Luke 4:1-13, The devil offers the kingdoms

Forty days in the wilderness recall Israel's forty years in Deuteronomy 8:2, and every one of Jesus' answers comes from that part of Deuteronomy (Keener's notes). Some magicians claimed they could turn one material into another. The devil's claim to delegated authority over the world fits Jewish ideas of his rule over the wicked nations, but the authority to delegate belonged in the end to God (Keener's notes). Keener's background commentary adds that Luke and his first readers would have taken the devil as a literal, personal being. Strauss, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary, notes that Luke's word for the world in 4:5 is the one often used of the Roman empire, which gives the offer a political edge, and that the Caesars made the same boast: Nero once said, "I have the power to take away kingdoms and to bestow them." The highest point of the temple is traditionally the Royal Portico at the southeast corner, above the Kidron Valley, whose dizzying height Josephus describes, and a later rabbinic tradition, perhaps not as old as the first century, says the Messiah will reveal himself standing on the temple roof (Strauss).