Luke 4:2

4:2 where for forty days he endured temptations 1  from the devil. He 2  ate nothing 3  during those days, and when they were completed, 4  he was famished.

Luke 6:1

Lord of the Sabbath

6:1 Jesus 5  was going through the grain fields on 6  a Sabbath, 7  and his disciples picked some heads of wheat, 8  rubbed them in their hands, and ate them. 9 

1 tn Grk “in the desert, for forty days being tempted.” The participle πειραζόμενος (peirazomeno") has been translated as an adverbial clause in English to avoid a run-on sentence with a second “and.” Here the present participle suggests a period of forty days of testing. Three samples of the end of the testing are given in the following verses.

2 tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

3 sn The reference to Jesus eating nothing could well be an idiom meaning that he ate only what the desert provided; see Exod 34:28. A desert fast simply meant eating only what one could obtain in the desert. The parallel in Matt 4:2 speaks only of Jesus fasting.

4 tn The Greek word here is συντελεσθείσων (suntelesqeiswn) from the verb συντελέω (suntelew).

sn This verb and its cognate noun, sunteleia, usually implies not just the end of an event, but its completion or fulfillment. The noun is always used in the NT in eschatological contexts; the verb is often so used (cf. Matt 13:39, 40; 24:3; 28:20; Mark 13:4; Rom 9:28; Heb 8:8; 9:26). The idea here may be that the forty-day period of temptation was designed for a particular purpose in the life of Christ (the same verb is used in v. 13). The cognate verb teleiow is a key NT term for the completion of God’s plan: See Luke 12:50; 22:37; John 19:30; and (where it has the additional component of meaning “to perfect”) Heb 2:10; 5:8-9; 7:28.

5 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

6 tn Grk “Now it happened that on.” The introductory phrase ἐγένετο (egeneto, “it happened that”), common in Luke (69 times) and Acts (54 times), is redundant in contemporary English and has not been translated.

7 tc Most later mss (A C D Θ Ψ [Ë13] Ï lat) read ἐν σαββάτῳ δευτεροπρώτῳ (en sabbatw deuteroprwtw, “a second-first Sabbath”), while the earlier and better witnesses have simply ἐν σαββάτῳ (Ì4 א B L W Ë1 33 579 1241 2542 it sa). The longer reading is most likely secondary, though various explanations may account for it (for discussion, see TCGNT 116).

8 tn Or “heads of grain.” While the generic term στάχυς (stacus) can refer to the cluster of seeds at the top of grain such as barley or wheat, in the NT the term is restricted to wheat (L&N 3.40; BDAG 941 s.v. 1).

9 tn Grk “picked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands.” The participle ψώχοντες (ywconte") has been translated as a finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style, and the order of the clauses has been transposed to reflect the logical order, which sounds more natural in English.