Word Pictures in the New Testament - David Cox

Word Pictures in the NT [Matthew: Chapter 4].
they should see him sailing down as if from heaven. This would be
a sign from heaven in accord with popular Messianic expectation.
The promise of the angels the devil thought would reassure Jesus.
They would be a spiritual parachute for Christ.
4:7 {Thou shall not tempt} (\ouk ekpeiraseis\). Jesus quotes
Deuteronomy again (De 6:16) and shows that the devil has wholly
misapplied God's promise of protection.
4:8 {And showeth him} (\kai deiknusin aut•i\). This wonderful
panorama had to be partially mental and imaginative, since the
devil caused to pass in review "all the kingdoms of the world and
the glory of them." But this fact does not prove that all phases
of the temptations were subjective without any objective presence
of the devil. Both could be true. Here again we have the vivid
historical present (\deiknusin\). The devil now has Christ upon a
very high mountain whether the traditional Quarantania or not. It
was from Nebo's summit that Moses caught the vision of the land
of Canaan (De 34:1-3). Luke (Lu 4:5) says that the whole
panorama was "in a moment of time" and clearly psychological and
instantaneous.
4:9 {All these things will I give thee} (\tauta soi panta d•s•\).
The devil claims the rule of the world, not merely of Palestine
or of the Roman Empire. "The kingdoms of the cosmos" (4:8) were
under his sway. This word for world brings out the orderly
arrangement of the universe while \h• oikoumen•\ presents the
inhabited earth. Jesus does not deny the grip of the devil on the
world of men, but the condition (\ean\ and aorist subjunctive,
second class undetermined with likelihood of determination), was
spurned by Jesus. As Matthew has it Jesus is plainly to "fall
down and worship me" (\pes•n prokun•s•is moi\), while Luke (Lu
4:7) puts it, "worship before me" (\en•pion emou\), a less
offensive demand, but one that really involved worship of the
devil. The ambition of Jesus is thus appealed to at the price of
recognition of the devil's primacy in the world. It was
compromise that involved surrender of the Son of God to the world
ruler of this darkness. "The temptation was threefold: to gain a
temporal, not a spiritual, dominion; to gain it at once; and to
gain it by an act of homage to the ruler of this world, which
would make the self-constituted Messiah the vice-regent of the
devil and not of God" (McNeile).
4:10 {Get thee hence, Satan} (\Hupage, Satan•\). The words
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