TEMPTATION (in the Wilderness).—[On the general subject of temptation see preced. article]. The continuousness and variety of our Lord’s temptations have probably been obscured by the circumstance that attention has been concentrated upon one episode in His life which is distinctively known as ‘ The Temptation.’ This very significant incident is fully related in Mt. (Matthew 4:1-11) and Lk. (Luke 4:1-13), mentioned in Mk. (Mark 1:12-13), and omitted from the Fourth Gospel. St. Mark’s account is of the briefest: ‘And straightway the Spirit urges him forth into the desert. And he was in the desert forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.’* [Note: The ‘desert’ is possibly that known as Quarantania, from the forty days, and since the 12th cent. traditionally accepted as the same, a few miles from Jericho; or it may have been, as Conder thinks, some miles farther south—the dreary desert which extends between the Dead Sea and the Hebron mountains. See his picturesque description, pp. 213 to 214 of his Handbook.] The mention of ‘wild beasts,’ which is peculiar to Mark, is usually supposed to be introduced for the purpose of accentuating the solitariness of Jesus, and His remoteness from all human aid. but Professor Bevan (Trans. of Soc. of Hist. Theol. 1901–2) finds in this mention the key to the whole incident. It seems that in the East, or at any rate in Persia, there is a traditional custom, called ‘the subjugation of the jinn.’ in order to achieve this victory the candidate retires to a desert place, fasts for forty days, and when the jinns appear in the forms of a lion, a tiger, and a dragon, he must hold his ground fearlessly. Doing so, power over the demons is attained. ‘The conclusion,’ says Professor Bevan, ‘which we may draw from these facts is that the story of the Temptation, in its original form, was a description of a practice by means of which it was believed that man could acquire the power of controlling the demons.’ the analogy is interesting. Our Lord in this critical conflict with Satan did ‘bind the strong man,’ and secured that in all future encounters He would conquer. but is there any evidence at all that the Persian custom prevailed among the Jews? Is there any ground for supposing either that our Lord would follow such a custom, or, on the other hand, that there is no foundation for the story of the Temptation in the facts of His career? And is not the simple expression, ἧ?ν μετὰ? τῶ?ν θηρίων, inadequate to suggest such a conflict as is supposed?* [Note: Besides, as O. Holtzmann (Life of Jesus, 143) says: ‘In old Israelitish times lions still inhabited the thickets beside the Jordan (Jeremiah 49:19); in the age of Jesus the chief beast of prey in Palestine was, as it still is, the jackal. but Mark’s sole object in making this addition would appear to have been the desire to bring into greater relief Jesus’ complete severance from human society, with the idea of imparting more body to his description.’ Dr. Abbott’s Clue, p. 115, is suggestive in this connexion.]
Order of Temptations.—In Mt. and Lk. the order of the second and third temptations is inverted, while the substance of them remains identical. The order followed by Mt. is generally accepted as correct. There seems to be an ascending scale in the temptations as recorded in the First Gospel, though Plummer (Luke 4:5) says: ‘The reasons given for preferring one order to the other are subjective and unconvincing. Perhaps neither Evangelist professes to give any chronological order.’
Source of the story.—As, according to all the accounts, Jesus was not accompanied by anyone during His temptation, the question naturally arises, How did the knowledge of what took place become public property? To this there can be but one answer: Our Lord informed His disciples of what had taken place. That He should have done so is probable. At first, perhaps, they might not be prepared to understand the incident; but after they had acknowledged Him as Messiah many questions as to His procedure must have arisen in their minds, and to these questions an account of His initial temptations was the best answer.
Character of the incident.—The more clearly the reality of the Temptation is grasped, the less need does there seem for supposing that the tempter took a visible shape, or that any bodily transport to ‘the high mountain’ or ‘the wing of the temple’ took place. It is more difficult to determine whether such bodily transport was thought of by the Evangelists or is implied in their words. In Lk. the ‘high mountain’ is omitted except in so far as reference may be found to it in the word ἀ?ναγαγών . In the Gospel of the Hebrews there occurs a characteristic apocryphal embellishment: ‘Forthwith my Mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of the hairs of my head and carried me away to the high mountain of Tabor.’
Its connexion.—In all the Synoptic Gospels and in the development of our Lord’s life, the Temptation follows upon the Baptism. In His Baptism He had been proclaimed Messiah, called out of private into public life, summoned to take among men a place which could be filled by Himself alone. He was called from the carpenter’s shop to redeem a world. The village youth was to represent in His person the wisdom, the holiness, the love, the authority of the Highest. How could He face this task? by what hitherto untried methods accomplish it? He had no counsellor, example, or guide. None had as yet attempted or even adequately conceived the part He was to play.
Its necessity.—The burden and glory, the hazard and intricacy and responsibility of His vocation must have stirred in His soul a ferment of emotions. O. Holtzmann may overstate the risk when he says (Life of Jesus, English translation 141): ‘There was a grave danger of His personal life being disturbed by so august a revelation, of its causing Him to plunge headlong into fantastic dreams of the future, and into acts of violence, with the object of realizing His dreams.’ Our Lord was not unprepared for the great vocation; He must often have considered how He could best bring light and life to His fellow-countrymen, but now that He was actually launched on the work, all past thoughts must have seemed insufficient, and He felt that still His decisions were to be made. Solitude was necessary. The Spirit that came upon Him in Baptism compelled Him to contemplate action, and in order that He might finally choose His path and His methods He must turn away from the expectant gaze and eager inquiries of John’s disciples and seek the solitude of the desert.
Its conditions.—The intensity of our Lord’s emotion and the difficulty of decision are conveyed by the Evangelists’ statement that for forty days (i.e. for an unusually long period, ‘forty’ being used as a round number indicative of magnitude)* [Note: ‘It is only by travelling that one becomes aware how universal is the application of the number 40 to the features of Oriental architecture. If there is a famous building with something over a score of columns, or a town with a like number of minarets, it will be styled the hall of 40 columns or the city of 40 towers’ (Arthur Arnold in Academy, 12 March 1881). ‘ “Forty” means “many” ’ (Angus, Bible Handbook).] He forgot to eat. This gives us the measure of His absorption in thought. The temptations indeed are spoken of as if they occurred at the close of the forty days’ fast; naturally, because then only out of the turmoil of thought did these three possible lines of conduct become disengaged and present themselves as now finally rejected. To one who adequately conceives the stupendous task a waiting our Lord and the various methods of accomplishing it which He had often heard discussed, no statement of His absorption in thought or of the strife of contending pleas will seem exaggerated.
Lines on which the Temptation proceeded.—The key to the Temptation is found in the necessity laid upon Jesus of definitely determining the principles and methods of the great work that a waited Him. There were necessarily present to His mind as possible courses the various expectations current among the people. Eventually these presented themselves in three great questions: Am I as Messiah lifted above human needs and trials? What means may I legitimately use to convince the people of my claims? What kind of Messianic kingdom and Messianic King am I to represent? To each of these questions there was an answer present to the mind of the Lord, cherished by most of the people He was now to influence, and with much which superficially commended it, but which He recognized as Satanic.
The absence of the article before υἱ?ός has given rise to the idea that the temptations were not Messianic. Against this it has been pointed out that the predicate is regularly anarthrous. but Middleton (Gr. Article, p. 62) shows that ‘we sometimes find that the predicate of the εἰ?μί has the Article, where the subject is a personal pronoun or demonstrative, ἐ?γώ, σύ, οὖ?τος ,’ etc. This rule is borne out by NT usage: see Matthew 16:16, Matthew 26:63, Matthew 27:11, Mark 3:11 etc. For this and other reasons we should expect the Article here, if the meaning were, ‘If thou art the Son of God, or, the Christ.’ the meaning rather is, ‘If thou art God’s Son’ [the emphatic place being given to υἱ?ός, εἰ? υἱ?ὸ?ς εἶ? τ . θεοῦ? ], if this relationship to God be the determining element in your life. but this by no means excludes reference to His Messianic dignity, it rather implies it. It was as God’s Son He had been hailed at His baptism proclaiming His Messianic vocation, and fitly, because Divine Sonship was that out of which the Messiahship sprang, and which underlay the whole vocation of Jesus as the Christ.
First temptation.—The first temptation was to use for His own comfort and preservation the powers committed to Him as Messiah. The circumstances in which He found Himself lent immense force to the appeal. He found Himself faint and ready to perish. What a fiasco would His Messianic calling seem if He died here in the wilderness, and how easy apparently the means of relief: ‘Say the word.’ ‘How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!’ Once only in His life can He have suffered more acutely from this same temptation: only when He knew He could command twelve legions of angels to His aid, only when He was taunted, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save.’ the use He might legitimately make of His powers as God’s Son must once for all be settled: and He settles it by recognizing that having taken human nature He must accept human conditions, and elevate human life not by facing life’s temptations on wholly different terms from the normal, but by accepting the whole human conflict: ‘Man lives—and I, being man, therefore live—not by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ He accepted absolutely the human condition with its entire dependence on God. Duty was more than food. His life was to be ruled by intimations of God’s will, not by fear of death by starvation. He, like all other men, was in God’s hand.
Second temptation.—The second temptation was to establish the Messianic claim by the performance of some astounding feat, such as leaping from the roof of the wing of the temple into the crowded courts below. Once for all our Lord had to settle by what methods His claim could be made good. That which the people so frequently demanded, ‘a sign,’ must have suggested itself as a possible means of convincing them. And it was an easy means, for was it not written in the book He had pondered as His best guide: ‘He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone’ (Psalms 91:11 f.)? Were these words not prepared for this Messianic manifestation? Could the people, ever craving for signs, be in any other way led to accept Him as God’s messenger? Might not His whole mission fail, might He not miss the accomplishment of God’s purpose, if He did not condescend to the weakness of His countrymen and grant them a sign? but now, as always, He saw the incongruity and insufficiency of such signs: ‘an evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign, and no sign shall be given to it’ (Matthew 12:39 ||). but that which settles the matter in His own mind is the consideration that to attempt the performance of any such feat would be a tempting of God. He rebuts the temptation with the words, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’ He perceived that He had no right to expect the protection of God in any course but the highest, in any course which His own conscience told Him was a short cut to His end. To abandon the region of man’s actual needs and work wonders not for their relief and as the revelation of God’s love, but for mere display, was, He felt, to trespass the Father’s intentions. He could not count upon the Father’s countenance and help if He departed in the slightest degree from His own highest ideal. Spiritual ends must be attained by spiritual means, however slow and uncertain these seem.
Third temptation.—The third question which had now once for all to be settled was, What kind of kingdom must the Messiah establish? Shall it be a kingdom of this world, such as many expected and would promptly aid Him to secure? The glory of the kingdoms of the earth had a present lustre all its own. There was in their power and opportunity an appeal to beneficent ambition not easily resisted. What might not be accomplished for the down-trodden, the heavily-taxed, the outcast, the despairing? He had Himself groaned with the rest of His countrymen under the unrighteous exactions of fraudulent publicans; why not win for His people the blessings of freedom? More than once this temptation returned in the attempts of the multitude to make Him a king. but our Lord recognized that for Him to depart from the idea of founding a spiritual kingdom in which God should be acknowledged would be to serve Satan. The craving for earthly dominion was inextricably mixed up with worldly ambitions, and could only be gratified by the use of means alien to the Divine Spirit. He felt such a kingdom to be incompatible with the sole and exclusive service of God—not that all earthly kingdoms are necessarily Satanic, but His calling was to introduce the true reign of God among men. He saw that in order to win earthly dominion He would require to appeal to evil passions and use such means as the sword—in a word, to avail Himself of the aid of evil. This was impossible.
Literature.—The various Commentaries on the Gospels, and the Lives of Christ; Liddon, Bamp. Lect. 8 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] p. 512 f.; Expos. Times, iii. [1891] 118 ff., xiv. [1903] 389 ff.; Expositor, i. iii. [1876] 321 ff.; Trench, Studies in the Gospels, 1; W. H. Brookfield, Serm. 252, 262, 275; T. Christlieb, Memoir with Serm. 219, 238, 255; A. B. Davidson, Waiting upon God, 107; H. Wace, Some Central Points of our Lord’s Ministry, 59–132; Th. Zahn, Bread and Salt from the Word of God (1905), 1.
Marcus Dods.