God tempted Abraham, and God tempts no one

The Skeptic's Annotated Bible files Genesis 22:1 under the question "Has God ever tempted anyone?" against James 1:13, and adds 2 Samuel 24:1, where God moves David to number the people, and the line in the Lord's Prayer about not being led into temptation. Its comment on the prayer is that it "wouldn't be necessary if God never tempts anyone." At full strength the case is about more than a verb: God arranges situations in which people can fail, and calling that a test does not change what it is.

The ESV Study Bible says testing must be clearly distinguished from tempting: God tests the commitment of people, as at Exodus 15:25 and 16:4, but tempts no one to do evil. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible locates the difference in motive. Jewish texts, it says, distinguished God testing people in love and seeking their good from Satan testing them to make them fall. MacArthur reads James the same way: one Greek word gives trials in verses 2 to 12 and tempted in verse 13, and the circumstance either strengthens the believer or becomes a solicitation to evil, depending on how he responds.

The diagnosis explains the English. It does not answer the skeptic's wider point. Hebrew and Greek both use one word for the test and the lure, so the original still asks what God intends by a test a person might fail, and the harmonizing case answers from motive, which the verb alone does not supply. 2 Samuel 24:1, set beside 1 Chronicles 21:1, is a separate claim and is not settled here.

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