incapable of being temptations to Jesus. He is 'driven' into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted. [2 The place of the Temptation could not, of course, have been the traditional 'Quarantania,' but must have been near Bethabara. See also Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 308.] The history of humanity is taken up anew at the point where first the kingdom of Satan was founded, only under new conditions. It is not now a choice, but a contest, for Satan is the prince of this world. During the whole forty days of Christ's stay in the wilderness His Temptation continued, though it only attained its high point at the last, when, after the long fast, He felt the weariness and weakness of hunger. As fasting occupies but a very subordinate, we might almost say a tolerated, place in the teaching of Jesus; and as, so far as we know, He exercised on no other occasion such ascetic practices, we are left to
infer internal, as well as external, necessity for it in the present instance. The former is easily understood in His pre-occupation; the latter must have had for its object to reduce Him to utmost outward weakness, by the depression of all the vital powers. We regard it as a psychological fact that, under such circumstances, of all mental faculties the memory alone is active, indeed, almost preternaturally active. During the preceding thirty-nine days the plan, or rather the future, of the Work to which He had been consecrated, must have been always before Him. In this respect, then, He must have been tempted. It is wholly impossible that He hesitated for a moment as to the means by which He was to establish the Kingdom of God. He could not have felt tempted to adopt carnal means, opposed to the nature of that Kingdom, and to the Will of God. The unchangeable convictions which He had already attained must have stood out before Him: that His Father's business was the Kingdom of God; that He was furnished to it, not by outward weapons, but by the abiding Presence of the Spirit; above all, that absolute submission to the Will of God was the way to it, nay, itself the Kingdom of God. It will be observed, that it was on these very points that the final attack of the Enemy was directed in the utmost weakness of Jesus. But, on the other hand, the Tempter could not have failed to assault Him with considerations which He must have felt to be true. How could He hope, alone, and with such principles, to stand against Israel? He knew their views and feelings; and as, day by day, the sense of utter loneliness and forsakenness increasingly gathered around Him, in His increasing faintness and weakness, the seeming hopelessness of such a task as He had undertaken must have grown upon Him with almost overwhelming power. [1 It was this which would make the 'assault' a 'temptation' by vividly setting before the mind the reality and rationality of these considerations, a mental assensus, without implying any inward consensus to the manner in which the Enemy proposed to have them set aside.] Alternately, the temptation to despair, presumption, or the cutting short of the contest in some decisive manner, must have presented itself to His mind, or rather have been presented to it by the Tempter.
And this was, indeed, the essence of His last three great temptations; which, as the whole contest, resolved themselves into the one question of absolute submission to the Will of God, [1 All the assaults of Satan were really directed against Christ's absolute submission to the Will of God, which was His Perfectness. Hence, by every one of these temptations, as Weiss says in regard to the first, 'ruttelt er an Seiner Volkommenheit.] which is the sum and substance of all obedience. If He submitted to it, it must be suffering, and only suffering, helpless, hopeless suffering to the bitter end; to the extinction of life, in the agonies of the Cross, as a male-factor; denounced, betrayed, rejected by His people; alone, in very God-forsakenness. And when thus beaten about by temptation, His powers reduced to the lowest ebb of faintness, all the more vividly would memory hold out the facts so well known, so keenly realised at that moment, in the almost utter cessation of every other mental faculty: [2 I regard the memory as affording the basis for the Temptation. What was so vividly in Christ's memory at that moment, that was flashed before Him as in a mirror under the dazzling light of temptation.] the scene lately enacted by the banks of Jordan, and the two great expectations of His own people, that the Messiah was to head Israel from the Sanctuary of the Temple, and that all kingdoms of the world were to become subject to Him. Here, then, is the inward basis of the Temptation of Christ, in which the fast was not unnecessary, nor yet the special assaults of the Enemy either 'clumsy suggestions,' or unworthy of Jesus.
He is weary with the contest, faint with hunger, alone in that wilderness. His voice falls on no sympathising ear; no voice reaches Him but that of the Tempter. There is nothing bracing,
strengthening in this featureless, barren, stony wilderness, only the picture of desolateness, hopelessness, despair. He must, He will absolutely submit to the Will of God. But can this be the Will of God? One word of power, and the scene would be changed. Let Him despair of all men, of everything, He can do it. By His Will the Son of God, as the Tempter suggests, not, however, calling thereby in question His Sonship, but rather proceeding on its admitted reality [3 Satan's 'if was rather a taunt than a doubt. Nor could it have been intended to call in question His ability to do miracles. Doubt on that point would already have been a fall.], can change the stones into bread. He can do miracles, put an end to present want and question, and, as visibly the possessor of absolute miraculous power, the goal is reached! But this would really have been to change the idea of Old Testament miracle into the heathen conception of magic, which was absolute power inherent in an without moral purpose. The moral purpose, the grand moral purpose in all that was of God, was absolute submission to the Will of God. His Spirit had driven Him into that wilderness. His circumstances were God-appointed; and where He so appoints them, He will support us in them, even as, in the failure of bread, He supported Israel by the manna, [a Deut. viii 3.] [1 The supply of the manna was only an exemplification and application of the general principle, that man really lives by the Word of God.] And Jesus absolutely submitted to that Will of God by continuing in His present circumstances. To have set himself free from what they implied, would have been despair of God, and rebellion. He does more than not succmb: He conquers. The Scriptural reference to a better life upon the Word of God marks more than the end of the contest; it marks the conquest of Satan. He emerges on the other side triumphant, with this expression of His assured conviction of the sufficiency of God.
It cannot be despair, and He cannot take up His Kingdom alone, in the exercise of mere power! Absolutely submitting to the Will of God, He must, and He can, absolutely trust Him. But if so, then let Him really trust Himself upon God, and make experiment, nay more, public demonstration, of it. If it be not despair of God, let it be presumption! He will not do the work alone! Then God-upborne, according to His promise, let the Son of God suddenly, from that height, descend and head His people, and that not in any profane manner, but in the midst of the Sanctuary, where God was specially near, in sight of incensing priests and worshipping people. So also will the goal at once be reached.
The Spirit of God had driven Jesus into the wilderness; the spirit of the Devil now carried Him to Jerusalem. Jesus stands on the lofty pinnacle of the Tower, or of the Temple-porch, [2 It cannot be regarded as certain, that the was, as commentators generally suppose, the Tower at the southeastern angle of the Temple Cloisters, where the Royal (southern) and Solomon's (the eastern) Porch met, and whence the view into the Kedron Valley beneath was to the stupendous depth of 450 feet. Would this angle be called 'a wing' ()? Nor can I agree with Delitzsch, that it was the 'roof of the Sanctuary, where indeed there would scarcely have been standing-room. It certainly formed the watch-post of the Priest. Possibly it may have been the extreme corner of the 'wing-like' porch, or ulam, which led into the Sanctuary. Thence a Priest could easily have communicated with his brethren in the court beneath. To this there is, however, the objection that in that case it should have been. At p. 244, the ordinary view of this locality has been taken.] presumably that on which every day a Priest was stationed to watch, as the pale morning light passed over the hills of Judaea far off to Hebron, to announce it as the signal for offering the morning sacrifice. [3 Comp. 'The Temple, its Ministry and Services,' p. 132.] If we might indulge our imagination, the moment chosen would be just as the Priest had quitted that station. The first
desert-temptation had been in the grey of breaking light, when to the faint and weary looker the stones of the wilderness seemed to take fantastic shapes, like the bread for which the faint body hungered. In the next temptation Jesus stands on the watch-post which the white-robed priest had just quitted. Fast the rosy morning- light, deepening into crimson, and edged with gold, is spreading over the land. In the Priests' Court below Him the morning-sacrifice has been offered. The massive Temple-gates are slowly opening, and the blasts of the priests' silver trumpets is summoning Israel to begin a new day by appearing before their Lord. Now then let Him descend, Heaven-borne, into the midst of priests and people. What shouts of acclamation would greet His appearance! What homage of worship would be His! The goal can at once be reached, and that at the head of believing Israel. Jesus is surveying the scene. By His side is the Tempter, watching the features that mark the working of the spirit within. And now he has whispered it. Jesus had overcome in the first temptation by simple, absolute trust. This was the time, and this the place to act upon this trust, even as the very Scriptures to which Jesus had appealed warranted. But so to have done would have been not trust, far less the heroism of faith, but presumption. The goal might indeed have been reached; but not the Divine goal, nor in God's way, and, as so often, Scripture itself explained and guarded the Divine promise by a preceding Divine command. [1 Bengel: 'Scriptura per Scripturam interpretanda et
