The temptation narrative follows Jesus’s baptism and continues the focus on the preparation of Jesus for his public ministry. On the level of Matthew’s communication with the reader, he continues to emphasize Jesus’s identity as God’s obedient Son—Jesus as Israel’s representative.

God’s Spirit has descended on Jesus at his baptism. Now the Spirit leads Jesus into the desert, where he will be tempted by the devil (also referred to here as the tempter and Satan). By indicating the setting of the temptations in the desert (4:1), Matthew ties Jesus’s temptation to the testing of Israel in the wilderness. The parallel “forty days and forty nights” to Israel’s forty-year wilderness wanderings confirms this connection, which Matthew highlights through Jesus’s citation from Deuteronomy in respon…