And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.
fasted.
Exodus 24:18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
Exodus 34:28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
Deuteronomy 9:9,18,25 When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water: …
he was.
Matthew 21:18 Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered.
Mark 11:12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:
John 4:6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.
He was hungry
This phrase emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, showing that He experienced physical needs and limitations like any other human. It underscores the reality of the Incarnation, where Jesus, though fully divine, took on human flesh and its accompanying frailties (Philippians 2:7-8). The hunger also sets the stage for the subsequent temptation by Satan, where Jesus' physical weakness contrasts with His spiritual strength and reliance on God's Word. This moment foreshadows Jesus' role as the Bread of Life (John 6:35), who provides spiritual nourishment to those who believe in Him.
• “After fasting” signals deliberate preparation. Jesus did not stumble into the wilderness; He was led there by the Spirit (Matthew 4:1).
• Fasting in Scripture is tied to wholehearted dependence on God. Moses fasted when receiving the Law (Exodus 34:28), and believers are taught, “When you fast, do not be somber like the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:16–18).
• The fast follows His baptism (Matthew 3:13–17), showing a pattern: public affirmation, then private testing.
• Luke’s parallel account confirms the same forty-day fast (Luke 4:2), underscoring its historical reality.
• The exact period mirrors other pivotal “forty”s: rain in Noah’s flood (Genesis 7:12), Israel’s forty years in the wilderness (Numbers 14:33), Elijah’s forty-day journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8). Each episode precedes fresh revelation or covenant renewal.
• Forty marks a complete span of testing; it is neither symbolic only nor embellished. Scripture presents it as literal, and Jesus affirms that pattern by living it.
• Deuteronomy 8:2–3 explains Israel’s forty-year test: “to humble you and test you... that man does not live on bread alone.” Jesus will quote this very passage in the next verse, linking His fast to Israel’s story.
• Night is included so no part of the period is excluded; the emphasis is on totality—continuous dependence without earthly sustenance.
• The statement is straightforward: after such prolonged abstinence, true physical hunger set in. Mark 11:12 shows a similar glimpse of Jesus’ humanity: “The next day, when they had left Bethany, Jesus was hungry.”
• Hunger here is not weakness but identification. Hebrews 4:15 comforts us: “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin.”
• The genuine hunger magnifies the coming temptation (Matthew 4:3). Satan targets the real need, but Jesus trusts the Father rather than misuse divine power.
• John 4:6 notes, “Jesus, tired from His journey, sat down by the well.” The Gospels repeatedly show His physical limits, underscoring that the eternal Son truly took on flesh (Philippians 2:6–8).
Matthew 4:2 reports literal facts with profound meaning: Jesus voluntarily fasted, embracing the classic forty-day testing span, and experienced authentic hunger. In doing so He aligned Himself with Israel’s wilderness story, fulfilled righteous patterns set by Moses and Elijah, and demonstrated perfect reliance on the Father. This verse sets the stage for His victory over temptation and assures us that our Savior fully understands human weakness while remaining wholly obedient to God.
(2) Forty days and forty nights.--Here we have an obvious parallelism with the fasts of Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah (1Kings 19:8), and we may well think of it as deliberately planned. Prolonged fasts of nearly the same extent have been recorded in later times. The effect of such a fast on any human organism, and therefore on our Lord's real humanity, would be to interrupt the ordinary continuity of life, and quicken all perceptions of the spiritual world into a new intensity. It may be noted that St. Luke describes the Temptation as continuing through the whole period, so that what is recorded was but the crowning conflict, gathering into one the struggles by which it had been preluded. The one feature peculiar to St. Mark (who omits the specific history of the temptations), that our Lord "was with the wild beasts" (Mark 1:13). suggests that their presence, their yells of hunger, their ravening fierceness, their wild glaring eyes, had left, as it were, an ineffable and ineffaceable impression of horror, in addition to the terrors and loneliness of the wilderness as such.He was afterward an hungred.--The words imply a partial return to the common life of sensation. The cravings of the body at last made themselves felt, and in them, together with the memory of the divine witness that had been borne forty days before, the Tempter found the starting-point of his first attack. Of that attack there may well have been preludes during the previous time of trial. Now it came more distinctly.
Verse 2. - And when he had fasted... he was afterwards an hungred. He was so absorbed in prayer that it was only after his six weeks meditation that he felt the need of food. But though his humanity had been elevated and his spiritual sense quickened by this at the time almost unconscious fast, it left him physically prostrate and completely exposed to attack. "In certain morbid conditions, which involve a more or less entire abstinence from food, a period of six weeks generally brings about a crisis, after which the demand for nourishment is renewed with extreme urgency. The exhausted body becomes a prey to a deathly sinking. Such, doubtless, was the condition of Jesus; he felt himself dying. It was the moment the tempter had waited for to make his decisive assault" (Godet). Luke (cf. Mark?) probably (though not in the Revised Version) represents the temptation as continuous during the whole period. Of this Matthew says nothing, but only describes the final scenes, when the might of the tempter was felt to the uttermost, and his defeat was most crucial. Forty. Trench's remark is well worth study: "On a close examination we note it to be everywhere there [i.e. in Holy Scripture] the number or signature of penalty, of affliction, of the confession, or the punishment, of sin (Studies, p. 14). Nights. The mention of nights as well as days brings out more vividly the continuance and the completeness of the abstinence (cf Genesis 7:4, 12 [17, LXX.]; Exodus 24:18; Deuteronomy 9, especially 18; 1 Kings 19:8).