Matthew 4:5

THE SECOND TEMPTATION, Matthew 4:5-7.

5. Taketh him Many commentators interpret this as merely meaning that Satan induced the Saviour to go with him to the temple. But these same commentators do not maintain that in Matthew 4:8 our Lord walked up the exceeding high mountain. And yet the words implying Satan’s control of his person are the stronger in this verse. The devil not only taketh him, but setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple. To suppose that our Lord voluntarily walked from the wilderness, breaks the continuity of the scene, and the unity of place.

Holy city So called, in spite of many a wickedness, as being the seat of the theocracy. “They call themselves of the holy city,… but not in truth, nor in righteousness.” Isaiah 48:1-2. Pinnacle or little wing, as the word means. It was doubtless the summit of the royal gallery built by Herod over the brink of the valley of Kedron, with a dizzy height from summit to bottom of seven hundred feet, down which as any one looked, according to Josephus, “he would become dizzy, his eyes being unable to reach so vast a depth.”