Luke 4:3

εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ διάβολος. St Luke says nothing about the devil ‘approaching Him’ (Matthew 4:3), and thereby wholly leaves on one side the question of any corporal appearance.

εἰ υἱὸς εἶ τοῦ θεοῦ. Doubtless an allusion to the divine Voice at His baptism (Luke 3:22). The same words were tauntingly addressed to our Lord on the Cross (Matthew 27:40). The Greek strictly means “Assuming that Thou art,” or “Since Thou art,” but in Hellenistic Greek words and phrases are not always used with their earlier delicate accuracy.

εἰπὲ τῷ λίθῳ τούτῳ. Say to this stone. The Greek implies that the Tempter called direct attention to a particular stone. In this desert there are loaf-shaped fossils known to early travellers as lapides judaici, and to geologists as septaria. Some of these siliceous accretions assume the shape of fruit, and are known as ‘Elijah’s melons’ (Stanley, Sin. and Pal. 154). They were popularly regarded as petrified fruits of the Cities of the Plain. Such deceptive semblances would intensify the pangs of hunger, and add to the temptation the additional torture of an excited imagination. (See a sketch of such a septarium in the Illustrated Edition of my Life of Christ, p. 99.)

ἵνα γένηται ἄρτος. ‘That it may become a loaf.’ Here again we have the extended use of ἵνα in Hellenistic Greek which has been already noticed. The subtle malignity of the temptation is indescribable. It was a temptation to ‘the lust’ (i.e. the desire ‘of the flesh;’ a temptation to gratify a natural and blameless appetite; an appeal to free-will and self-will, closely analogous to the devil’s first temptation of the race. ‘You may; you can; it will be pleasant: why not?’ (Genesis 3:1-15). Yet it did not come in an undisguisedly sensuous form, but with the suggestive semblance of Scriptural sanctions (1 Kings 19:8; Deuteronomy 8:16; Psalms 78:19).