Charles Ellicott Commentary Mark 1:13

"And he was in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan; And he was with the wild beasts; And the angels ministered unto him." — Mark 1:13 (ASV)

And he was there in the wilderness.—See Notes on Matthew 4:2-11.

Mark compresses the history by omitting the several forms of the Temptation. Peculiar to him are:

1. the use of “Satan” instead of “the devil”;
2. the statement that Jesus was “with the wild beasts.”

In our Lord’s time these might include the panther, the bear, the wolf, the hyena, possibly the lion.

The implied thought is partly that their presence added to the terrors of the Temptation, partly that in His being protected from them, there was the fulfilment of the promise in the very Psalm which furnished the Tempter with his chief weapon, that the true child of God should trample under foot the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon (Psalms 91:13).