Charles Ellicott Commentary Luke 4:6

"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.