What Does Luke 4:2 Mean in the King James?
Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The testing spans the forty days, but hunger is named afterward, so pressure and bodily need move on different clocks.
THE MEANING
You can see testing and bodily need held in the same human life: the pressure continues through the forty days, and hunger becomes explicit when they end. The Slanderer’s presence does not make the body’s need unreal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that endurance or spiritual testing makes bodily need unreal: hunger remains when the days end.
THE ROOT
πειραζόμενος
peirazomenos
GROWS FROM
πειράζω
peirazō
To test or put someone through a trial.
“tempted” in this verse is peirazomenos. The Greek word holds the sense of testing alongside temptation, letting the pressure be read as both trial and temptation. Its ongoing form places that pressure across the forty days, while the verse names hunger afterward.
ALSO GROWS
peirasmos: Trial, test, or temptation.
πειρασμός
This related word carries the same range of pressure, making visible what the English word can hold within it.
peirazōn: One who tests or tempts.
πειράζων
The form names the one applying the test, linking the ongoing pressure here with the figure identified as the Slanderer.
διάβολος
diabolos
GROWS FROM
διαβάλλω
diaballō
To slander or accuse; to set someone at variance through accusation.
“devil” in this verse is diabolos. The name carries the work of slander and accusation. The verse places that pressure beside real human vulnerability: the person being tested still hungers.
ALSO GROWS
diaballō: To slander or accuse.
διαβάλλω
This verb reveals the action inside the name: the Slanderer works through accusation.
diabolē: Slander or accusation.
διαβολή
This related noun makes the accusatory character of the pressure explicit.
THE PATTERN
A test becomes concrete where human need and vulnerability are exposed to pressure.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.THE THREAD
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.Hebrews uses the same peirazō word family for being tempted. It opens Luke’s brief account into a shared human vulnerability while holding apart being tested and missing the mark.
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