Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 4
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Luke 4
Charles Ellicott Commentary
Luke 4
"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness" — Luke 4:1 (ASV)
Being full of the Holy Ghost.—See Notes on Matthew 4:1-11. The words used by St. Luke describe the same fact as those used by St. Matthew and St. Mark, and agree with the Spirit given not by measure of John 3:34.
"And the devil said unto him, if thou art the Son of God, command this stone that it become bread." — Luke 4:3 (ASV)
Command this stone.—The singular form is somewhat more vivid than the plural, these stones, in St. Matthew.
"And he led him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time." — Luke 4:5 (ASV)
The kingdoms of the world.—St. Luke uses the word (literally, the inhabited world) which was commonly used as co-extensive with the Roman empire. On the difference in the order of the temptations, see Note on Matthew 4:5.
In a moment of time.—The concentration of what seems an almost endless succession of images into the consciousness of a moment is eminently characteristic of the activity of the human soul in the state of ecstasy or vision.
"And the devil said unto him, To thee will I give all this authority, and the glory of them: for it hath been delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it." — Luke 4:6 (ASV)
For that is delivered to me.—Better, has been delivered to me. The specific assertion of the usurped dominion, though implied in Matthew, is in its form peculiar to Luke. (See Note on Matthew 4:9.) The notion that any such delegated sovereignty had been assigned to the Tempter, either before or after his fall from his first estate, has, it hardly needs to be said, no foundation in Scripture. It asserts that the earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof (Psalms 24:1); and the claim of the Tempter was a lying boast, resting only on the permitted activity and temporary predominance of evil in the actual course of the world’s history.
"And when the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him for a season." — Luke 4:13 (ASV)
When the devil had ended all the temptation.—Better, had completed every kind of temptation. The three trials were each typical in character, and taken together they made up the cycle of those to which our Lord’s human nature was then open.
For a season.—Till a [convenient] season—i.e., till the close of the great work, the time of the power of darkness (Luke 22:53), when the prince of this world again came (John 14:30), and, trying then the power of suffering, as he had before tried the allurement of the world, found that he was foiled in the latter temptation as he had been in the earlier.
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