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Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert, for forty days being put to the test by the devil. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry. Then the devil said to him, “If you are Son of God, tell this stone to turn into a loaf.” But Jesus replied, “Scripture says,
Human beings live not on bread alone.
Jesus started his public ministry with a vision quest that emphasized the continuity between his project and the great story of the Exodus: 40 days in the desert, reminding the readers of the scripture accounts of the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness leaving Egypt. Furthermore, he fasts for these same 40 days, bringing to mind Moses’ forty-day fast recounted in Deuteronomy 9:18. There is no human witness to these events other than Jesus, whom we must assume was the original reporter. It follows, therefore, that these descriptions of times and events, and the others which we will explore, were chosen by Jesus for their symbolic value. Jesus wants us to make the sort of connections we will explore. It is the point of the episode.
After 40 years of wandering, the Israelites came out of the desert and into: Canaan - a vassal state of Egypt. Yahweh liberated them from the power of Pharaoh, led them on a 40-year spiritual purification trek, and delivered them across the Jordan - through the back door, as it were - into Canaan, a nation-state that paid tribute to Egypt and was part of the Egyptian empire. They were back in Egypt!
Yahweh’s point, it seems, was not to help the Israelites escape bodily from Egypt, but to
liberate them by teaching them how to be non-Egyptian in Egypt. This is still GodŐs project today:
to teach us how to lead a Kingdom life in a non-Kingdom world.
Last Modified: 5.26.03