Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 4:8

"Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;" — Matthew 4:8 (ASV)

An exceeding high mountain — Here, if proof were needed, is evidence that everything that took place during the Temptation occurred in a realm that the spirit, not the senses, perceives. No “specular mount” (to use Milton’s phrase) on the entire earth commands a view of all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them. Saint Luke’s addition, in a moment of time—one of those flashes of intuition that concentrate years of experience into a single act of consciousness—adds, if anything could, to the certainty of this view.

Milton’s well-known expansion of this part of the Temptation (Paradise Regained, Book III), though too obviously the work of a scholar exulting in his scholarship, is nevertheless worth studying as the first serious attempt to understand, at least in part, what must thus have been presented to our Lord’s mind.