*4:2 This episode was ordained by the Holy Spirit. Jesus had to confront Satan when He was physically the weakest He would ever be (40 days without food!). When Satan failed to defeat this weakened Jesus he was probably filled with despair—he now knew that he could never defeat Him. (But he would still try to kill Him.)
†4:3 Satan was not so foolish as to question Jesus' identity, “if”; he was more subtle, “since”.
‡4:4 See Deuteronomy 8:3.
§4:5 ‘The holy city’ was evidently Jerusalem. One is tempted to ask, what was ‘holy’ about it?
*4:5 This is literal; Satan has the power to transport things. Matthew has the correct sequence, whereas Luke inverts the order of tests 2 and 3 (Matthew uses adverbs of sequence, but Luke does not).
†4:6 See Psalm 91:11-12. Satan knows the Bible, and how to twist it.
‡4:7 See Deuteronomy 6:16. The point is to not put God to the test, to not deliberately do something irresponsible with the intention of obliging God to work a miracle to save you.
§4:8 This also is literal and obviously supernatural (since the world is a sphere, even from a satellite one can only see half of it). We have here a master stroke of Satan—Jehovah the Son took on human form in order to recover what the first Adam had lost, and Satan offers it to Him on a silver platter, with just one ‘small’ condition…
*4:10 88% of the Greek manuscripts have “Get behind me…”; in Luke 4:8 at least 97% have “Get behind me…”.
†4:10 See Deuteronomy 6:13. Note that Jesus did not deny his right to make the offer.
‡4:11 The impression one gets is that the angels were not allowed to help Jesus during His direct confrontation with Satan.
§4:12 The early Judean ministry, as recorded in John 1, 2 and 3, ends here.
*4:13 See Luke 4:16-30. Presumably Jesus moved His belongings out of Natsareth at this time.
†4:16 See Isaiah 9:1-2.
‡4:17 Right! The King was walking among them. “Kingdom of the heavens” and “kingdom of God” are synonyms, as can be seen by comparing parallel passages in Mark and Luke. Jesus continues with John's message, since the herald is now out of action.
§4:20 They had employees who could take care of the equipment.
*4:22 All four of these men had spent time with Jesus already, so this was not ‘out of the blue’.
†4:25 Luke 5:1 says that this same crowd was hungry to hear the Word of God, and they did indeed hear the Sermon on the Mount, but Jesus used healing and deliverance to attract the crowd.