Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan. (The evidence for the insertion here of the words opisoo (G3694) mou (G3450) - 'behind me,'-and the omission of them in Luke 4:8, is nearly equal; but perhaps the received text in both places has slightly the better support.) Since the tempter has now thrown off the mask, and stands forth in his true character, our Lord no longer deals with him as a pretended friend and pious counselor, but calls him by his right name-His knowledge of which from the outset He had carefully concealed until now-and orders him off. This is the final and conclusive evidence, as we think, that Matthew's must be the right order of temptations. For who can well conceive of tempter's returning to the assault after this, in the pious character again, and hoping still to dislodge the consciousness of His Sonship; while our Lord must in that case be supposed to quote Scripture to one He had called the Devil to his face-thus throwing His pearls before worse than swine?
For it is written (Deuteronomy 6:13): Thus does our Lord part with Satan on the rock of Scripture, "Thou shalt worship." In the Hebrew and Septuagint it is, "Thou shalt fear;" but as the sense is the same, so "worship" is here used to show emphatically that what the tempter claimed was precisely what God had forbidden.
The Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. The word "serve" х latreuseis (G3000)], in the second clause, is one never used by the Septuagint of any but religious service; and in this sense exclusively is it used in the New Testament, as we find it here. Once more the word "only," in the second clause-not expressed in the Hebrew and Septuagint-is here added to bring out emphatically the negative and prohibitory feature of the command. (See Galatians 3:10 for a similar supplement of the word "all," in a quotation from Deuteronomy 27:26).