What Does Matthew 4:2 Mean?
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he hungered.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.THE KEY
The hunger Jesus feels after fasting is the same Greek hunger-word he uses for longing for alignment.
THE MEANING
The body in this verse feels hunger after an extended fast; the wilderness encounter does not erase bodily need. The verse leaves that need plainly visible alongside spiritual intensity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This dissolves the belief that spiritual intensity makes bodily need disappear.
THE ROOT
ἐπείνασεν
epeinasen
GROWS FROM
πειν-
pein-
Hunger; felt need for food.
“hungered” in this verse is epeinasen. This verb names bodily hunger, and its participial form also describes those who hunger for alignment in Matthew 5:6. The same word carries physical appetite into the language of longing, so the image keeps its bodily texture.
ALSO GROWS
peinaō: To hunger; to feel hunger.
πεινάω
This verb names the bodily state that follows the fast in this verse.
peinōntes: Those who hunger.
πεινῶντες
Matthew 5:6 uses this form for those who hunger for alignment, carrying the same bodily word into the language of longing.
peina: Hunger; famine.
πείνα
The noun names hunger as an ongoing condition, widening the root from a moment of appetite to felt deprivation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses hunger as both a body’s concrete need and language for inward longing.
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.For he sates the thirsting living soul, and fills the hungry living soul with goodness.Flourishing are those who hunger and thirst for alignment, for they are filled.THE THREAD
Flourishing are those who hunger and thirst for alignment, for they are filled.The Greek hunger-root πειν- (pein-, hunger) appears in both verses: here it names bodily hunger, and there it names longing for alignment. The shared word lets the later image keep the physical texture of need.
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