12:4 “I 14 tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, 15 and after that have nothing more they can do.
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 “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.
6 tn Grk “the”; in context the article is used as a possessive pronoun (ExSyn 215).
7 sn Mark 6:8 allows one staff. It might be that Luke’s summary (cf. Matt 10:9-10) means not taking an extra staff or that the expression is merely rhetorical for “traveling light” which has been rendered in two slightly different ways.
8 tn Or “no traveler’s bag”; or possibly “no beggar’s bag” (L&N 6.145; BDAG 811 s.v. πήρα).
9 tn Grk “have two tunics.” See the note on the word “tunics” in 3:11.
10 tn Or perhaps, “trample on” (which emphasizes the impact of the feet on the snakes). See L&N 15.226.
11 sn Snakes and scorpions are examples of the hostility in the creation that is defeated by Jesus. The use of battle imagery shows who the kingdom fights against. See Acts 28:3-6.
12 tn Or “I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and [authority] over the full force of the enemy.” The second prepositional phrase can be taken either as modifying the infinitive πατεῖν (patein, “to tread”) or the noun ἐξουσίαν (exousian, “power”). The former is to be preferred and has been represented in the translation.
sn The enemy is a reference to Satan (mentioned in v. 18).
13 tn This is an emphatic double negative in the Greek text.
14 tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.
15 sn Judaism had a similar exhortation in 4 Macc 13:14-15.
16 sn This man has done nothing wrong is yet another declaration that Jesus was innocent of any crime.