of our Lord's life, the Tem])ta- tion follows upon the Baptism. In His Baptism He had been i)roclaimed Messiah, called out of private into public life, summoned to take among men a place which could be tilled by Himself alone. He was called from the carpenter's shop to redeem
* Besides, as O. Holtzitiann (Life of Jems, 143) savs : ' In old Israelitish times lions still inhabited the thickets "beside the Jordan (.Jer 491S) ; in the ajre of Jesus the chief beast of prey in Palestine was, as it still is, the jackal. But Mark's sole object in making' this addition would appear to have been the desire to bring into greater relief Jesus' complete severance from human society, with the idea of imparting more body to his description." Dr. Abbott's Clue, p. 115, is suggestive in this connexion.
a world. The village youth was to represent in His person the wisdom, the holiness, the love, the authority of the Highest. How could He face this task ? By what hitlierto untried methods accom- ])lish it ? He had no counsellor, example, or guide. None had as yet attempted or even adequately conceived the part He was to play.
Its necessity. — The burden and glory, the hazard and intricacy and responsibility of His vocation must have stirred in His soul a ferment of emotions. O. Holtzmann may overstate the risk when he says (Life of Jestis, Eng. tr. 141) : ' There was a grave danger of His personal life being disturbed by so august a revelation, of its causing Him to plunge headlong into fantastic dreams of the future, and into acts of violence, with the object of realizing His dreams.' Our Lord was not unprepai'ed for the great vocation ; He must often have considered how He could best bring light and life to His fellow- countrymen, but now that He was actually launched on the work, all past thoughts must have seemed insufficient, and He felt that .still His decisions were to be made. Solitude was necessary. The Spirit that came upon Him in Baptism compelled Him to contemplate action, and in order that He might Anally choose His path and His methods He must turn away from tlie expectant gaze and eager inquiries of John's disciples and seek the solitude of the desert.
Its conditions. — The intensity of our Lord's emotion and the difficulty of decision are conveyed by the Evangelists' statement that for forty days (i.e. for an unusually long period, 'forty' being used as around number indicative of magnitude) * He forgot to eat. This gives us the measure of His absorption in thought. The temptations in- deed are spoken of as if they occurred at the close of the forty days' fast ; naturally, because then only out of the turmoil of thought did these three possible lines of conduct become disengaged and present themselves as now finally rejected. To one who adequately conceives the stupendous task awaiting our Lord and the various methods of accomplishing it which He had often heard dis- cussed, no statement of His absorption in thought or of the strife of contending pleas will seem exag- gerated.
Lines on which the Temptation proceeded. — The key to the Temptation is found in the necessity laid upon Jesus of definitely determining the principles and methods of the great work that awaited Him. There were necessarily present to His mind as possible courses the various expecta- tions current among the people. Eventually these presented themselves in three great questions : Am I as Messiah lifted above human needs and trials ? What means may I legitimately use to convince the people of my "claims ? What kind of Messianic kingdom and Messianic King am I to represent ? To each of these questions there was an answer present to the mind of the Lord, cherished by most of the people He was now to influence, and with mucii which .superficially commended it, but which He recognized as Satanic.