Matthew 4:4 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

It is written. — The words of all the three answers to the Tempter come from two Chapter s of Deuteronomy, one of which (Deuteronomy 6) supplied one of the passages (6:4-9) for the phylacteries or frontlets worn by devout Jews. The fact is every way suggestive. A prominence was thus given to that portion of the book, which made it an essential part of the education of every Israelite. The words which our Lord now uses had, we must believe, been familiar to Him from His childhood, and He had read their meaning rightly. With them He may have sustained the faith of others in the struggles of the Nazareth home with poverty and want. And now He finds in them a truth which belongs to His high calling as well as to His life of lowliness. “Not by bread only doth man live, but by the word, i.e., the will, of God.” He can leave His life and all that belongs to it in His Father’s hands. In so losing His life, if that should be the issue, He is certain that He shall save it. If His Father has given Him a work to do, He will enable Him to fulfil it. As this act of faith throws us back on the training of the childhood, so we trace its echoes in the after-teaching of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-32), of Matthew 10:39, yet more in that of John 6. The experience of the wilderness clothed the history of the bread from heaven with a new significance.