⚠ “To be TESTED” — and the Spirit is the one who leads him there. Peirazō covers both English words: to TEST (put to the proof, as metal is assayed) and to TEMPT (solicit to evil). Greek does not choose, and the sentence needs both — the devil is tempting, and God is proving. What the grammar will not allow is a softening of who arranges it: Jesus “was led up… by the Spirit” — the same Spirit that descended in the previous verse. The dove and the wilderness are one movement. KJV “to be tempted”; ASV “to be tempted”; NWT “to be tempted”; Mister reads “tested” here, because the passage Jesus quotes in reply is about a testing (Deuteronomy 8:2, “to test you, to know what was in your heart”) — and flags that the Greek carries the other sense at the same time.

⚠ “Forty days AND FORTY NIGHTS” — a phrase Matthew alone adds. Mark says “forty days” (1:13) and so does Luke (4:2). Matthew writes “forty days and forty nights,” which is the exact formula of Moses on the mountain: “he was there with Jehovah forty days and forty nights — bread he did not eat, and water he did not drink” (Exodus 34:28). ⚠ The detail is not decoration: Moses fasted forty days and forty nights and ate no bread, and the first thing said to Jesus after forty days and forty nights is “tell these stones to become loaves.” Elijah walked forty days and forty nights to the same mountain on the strength of one meal (1 Kings 19:8), and Israel was forty years in a wilderness “that he might make you know that the human does not live on bread alone” — which is the verse Jesus is about to quote. Three fasts and a nation stand behind one sentence.

⚠ “THESE stones” — the same stones John was pointing at. The Greek is hoi lithoi houtoi, and one chapter ago John told the Pharisees that God is able “from these stones” (ek tōn lithōn toutōn) to raise up children to Abraham (3:9). Same noun, same demonstrative, a wilderness full of them. John used the stones to say what God can make out of nothing; the tempter uses them to suggest what the Son might make for himself. ⚠ And note the attack: “IF you are the Son of God” is the first word spoken to Jesus by anyone in this Gospel after the voice from the heavens said “this is my beloved Son” (3:17). The tempter opens on the last thing God said.

“Not on bread alone shall THE HUMAN live.” Deuteronomy 8:3, and the Hebrew word is ha-adam — the human, humankind — which this library has rendered that way since Genesis 1, so the sentence is about the species and not about a gentleman. ⚠ One honest wrinkle: the Hebrew says “by everything that proceeds from the mouth of Jehovah” — there is no noun “word” in it. The Greek Old Testament supplied rhēmati, “word,” and Matthew quotes the Greek. The sense is not damaged (what proceeds from God’s mouth is speech), but a reader should know the famous phrase “every word” is the Greek’s contribution. KJV “Man shall not live by bread alone”; NWT “Man must live, not on bread alone.”

The devil quotes Scripture, and quotes it accurately — nearly. This is the second round, and it is the only one in which the tempter argues from a text. He cites Psalm 91:11–12, a psalm about the man who shelters in God, and he cites it almost word for word. ⚠ Almost. The Hebrew reads: “For he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” The devil goes straight from the first clause to the third and drops the middle one — and the dropped clause is precisely the one that would have answered him, because “in all your ways” means the roads God sets a man walking on, not a jump off a roof. The omission is the argument. A promise of protection on the way becomes, with four words removed, a guarantee for a stunt.

“The PINNACLE of the temple.” Pterygion is a diminutive of pteron, a wing — so “the little wing,” some projecting point or parapet of the temple complex; nobody knows which, and the guesses (the roof of the sanctuary, the corner above the Kidron drop) are guesses. ⚠ Worth noticing where they are: not a lonely place but “the holy city,” over a crowded court. The suggestion is not private suicide but a public landing — a Messiah who arrives by descending on the temple in front of witnesses. KJV “a pinnacle of the temple”; NIV “the highest point of the temple”; NWT “the battlement of the temple.”

“You shall not put the Lord your God TO THE TEST.” Deuteronomy 6:16, and the verb is the intensive ekpeirazō — the same root as the peirazō of verse 1, now pointed the other way: the tempter is testing Jesus, and Jesus says the one thing forbidden is for a man to test God. ⚠ Two details from the Hebrew. Deuteronomy adds “as you tested him at Massah” — and Massah is simply the Hebrew word for “testing,” the place named after the offence (Exodus 17:7), where thirsty Israel demanded proof that God was among them. And the Hebrew is plural, addressed to a nation (“you shall not test” = all of you); the Greek Jesus speaks is singular. He answers a personal invitation with a national commandment, made personal.

⚠ What the devil asks for is the exact word this library has been tracking since the magi. “If you will fall down and bow before me” — proskynēsēs moi. It is the third appearance of the verb in four chapters, and the three uses make a sequence: foreign astrologers bowed to a child (2:11); Herod lied about wanting to (2:8); and now the devil asks for it outright. ⚠ And Jesus answers with the one verse in the Law that says whom a person may bow to: “You shall bow before the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve.” Because this translation renders proskyneō the same way in every mouth, the exchange is visible in English — the request and the refusal use one word, and the whole argument is about its object.

⚠ The quotation is not quite Deuteronomy 6:13, and the difference is worth stating. The Hebrew reads “You shall FEAR Jehovah your God, and him shall you serve.” Jesus (with the Greek Old Testament) says bow before / worship rather than fear, and adds “alone”, which is not in the Hebrew of that verse though the Greek tradition carries it. ⚠ The library prints what Matthew wrote rather than harmonizing it back, and notes the seam: the added “alone” is the hinge of the reply, since the devil is not asking to replace God so much as to be added to him.

“GO AWAY, Satan!” Hypage Satana — two words, no argument attached beyond the citation, and the only time in the three rounds that Jesus addresses him by a name. ⚠ Matthew uses the phrase once more, and it lands on a friend: at 16:23, when Peter tells him he must not suffer, Jesus turns and says Hypage opisō mou, Satana — the same two words with “behind me” added. The words spoken to the tempter on the mountain are spoken again to the disciple who offers the same shortcut. ⚠ Note also what Jesus never disputes: the devil claims the kingdoms are his to give, and the reply does not argue the point.

“Then the devil LEAVES him… and angels were ministering to him.” Aphiēsin — a historic present (“leaves”), and the same verb Jesus used at the river when he told John to allow it and John allowed him (3:15). The angels the devil quoted a psalm about arrive after the test instead of during it, and they come to feed him — which is what an angel did for Elijah at the end of his forty days (1 Kings 19). Luke adds the ominous note that the devil left him “until an opportune time”; Matthew simply lets him go.

⚠ “He WITHDREW into Galilee” — the verb from the nativity, a fourth time. Anechōrēsen sounded four times in chapter 2 — the magi withdrew, Joseph withdrew to Egypt, and withdrew again to Galilee. Here the grown man does what the child was carried away to do, and for the same reason: a ruler has moved against the prophet. ⚠ The trigger is stated in one word, paredothē, “was handed over” — the verb Matthew will use again and again of Jesus himself (handed over by Judas, handed over to Pilate, handed over to be crucified). John's arrest is reported in the vocabulary of the passion, and the ministry begins when the forerunner is taken.

“Leaving NAZARA… settled in CAPERNAUM.” The spelling here is Nazara, not the Nazaret of 2:23 — a variant Matthew uses once, printed as he has it. Capernaum is the real change: a lakeside town on the trade road, in the old tribal territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, and from here on it is effectively his base. ⚠ He does not go back to the village; a man rejected in his home town moves to a customs post on a highway, which is where the crowds of verse 25 can reach him.

⚠ The Isaiah quotation, and its numbering. Matthew quotes what English Bibles print as Isaiah 9:1–2 — which in the Hebrew is 8:23 and 9:1, one of the offsets this library flags rather than hides. Two things in it repay attention. “Galilee of the nations” translates Hebrew gelil ha-goyim, and galil means a circuit or district — so the place-name GALILEE is, quite literally, “the District,” and Isaiah’s phrase is “the district of the nations,” the mixed borderland that had been overrun first. Matthew reads the Hebrew phrase as the proper name it became. ⚠ And where the Hebrew has the people “walking in darkness” (ha-holekhim), Matthew, following the Greek, has them “sitting” in it. Walking implies a journey; sitting implies having stopped. It is a small change and it darkens the verse before the light arrives in it.

⚠ The first sentence of the ministry is the Baptist’s sentence. “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has drawn near” — word for word, letter for letter, what John was saying at 3:2. Matthew does not paraphrase and does not comment; he simply lets the king begin with the herald’s line, immediately after reporting that the herald has been arrested for saying it. ⚠ “From then on” (apo tote) is one of Matthew’s structural markers — he uses it again at 16:21, where the message changes from the kingdom to the cross.

⚠ The two pairs are not equals, and the Greek says so with its nets. Simon and Andrew are “casting an amphiblēstron” (v18) — a circular hand-thrown casting net, weighted at the rim, worked by one man in the shallows. James and John are in a boat, with their father, mending diktya (vv 20–21), the general word for nets and the gear of a family business with hired hands (Mark adds the hired men). The vocabulary quietly draws two rungs of the same trade. This translation keeps them distinct — “a net” for the one thrown, “the nets” for the tackle left behind; the shelf mostly flattens both to “nets” (KJV “casting a net” then “their nets”; NIV the same).

“Come after me, and I will make you FISHERS OF MEN.” Mark has one extra word — “I will make you become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17) — and Matthew’s blunter form is printed here. ⚠ The image is not as comfortable as embroidery has made it: in the prophets, catching men in a net is usually a picture of judgment (Jeremiah 16:16; Amos 4:2; Habakkuk 1:14–17, where men are caught like fish and it is a horror). Whatever Jesus meant, his first hearers had a net in their hands and those texts in their ears, and the phrase would have landed with an edge on it.

“IMMEDIATELY” — twice, and it is the whole point of the paragraph. Eutheōs in verse 20 and again in verse 22, each time followed by what was left: the first pair leave the nets, the second leave the boat and their father. The list lengthens. ⚠ Matthew gives no back-story — no earlier meeting, no explanation of why four working men would do this (the Gospel of John has them meet him earlier, which is one way to account for it). Matthew wants the abruptness: a sentence, and a trade abandoned mid-cast. And “followed” (ēkolouthēsan) is the word that will define them for the rest of the book.

⚠ This sentence is a frame, and Matthew closes it five chapters later. “Teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness” — and at 9:35, after the Sermon and the miracles, Matthew writes this exact clause again — word for word in the Greek, unchanged. ⚠ Only the frame around it moves: “in all Galilee” becomes “all the cities and villages,” the subject “Jesus” is now named outright, and the closing “among the people” is dropped. The center holds exactly; the edges widen and trim (see the fuller note at 9:35). The repetition is deliberate architecture: everything between the two sentences is the demonstration of them. The teaching is chapters 5–7, the Sermon on the Mount; the healing is chapters 8–9. A reader who notices the bracket knows what the next five chapters are for before starting them.

“MOONSTRUCK.” Selēniazomenous, from selēnē, the moon — those thought to be afflicted by its phases, which is what antiquity made of the falling sickness. KJV reads “those which were lunatick,” the same idea by way of Latin luna; NIV and NWT modernize to “those having seizures” / “epileptics.” Mister keeps “moonstruck”: it is what the word says, and it preserves the ancient explanation the text is written inside rather than quietly replacing it with ours. ⚠ Note also that Matthew lists “demon-possessed and moonstruck and paralysed” as three separate categories — he is not equating them.

The map at the end of the chapter is the point of the chapter. The crowds come from Galilee, the Decapolis (ten Greek-speaking cities, largely Gentile), Jerusalem, Judea and beyond the Jordan — and the report runs into Syria, outside the land altogether. ⚠ Isaiah’s “Galilee of the nations” was quoted eight verses earlier; here the nations start arriving. The Gospel that began with foreign astrologers at a house in Bethlehem ends its first movement with a crowd from five regions and a rumour crossing a border.