By its position in the sentence Son is emphatic. "If thou standest to God in the relation of Son."

Bread (ἄπτοι)

Lit., loaves or cakes. So Wyc., loaves. These stones were perhaps those "silicious accretions," which assume the exact shape of little loaves of bread, and which were represented in legend as the petrified fruits of the cities of the plain. By a similar fancy certain crystallizations on Mount Carmel and near Bethlehem are called "Elijah's melons," and the "Virgin Mary's peas;" and the black and white stones found along the shores of the Lake of Galilee have been transformed into traces of the tears of Jacob in search of Joseph. The very appearance of these stones, like the bread for which the faint body hungered, may have added force to the temptation. This resemblance may have been present to Christ's mind in his words at Matthew 7:9.

The perfect tense. "It has been written, and stands written." The first recorded words of Jesus after this entrance upon his ministry are an assertion of the authority of scripture, and that though he had the fulness of the Spirit. When addressing man, our Lord seldom quoted scripture, but said, I say unto you. In answer to Satan he says, It is written.

The preposition παρά (with, by the side of), implies taketh along with himself, or conducteth. It is the same word which all three evangelists use of our Lord's taking his chosen apostles to the Mount of Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:9; Luke 9:28).

The holy city

Matthew alone calls Jerusalem by this name, in accordance with the general intent of his gospel to connect the old economy with the new.

Pinnacle of the temple (τὸ πτερέγιον τοῦἱροῦ)

Pinnacle, from the Latin pinnaculum, a diminutive of pinna or penna (a wing), is a literal translation of πτερύγιον, which is also a diminutive (a little wing or winglet). Nothing in the word compels us to infer that Christ was placed on the top of a tower or spire, which is the popular meaning of pinnacle. The word may be used in the familiar English sense of the wing of a building. Herod's temple had two wings, the northern and southern, of which the southern was the higher and grander; that being the direction in which the chief enlargement of the temple area made by Herod was practicable. That enlargement, according to Josephus, was effected by building up walls of solid masonry from the valley below. At the extremity of the southern side of the area, was erected the "royal portico," a magnificent colonnade, consisting of a nave and two aisles, running across the entire space from the eastern to the western wall. Josephus further says, that "while the valley of itself was very deep, and its bottom could scarcely be seen when one looked down from above, the additional vastly high elevation of the portico was placed on that height, insomuch that, if any one looked down from the summit of the roof, combining the two altitudes in one stretch of vision, he would be giddy, while his sight could not reach to such an immense depth." This, in comparison with the northern wing, was so emphatically the wing of the temple as to explain the use of the article here, as a well-known locality. The scene of the temptation may have been (for the whole matter is mainly one of conjecture) the roof of this portico, at the southeastern angle, where it joined Solomon's Porch, and from which the view into the Kedron valley beneath was to the depth of four hundred and fifty feet.

The word temple (ἱερόν, lit., sacred place) signifies the whole compass of the sacred inclosure, with its porticos, courts, and other subordinate buildings; and should be carefully distinguished from the other word, ναός, also rendered temple, which means the temple itself - the "Holy Place" and the "Holy of Holies." When we read, for instance, of Christ teaching in the temple (ἱερόν)we must refer it to one of the temple-porches. So it is from the ἰερόν, the court of the Gentiles, that Christ expels the money-changers and cattle-merchants. In Matthew 27:51, it is the veil of the ναός which is rent; the veil separating the holy place from the holy of holies. In the account of Zacharias entering into the temple of the Lord to burn incense (Luke 1:9), the word is ναός, the holy place in which the altar of incense stood. The people were "without," in the fore-courts. In John 2:21, the temple of his body, ἱερόν, would be obviously inappropriate.

On their hands (so Rev.) is more correct, and gives a different picture from the A. V. in: lifted on their hands, as on a litter or platform.

Emphatic, meaning on the other hand, with reference to Satan's it is written (Matthew 4:6); as if he had said, "the promise which you quote must be explained by another passage of scripture." Archbishop Trench aptly remarks, "In that 'It is written again of Christ, lies a great lesson, quite independent of that particular scripture which, on this occasion, he quotes, or of the use to which he turns it. There lies in it the secret of our safety and defence against all distorted use of isolated passages in holy scripture. Only as we enter into the unity of scripture, as it balances, completes, and explains itself, are we warned against error and delusion, excess or defect on this side or the other. Thus the retort, 'It is written again,' must be of continual application; for indeed what very often are heresies but one-sided, exaggerated truths, truths rent away indeed from the body and complex of the truth, without the balance of the counter-truth, which should have kept them in their due place, co-ordinated with other truths or subordinated to them; and so, because all such checks are wanting, not truth any more, but error?