Matthew 4:10

10 . Get thee hence, Satan ] It is instructive to find these words addressed to Peter (ch. Matthew 16:23 ) when he put himself as it were in the place of the tempter. See note ad loc . him only shalt thou serve ] Deuteronomy 6:10-13 . Idolatry, multiplicity of aims, and forgetfulness of God are the dangers of prosperity and ambition. See context of passage in Deut.

Matthew 4:10 . Then saith Jesus, Get thee hence, Satan — The expression, Υπαγε , Σατανα , plainly expresses Christ’s authority over Satan, as well as his detestation of so vile a suggestion: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, &c. — It would therefore be unlawful to worship thee, who art no other than a mere creature, even though thou wast indeed his deputy on earth; and how much more then must it be so, as thou art, in reality, the great avowed enemy of God and man! for such, under all thy disguise, I well know thee to be. It appears from these words, that religious worship, or service, is due to God alone, and cannot be lawfully given to a creature. From whence we must infer, that Christ is not a mere creature: for all men are to honour him, even as they honour the Father, John 5:23 . And all the angels of God are commanded to worship him, Hebrews 1:6 : and it is given as the character of all Christians, 1 Corinthians 1:2 , that they call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord: and Colossians 3:24 , That they serve the Lord Christ. As to the answer made by some to this irrefragable argument in favour of our Lord’s divinity, it appears from this very passage to have no weight in it.

God alone say they, is to be worshipped as the first and principal cause of all things, and the chief author of our salvation; but yet, religious worship and service may be paid to Christ, as the intermediate cause of that salvation which God, by him, hath revealed and brought to us. For as there are no footsteps of this distinction in the holy Scriptures, so it is plain that our Lord’s reply to Satan here entirely condemns it. The devil, it is manifest, did not require to be worshipped by Jesus as the original cause and supreme governor of the world. He frankly owns that all the power he had over the kingdoms of the earth was given to him. He claims, therefore, only a subordinate worship; and yet our Lord rejects his claim, not on the ground of his being a liar and usurper, who had no such power, and therefore had no right to any such worship; but on the ground of God only having a right to any kind of religious worship, saying, in the words of Moses, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him ONLY shalt thou serve. Christ, therefore, cannot be worshipped lawfully, if he be not God as well as man.

Matthew 4:10 . ὕπαγε σατανᾶ . Jesus passionately repels the Satanic suggestion. The ὕπαγε σ . is true to His character. The suggestions of worldly wisdom always roused in Him passionate aversion. The ὀπίσω μου of some MSS. does not suit this place; it is imported from Matthew 16:23 , where it does suit, the agent of Satan in a temptation of the same sort being a disciple. Christ’s final word to the tempter is an absolute, peremptory Begone. Yet He condescends to support His authoritative negative by a Scripture text, again from Deut. ( Matthew 6:13 ), slightly adapted, προσκυνήσεις being substituted for φοβηθήσῃ (the μόνῳ in second clause is omitted in Swete’s Sept[15]). It takes the accusative here instead of dative, as in Matthew 4:9 , because it denotes worship proper (Weiss-Meyer). The quotation states a principle in theory acknowledged by all, but how hard to work it out faithfully in life! [15] Septuagint.

10. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan—Since the tempter has now thrown off the mask, and stands forth in his true character, our Lord no longer deals with him as a pretended friend and pious counsellor, but calls him by his right name—His knowledge of which from the outset He had carefully concealed till now—and orders him off. This is the final and conclusive evidence, as we think, that Matthew's must be the right order of the temptations. For who can well conceive of the tempter's returning to the assault after this, in the pious character again, and hoping still to dislodge the consciousness of His Sonship, while our Lord must in that case be supposed to quote Scripture to one He had called the devil to his face—thus throwing His pearls before worse than swine? for it is written—(De 6:13). Thus does our Lord part with Satan on the rock of Scripture. Thou shalt worship—In the Hebrew and the Septuagint it is, "Thou shalt fear"; but as the sense is the same, so "worship" is here used to show emphatically that what the tempter claimed was precisely what God had forbidden. the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve—The word "serve" in the second clause, is one never used by the Septuagint of any but religious service; and in this sense exclusively is it used in the New Testament, as we find it here.

(10) Get thee hence, Satan.—Once more the answer to the Tempter was found in the words of the Tephillim and the lessons of childhood. No evidence of power could change the eternal laws of duty. There came to the Son of Man the old command, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,” as an oracle from heaven, and this, rather than an attempt to refute the claim of sovereignty, was that on which He took His stand. Others, dealing with the same temptation, as the writers of the Book of Job and of Psalms 73, have discussed the question of the apparent triumph of evil in the world’s history, and have pointed to its ultimate downfall, to the sure though slow retribution which even that history records, to the redress of the anomalies of this life in a life beyond the grave. Here we have a truer and simpler answer. Even though they cannot solve the problem, the true wisdom of men who follow in the footsteps of Christ is to recognise that their allegiance is due to God and to Him only. Here, once more, the truth thus affirmed reappears later on. When the chief of the Apostles sought to turn his Master from the appointed path of suffering, he was met, as renewing the same form of temptation which had been thus resisted, with the self-same words. Even Peter had to hear himself rebuked with “Get thee behind me, Satan” ( Matthew 16:23 ).

The use of the formula here, for the first time in the conflict, is significant as implying that in the previous temptations Evil had presented itself in disguise, making sins of distrust appear as acts of faith, while now it showed itself in its naked and absolute antagonism to the divine will.

Matthew 4:10 . Ὕπαγε , depart) “Get thee behind Me, Satan ” said the Lord to Peter, when he took Him and endeavoured to dissuade Him from undergoing His passion; thus commanding Peter to retire into the proper place of a disciple, i.e. , behind Him. But to Satan He said, Depart, Satan: go, not behind Me, but plainly from Me.— Σατανᾶ , Satan) q.d . “Thou hast tried to discover who I am, and I tell thee who thou art.” He calls the tempter, when he wished to appear specially gracious to Him, Satan .[143]— Κύριον — προσκυνήσεις , κ . τ . λ ., Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve ) In Deuteronomy 6:13 , the LXX. have Κύριον — φοβηθήσῃ , κ . τ . λ ., Thou shalt fear the Lord , etc. Jesus substitutes worship aptly for fear .—Cf. Matthew 4:9 .— μόνῳ , only, alone ) Thus the LXX. have it, who have inserted μόνος also in Genesis 3:11 ; Genesis 3:17 , without doing violence to the meaning. [143] For he had plainly showed, by his pride, that he was Satan.— Vers. Germ .

Matthew 4:10 . Ὕπαγε ] The spurious words ὀπίσω μου would have to be explained: go behind me —that is, go back that I may see thee no longer! ἀφανίσθητι , Euth. Zigabenus. ὀπίσω with the genitive belongs to the LXX. and the Apocrypha, after the Hebrew, אַחֲרֵי פ׳ ; in this way the Greeks construe ὄπισθεν . σατανᾶ ] to infer from this that Jesus now for the first time (too late) recognises Satan (de Wette), is arbitrary, and opposed to the representation of the matter in Matthew 4:1 , according to which Jesus cannot have been unaware of the intention of the Holy Spirit, who impelled Him to go into the wilderness. That He now calls Satan by name, is in keeping with the growing intensity of the emotion in general, as well as with the personal address of the tempter in Matthew 4:9 . “Tentatorem, quuni is maxime favere videri vult, Satanam appellat,” Bengel. κύριον , κ . τ . λ .] Jehovah alone shalt thou worship, do homage to Him only as thy master. Deuteronomy 6:13 , according to the LXX., freely applied to the proposal of Satan.” According to this arrangement, it is by the way of obedience to God that Jesus is aware that He will attain to the government of the world. John 18:36 ; Php 2:6 ff.; Matthew 28:18 ; Acts 10:36 ff.

As this was of all the three the most impudent temptation, so our Lord receiveth it with the highest detestation, saying, Get thee hence, Satan by which words he doth not only show his detestation of this temptation, but also chides him off from any further tempting him. The sense is, Satan, I know better things, viz. that a religious adoration is not to be given unto any but unto God alone. Thou art a creature; no worship is due unto thee: to worship before thee (so Luke phrases it, Luke 4:7 ) is to worship thee. This is expressly contrary to the command of God, Deu 6:13 10:20 . It is also observable, that our Saviour opposeth this to the devil’s words, ean pesuyn proskunhshv moi, if thou falling down wilt worship me; and that Christ answers, Ton Yeos sou proskunhseis kai autw latreuseiv; which shows the idleness of the papists’ distinction of doulia and latreia; the first of which they say may be given to the creature, the second only unto God; by which they justify their veneration of images. The using a posture of adoration before the creature in an act of worship, Christ here interprets a worshipping the creature, if the creature either exacts it of us, or we purposely set it before us, or choose it as an object exciting or moving us to such an act of adoration, which the papists do.