Mateus 4
R.C.H. Lenski · Citado em PreceptAustin
Mateus 4
Lenski on forty - The fact that the hunger was not felt for just forty days, no more and no less, cannot be considered accidental. We read about other periods of precisely forty days in the Scriptures, so that it seems as though some mysterious law underlies this number. (Ibid) He then became hungry - Then literally = later became, afterward became. Luke 4:2 says He became hungry. Was he not hungry any time during the 40 days? Henry Alford makes a statement that is interesting but difficult to defend from the Scripture writing that "The period of the fast, as in the case of Moses was spent in a spiritual ecstasy, during which the wants of the natural body were suspended." In any event here was Jesus in a time of surely intense hunger, and the Devil sets the bait with bread. As Thomas Adams said "Satan, like a fisher, baits his hook according to the appetite of the fish!" John
Mateus 4
Lenski - The cunning of the temptation is doubled by the devil's use of Scripture. By himself quoting Scripture the devil would block any further resort of Jesus to Scripture; he would wrest the sword of the Spirit from Jesus' hand. The devil here shows himself an expert in handling Scripture. Luther well calls him a doctor non promotus sed expertus. The passage he quotes seems to fit the proposal he makes in the most perfect way. Read the entire Psalm and see how all of it fits quite exactly. All that Satan has done is to invent an act to match the two verses quoted, one in which God's angels can bear a man up and prevent him from crashing his feet on the stones beneath. They will catch him under the arms and let him light on the rocks below as gently as feather down. The devil's art of quoting Scripture has been spread far and wide in the devil's school, and some of his pupils and graduates are doctors that are quite as expert as he is. In this case the deception does not lie in misapplying to Jesus what really does not apply to him. Psalm 91 applies to any son of God and certainly also to this Son. Satan abbreviates by omitting the line, "to keep thee in all thy ways." Some find the deception in this omission as though the promise of God were conditional: to protect us only when we walk in the path of divine duty. But then the words should read, "to keep thee in all his ways." If the deception lay in omitting this line, it would have been rather easy to overthrow Satan. A misquotation is removed by the corrected quotation. Jesus, however, makes no correction, does not point to the omitted line but accepts the quotation as being substantially correct. The deception in the use of this quotation by Satan lies in setting one Scripture against another. One statement is stressed, and others that should go with it are quietly disregarded. The trick is constantly practiced, often on a large scale, when a mass of passages are combined in such a way that it makes the Bible say what it most certainly does not say, in fact, openly contradicts elsewhere in the plainest language. This type of deception easily catches the unwary, especially the devout who regard the Scriptures highly; it is also the delight of those who love to harass devout believers while they think they are fortifying themselves behind impregnable walls. (BORROW The Interpretation of St. Matthew's Gospel PAGE 148) Thomas