Luke 4:9

a pinnacle Rather, the pinnacle, or battlement. Some well-known pinnacle of the Temple, either that of the Royal Portico, which looked down from a dizzy height into the Valley of the Kidron (Jos. Antt. xv. 11 § 5); or the Eastern Portico, from which tradition says that St James was afterwards hurled (Euseb. H. E. ii. 23). -Battlement" is used for the corresponding Hebrew word Canaph(lit. -wing") in Daniel 9:27.

cast thyself down from hence The first temptation had been to natural appetite and impulse: the second was to unhallowed ambition; the third is to rash confidence and spiritual pride. It was based, with profound ingenuity, on the expression of absolute trust with which the first temptation had been rejected. It asked as it were for a splendid proof of that trust, and appealed to perverted spiritual instincts. It had none of the vulgar and sensuous elements of the other temptations. It was at the same time a confession of impotence. "Cast thyselfdown." The devil may place the soul in peril and temptation, but can never makeit sin. "It is," as St Augustine says, "the devil's part to suggest, it is ours not to consent."