And after He had fasted for forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.
Parallel translations
- WEB When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward.
- KJV And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
- BSB After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.
- NKJV And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.
- NLT For forty days and forty nights he fasted 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
After fasting forty days and nights, Jesus is hungry. His genuine hunger shows his true humanity and the reality of the test.
Overview
The forty-day fast recalls Moses and Elijah and Israel's forty years in the wilderness, casting Jesus as fulfilling that history faithfully. His real hunger underscores that he was truly human and that the temptation that follows was a genuine trial. In weakness he will nonetheless prove perfectly obedient.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Luke 4:2for forty days, being tempted by the devil. He ate nothing in those days. Afterward, when they were completed, he was hungry.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Mark 11:12The next day, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry.
- 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.
- Deut 18:18I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him.
- Heb 2:14–17Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
- Matt 21:18Now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry.
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Christ at the center
Matthew presents Jesus as the promised King — son of David, son of Abraham — the new Moses and true Israel in whom every prophecy reaches 'that it might be fulfilled.'
How Matthew 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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