1Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2When he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry afterward. 3The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
4But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of God’s mouth.’”
5Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and,
‘On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’”
7Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’”
8Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will fall down and worship me.”
10Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’”
11Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him.
12Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee. 13Leaving Nazareth, he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying,
15“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
toward the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles,
16the people who sat in darkness saw a great light;
to those who sat in the region and shadow of death,
to them light has dawned.”
17From that time, Jesus began to preach, and to say, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
18Walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers: Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. 19He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers for men.”
20They immediately left their nets and followed him. 21Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them. 22They immediately left the boat and their father, and followed him.
23Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness among the people. 24The report about him went out into all Syria. They brought to him all who were sick, afflicted with various diseases and torments, possessed with demons, epileptics, and paralytics; and he healed them. 25Great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan followed him.
The Temptations of Jesus (4:1-11)
Pinnacle of the Temple (4:5) In Matthew’s account of the temptation of Jesus he says, “Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple…” (NKJV). Finegan says that “πτερύγιον,” usually translated “pinnacle” here, is literally “little wing” and usually referred to “the tip or extremity of anything, hence the edge or the summit.”[1] Josephus, in his account of the temple says,
"but the fourth front of the temple, which was southward, had indeed itself gates in its middle, as also it had the royal cloisters, with three walks, which reached in length from the east valley unto that on the west, for it was impossible it should reach any farther and this cloister deserves to be mentioned better than any other under the sun; for while the valley was very deep, and its bottom could not be seen, if you looked from above into the depth, this farther vastly high elevation of the cloister stood upon that height, insomuch that if anyone looked down from the top of the battlements, or down both those altitudes, he would be giddy, while his sight could not reach to such an immense depth."[2]
Hence, Finegan concludes this must be where Jesus was in Matthew’s account. It would have been the southeastern corner of the temple mount itself, above the Kidron valley, on top of the building known as the Royal Portico. Today, the ground level has risen due to centuries of destruction and rebuilding, but when Warren dug a shaft down from that corner of the temple mount, he had to go down 106 feet below the elevation of the average level of the temple area to get to the bottom of Herod’s foundation blocks.[3] Josephus says the Royal Portico that once stood on the temple mount at this spot was fifty feet high.[4] This height, combined with the depth of the Kidron valley, makes it understandable why Josephus says that the view from this spot would make someone “giddy” and why Satan would have chosen this spot to tempt Jesus.
Later Christian tradition says James, the brother of Jesus, was martyred by being thrown off the pinnacle of the temple as well.[5] He was said to have been buried at the spot where he died. Although now known to belong to the family of Bene Hezir, a monumental tomb almost exactly opposite the south-east corner of the Temple Mount was known as the Tomb of James. If James was thrown off this corner, Finegan says, “…it would not have been difficult to imagine that that tomb was the monument to James.”[6]
Associate picture “Matt 4_5-Fig1-Pinnacle of the Temple”
See also Kidron Valley Tombs; Royal Portico
[1]Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 204.
[2]Flavius Josephus Ant 15.411-412. (William Whiston, trans., The Works of Josephus : Complete and Unabridged, Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996, c1987).
[3] Charles William Wilson and Charles Warren, The Recovery of Jerusalem, (London: Richard Bently, 1871),150.
[4] Flavius Josephus Ant 15.415.
[5]Eusebius, Church History, 2.23.12-18 (NPNF 2.1.126).
[6]Jack Finegan, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 308.