August 11

Christ in the Wilderness

Matthew 4:1-3; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-2

After his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus withdrew at once into the wilderness, as if to elude, rather than take advantage of the public attention which had been directed to Him on that occasion. As our Lord made the great events of his life occasions of special prayer, it was doubtless for devotional retirement, and for meditation on the great work He had undertaken, that He now withdrew into the wilderness. That it is distinguished as “the wilderness,” and not by any name, seems to indicate that this wilderness was in the near neighborhood of the place where He had been baptized. There is, therefore, sufficient probability in the tradition which finds this wilderness in the desolate region east of Jerusalem, overlooking the valley of the Jordan. The high mountain which the same tradition makes the immediate scene of the “temptation” that ensued, is from this tradition called Quarantania, and lies about three miles north of the road to Jericho. It is 1500 or 2000 feet high, and is distinguished for its sere and desolate aspect, even in this gloomy region of savage and dreary sights. Its highest summit is crowned with a chapel, still occasionally resorted to by ardent pilgrims, while its eastern face, which overhangs the plain, and commands a noble view of the Arabian mountains, is much occupied with grottos and cells, formerly the chosen abodes of pious anchorites.

It is noted by St. Mark that He was here “with the wild beasts,” a circumstance which shows the desolate and unfrequented character of the region to which He had retired. Wild beasts like the neighborhood of rivers, harboring, according to their various habits, in the jungle with which they are bordered, or in the ravines of the neighboring mountains, especially where natural caverns are found. These wild beasts may have been lions, panthers, bears, and wolves—all of which are mentioned in Scripture, and all except the first still existing in Palestine. These are all dangerous to men; but they could not harm Jesus; and we may well suppose with the poet, that

“They at his sight grew mild,
Nor sleeping Him nor waking harm’d; his walk
The fiery serpent fled and noxious worm;
The lion and fierce tiger glared aloof.”—Milton.

Of the like long fasting, we have antecedent examples in the cases of Moses and of Elijah; and these cases, like this, were doubtless miraculous. It is beyond the powers of nature to endure such privations. There is no authenticated instance of any healthy person having remained for nearly so long a time without food—though what may be possible in certain diseased conditions of the bodily functions, we are not prepared to say. The longest well-attested case of abstinence we have seen recorded, is that of the fourteen men and one woman of the ship Juno, wrecked many years ago on the coast of Arracan, and who lived twenty-three days without a morsel of food. There are indeed many stories of persons who, from mistaken devotion, have endeavored to imitate this fasting of our Lord, and some of whom are said to have exceeded this period before they died of hunger, or desisted from the attempt. But it is likely that most of these tales are fictitious. In certain old churches there are effigies representing persons in the last stage of emaciation—perfect living skeletons—in explanation of which the notion was taken up, that the persons represented, and entombed below, died of starvation in the attempt to imitate this forty days’ fast. It may well be doubted that these effigies have any such signification. The mention this year (1852), by a correspondent of Notes and Queries, of such a tradition connected with an effigy of this sort (a corpse in a winding-sheet) over the tomb of John Baret, in the tomb of St. Mary, Bury St. Edmunds, led to the production of various curious particulars on the subject in successive numbers of that publication—chiefly indicating the churches and cathedrals in which are found such figures of corpses or skeletons wrapped in shrouds, in connection with most of which the same traditions locally prevail, Note: One representing Tully, Bishop of St. David, in the parish church of Tenley; one in Feniton church, Devon; one in Exeter cathedral; one in Lincoln cathedral to Bishop Fleming; one in Salisbury cathedral; two in Winchester cathedral, respectively to Bishop Richard Fox and Stephen Gardiner; one in St. Saviour, Southwark; one in St. John’s College chapel, Cambridge; one (supposed to be Abbot Wakeman) at Tewkesbury; one in the wall of the yard of St. Peter’s church, Drogheda; one in Fyfield church, Berks, of Sir John Golafre (temp. Hen. v.); one in the parish church of Ewelme, Oxon; six in as many churches in Norfolk; one at Asby Folaile, in Leicestershire, where the reference in the inscription (Latin) to the passage where Job alludes to the destruction of his body by worms, and to his confident expectation, that yet in his flesh he should see God, seems to supply a clear indication of the real nature of these monuments. There are doubtless many more such effigies; not to speak of numerous monumental brasses of the same character. In fact, the number of the examples would alone suggest the purely emblematic character of the device. but are generally disbelieved by the writers; though, as one remarks, it is possible that some of them may commemorate deaths by fasting. Another thinks, that if anything were wanting “to refute the absurd notion of forty days’ fast,” the figure at Tewkesbury would supply the clue to the true conception of the artist; and show that it was intended by such figures to remind the passers-by of their own mortality, by representing the hollow cheek, and sunken eyes, and emaciated form, of a corpse from which life had only recently departed; for in this instance the representation is carried much farther, even to the more humbling and revolting processes of corruption and decay in a corpse that has lain some time in the grave. Another correspondent shows that these monuments were sometimes erected by the individual himself during his life, as an act of humiliation, and to remind himself and others of mortality, and of the instability of human grandeur. That the general purport of these representations was simply to remind men that the robes of pride must soon be exchanged for the winding-sheet, and that beauty and strength are hastening to the period when they shall become like this, seems to be shown by the inscription on the tomb of John Brigge, Salle church, Norfolk, 1454—

Here lyth John Briggs Undir this Marbil stone,
Whos sowl our lorde ihu have mercy vpon,
For in this world worthyly he lived many a day,
And here his bodi is berried and cowched undir clay.
Lo, frendis, see, whatever ye be, pray for me i you pray,
As ye me see in soche degre, So schall ye be another day. Note: See various contributions in Notes and Queries, No. 124, 126, 128, 131, 134, 150, 153.

When the forty days had expired, our Lord began to feel the sharp pangs of hunger; and it was then that Satan, who doubtless had been heedfully watching an opportunity to assail Him at disadvantage, thought he perceived an opening for his insidious approaches.

But we shall better comprehend the details of this remarkable transaction in our Lord’s life, if we first inquire into its essential character; for it is one of the most difficult—if not the most difficult—to interpret of all the events in sacred history. This is evinced by the very great difference in the opinions which have been formed as to the mode in which the temptations were presented to our Savior.

If we give to the gospel narratives the most literal interpretation, we must understand that Satan appeared to Christ in some bodily shape—but what shape we know not—and held with Him, in an audible voice, the conversation recorded; that he conveyed Jesus to the temple at Jerusalem, and afterwards placed Him on the top of a high mountain, from which a view of the whole world was exhibited to Him. This, we apprehend, is the sense in which the narrative is usually understood; and although it has many difficulties—some from the nature of the circumstances, and some from the relative position of the parties—no one can safely say that it is wrong, though he may be at liberty to suggest what appears to him a more probable interpretation.

Some take it to be a parabolic description of an actual event. It is supposed that the tempter may have been the high priest, or some member delegated to discover the real pretensions of Jesus. Having received intelligence of the testimony borne by John to Jesus, this person was commissioned to follow Him into the wilderness; and after requiring Him to perform certain miracles in attestation of his mission, held forth to Him the splendid objects of temporal ambition which lay before Him, if He would at once place himself at the head of the nation as its divinely commissioned leader. But it seems highly improbable that Jesus should at so early a period have become of so much importance to the ruling powers; and it is hardly reconcilable with the cautious distance at which the authorities observed his conduct even at a later period, that they should at once have hastened to commit themselves by such proposals as the temptation involved.

There are some who apprehend that the temptations were necessarily presented to our Lord in a vision. The strength of this hypothesis lies in the fact, that He is said to have been shown all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them—which is literally impossible, and could only be true in a vision; and if this was visionary, why not the rest? All the purposes of the temptation might be as well answered by vision as by reality, and we find in Scripture that such things do take place in visions; as when Ezekiel Note: Ezekiel 40:2. says: “In the visions of God brought He me into the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high mountain;” and John Note: Revelation 21:10. says: “He carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem.” It is also pointed out, that many things are represented in Scripture as being actually done which were only done in vision; Note: Genesis 32:30; Jeremiah 13, 14, 25, 27; Ezekiel 3, 4, 5. and it is remembered that St Paul calls his being “caught up into the third heaven, and into paradise,” Note: 2 Corinthians 12:1-4. a vision and revelation of the Lord, and declares that he could not tell whether he was in the body or out of the body; from which instance, and that of Peter, Note: Acts 12:7-9. it seems that neither of the apostles could at first distinguish visions from impressions made upon the senses. The main objection to this view, and one which equally applies to the literal view, is, that the apostle declares our Lord to have been “in all things tempted like as we are,” and proposes this fact for our encouragement and example. If he does not specially refer to this temptation, he must include it; but we are not thus tempted and tried, and the encouragement and strengthening to us are less than were the example to be found in something nearer to our own experience.

Another view is, that the temptations were presented by the power of God making suitable revelations to the mind of Jesus, with a view to his future trials, and are merely called temptations of the devil, because couched under the similitude of Satan coming to Him and offering Him temptations. But this we fear tends rather to bewilder than satisfy the mind, by casting uncertainty upon the use of the terms employed in Scripture; though, as it was the purpose of the Father that the Son should be thus tempted, and it could only have been by his ordinance and permission, it must be true that in the remoter sense these things may be traced to God.

We shall at present only notice one more interpretation, which is simply this, that the temporal and earthly thoughts which constituted these temptations, and which are parabolically described as a personal conflict with the evil one, were the results of our Lord’s own reflections, and constituted a mental struggle, such as we know but too well in our own experience, and in which lay his being tempted like as we are. This view, which derives these thoughts from himself, and regards them, as proceeding from his own mind, does not meet the idea which one forms of Christ’s nature and perfections. It revolts us as an outrage against his person; and, as a writer who has referred to it warmly declares, “Had Jesus cherished such thoughts in the faintest degree, He had been Christ no longer;” Note: Schleiermacher in Olshausen. or, as another says: “We dare not suppose, in Him a choice which, presupposing within Him a tendency for evil, would involve the necessity of his comparing the evil with the good—and deciding between them.” Note: Neander in Life of Jesus. Such an interpretation is only possible on the supposition, which some have hazarded, that on this and some other occasions He was abandoned by the Divine Spirit which rested without measure on Him, and was left as a man to struggle with the temptations and trials of men.

Tomorrow we must try to find our way through these difficulties.