for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He was hungry.
Parallel translations
- WEB for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry.
- KJV Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
- BSB where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when they had ended, He was hungry.
- NKJV being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.
- NLT where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
For forty days Jesus fasts and is tempted by the devil, ending hungry. He faces real temptation in genuine human weakness.
Overview
The forty days recall Israel's forty years in the wilderness and Moses' fasts, casting Jesus as the faithful Son retracing that path. His hunger shows the reality of His humanity and the genuineness of the temptation. Yet unlike Israel, He will not fail, qualifying Him to be our sympathetic and sinless Savior.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Exod 34:28He was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
- Heb 4:15For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin.
- Heb 2:18For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.
- Deut 9:9When I had gone up onto the mountain to receive the stone tablets, even the tablets of the covenant which Yahweh made with you, then I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water.
- 1 Kgs 19:8He arose, and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, God’s Mountain.
- John 4:6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
- Matt 4:2When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.
- Deut 9:18I fell down before Yahweh, as at the first, forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all your sin which you sinned, in doing that which was evil in Yahweh’s sight, to provoke him to anger.
- 1 Sam 17:16The Philistine came near morning and evening, and presented himself forty days.
- Esth 4:16“Go, gather together all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day. I and my maidens will also fast the same way. Then I will go in to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.”
- Gen 3:15I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.”
- Matt 21:18Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry.
- Deut 9:25So I fell down before Yahweh the forty days and forty nights that I fell down, because Yahweh had said he would destroy you.
- Jonah 3:7He made a proclamation and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, “Let neither man nor animal, herd nor flock, taste anything; let them not feed, nor drink water;
- Exod 24:18Moses entered into the middle of the cloud, and went up on the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
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Christ at the center
Luke shows Jesus the Savior for all — outsiders, the poor, the nations — the one who, on the Emmaus road, opened all the Scriptures to show they were about himself.
How Luke 4:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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