Bible Commentaries
Matthew 4

Verse 1

4:1 Then was {1} Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

(1) Christ is tempted in all manner of ways, and still overcomes, that we also through his virtue may overcome.

Verse 2

4:2 And when he had fasted {a} forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

(a) A full forty days.

Verse 5

4:5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a {b} pinnacle of the temple,

(b) The battlement which encompassed the flat roof of the Temple so that no man might fall down: as was appointed by the law; De 22:8 .

Verse 7

4:7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not {c} tempt the Lord thy God.

(c) Literally, "Thou shalt not go on still in tempting."

Verse 12

4:12 {2} Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;

(2) When the Herald’s mouth is stopped, the Lord reveals himself and brings full light into the darkness of this world, preaching free forgiveness of sins for those that repent.

Verse 13

4:13 And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in {d} Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim:

(d) Which was a town a great deal more famous than Nazareth was.

Verse 15

4:15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, [by] the way of the {e} sea, beyond Jordan, {f} Galilee of the Gentiles;

(e) Of Tiberias, or because that country went toward Tyre, which borders the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

(f) So called because it bordered upon Tyre and Sidon, and because Solomon gave the king of Tyre twenty cities in that quarter; 1 Kings 9:11 .

Verse 17

4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at {g} hand.

(g) Is come to you.

Verse 18

4:18 {3} And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

(3) Christ, thinking that he would eventually depart from us, even at the beginning of his preaching gets himself disciples of a heavenly sort, poor and unlearned, and therefore such as might be left as honest witnesses of the truth of those things which they heard and saw.

Verse 23

4:23 And {4} Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in {h} their {i} synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the {k} kingdom, and healing {l} all manner of sickness and all manner of {m} disease among the people.

(4) Christ assures the hearts of the believers of his spiritual and saving virtue, by healing the diseases of the body.

(h) Their, that is, the Galilaeans.

(i) Synagogues, that is, the Churches of the Jews.

(k) Of the Messiah.

(l) Diseases of all kinds, but not every disease: that is, as we say, some of every kind.

(m) The word properly signifies the weakness of the stomach: but here it is taken for those diseases which make those that have them faint and wear away.

Verse 24

4:24 And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and {n} torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were {o} lunatick, and those that had the {p} palsy; and he healed them.

(n) The word signifies properly the stone with which gold is tried: and by a borrowed kind of speech, is applied to all kinds of examinations by torture, when as by rough dealing and torments, we draw out the truths from men who otherwise would not confess: in this place it is taken for those diseases, which put sick men to great woe.

(o) Who at every full moon or the change of the moon, are troubled and diseased.

(p) Weak and feeble men, who have the parts of their body loosed and so weakened, that they are neither able to gather them up together, nor do with them as they wish.