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Matthew 4:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Matthew 4:1-3
New Catholic Bible
Chapter 4
Jesus Is Tempted by the Devil.[a]1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted for forty days and forty nights, after which he was famished.
3 Then the tempter approached him and said, “If you are the Son of God,[b] command these stones to be transformed into loaves of bread.”
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Matthew 4:1 This important passage is again filled with echoes and citations of the Old Testament. The intention is to show the experience and struggles of the Messiah, the new head of the People of God. Just as Moses remained forty days on Sinai, so the Messiah remains forty days in the wilderness (Ex 34:28), forty days being symbolic of a time of preparation for divinely planned activities. Jesus refuses to make use of his miraculous power simply to relieve human need (v. 3f), or to satisfy requests of unbelievers (v. 5ff), or to embrace a Messianic role that would be purely political. The basic theme is the obedience of Jesus to God as he is known through the Old Testament. He rebuffs all three temptations with Scriptural truth from Deuteronomy.
- Matthew 4:3 If you are the Son of God: in the sense of the Messianic King of Ps 2.
