If thou be the Son of God. — In this case, as before, the temptation starts from the attestation of the character of Jesus as the Son of God. With this there is now joined an appeal to familiar and sacred words, and the subtlety of the Tempter lay in his perversion of their true meaning. Here, too, the words throw light on the previous spiritual life of the Son of Man. As in all analogous temptations (and the history would have but little significance or interest for us if it were not analogous to many human experiences) the words which were presented to the soul, with their true meaning obscured and perverted, must have been precisely those that had before been most precious. We can think of Him as having fed on those words, found in them the stay and comfort of His life, without ever dreaming (if one may venture so to speak) of putting them to the test by devices of His own imagining.
In their hands. — Better, on. The angelic hands are thought of as sustaining and up-bearing.