Matthew 4:2

‘And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered.'

Throughout His forty days and nights, (that is, for over a moon period), Jesus fasted, His body weakened but His spirit intensified, and during it He prayed and thought and planned, and during it He was conscious of thoughts being continually fed into His mind seeking to direct Him in the wrong ways. And as His resolution grew stronger, and His resistance greater, so did the temptations, as the Tempter gathered for his final assault. We do not know exactly what form it took. Certainly it was largely in the mind, for what is described went beyond the possibility of literal human fulfilment (there is no mountain from which the whole world can be seen, except in the mind). It is, of course, always possible that Satan arranged for a desert dweller, even possibly one connected with Qumran, to approach and feed His mind with false ideas. It is even possible that Satan himself appeared in human form. But this is a mystery into which Jesus did not permit His disciples to enter. All they knew was that He had met him in ‘face to face' combat.

‘Forty days and forty nights.' This phrase probably means ‘for longer than a moon period'. It was the period of initial judgment at the Flood when the rains were unceasing. It was the time spent twice by Moses in the Mount as he received the Law of God and enjoyed the ecstasy of His veiled presence (Exodus 24:18; Exodus 34:28: Deuteronomy 9:9; Deuteronomy 9:18). It was the time spent by Elijah in the wilderness (1 Kings 19:8) when he was supernaturally sustained. It was the time for which Israel trembled in front of Goliath before David emerged victorious (1 Samuel 17:16). It spoke of crucial encounters with God, and with God's enemies. It possibly also has in mind the forty years of Israel's hunger and thirst in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2), preparatory to establishing the Kingly Rule of God in Canaan, a period that in a way Jesus was now duplicating.

It would seem that over the period Jesus was so taken up with His time with His Father that He was not conscious of weakness or hunger, and it was not therefore until He came out of that state that He ‘became hungry'. As His period of meeting with His Father was coming to an end He became conscious of a great need for food.