Worship & law
The forty-day fast
Before his ministry began, Jesus went into the wilderness and fasted for forty days and forty nights. Moses and Elijah also spent forty days with God. What does Jesus’s fast tell us about him?
1The question
Why did Jesus fast forty days, and how does his fast compare with the prophets’?
2What Christians believe
Christians answer that Jesus fasted to prepare for his ministry and to face temptation. Where Israel failed in the wilderness for forty years, Jesus stayed faithful for forty days, answering Satan each time with words from Deuteronomy.
Christians remember his fast in Lent, the forty days before Easter, though the way Christians fast in Lent varies widely between churches.
3What the texts say
Jesus in the wilderness
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Moses on the mountain
And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.
When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:
Elijah’s journey
And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.
4What scholars say
Commentators such as R. T. France (The Gospel of Matthew, 2007) note that Matthew tells the temptation story with echoes of Israel in the wilderness and of Moses on Sinai.
The Didache, an early Christian manual from around the end of the first century, tells believers to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, which shows that regular fasting was part of the earliest Christian life.
Scholars agree that forty days is a pattern in the Bible linked with Moses, Elijah and Israel’s forty years in the wilderness.
5The Islamic perspective
The Qur’an tells of Moses’ forty nights with his Lord, and prescribes fasting for believers as it was prescribed for those before them:
And when We did appoint for Moses thirty nights (of solitude), and added to them ten, and he completed the whole time appointed by his Lord of forty nights; and Moses said unto his brother, Aaron: Take my place among the people. Do right, and follow not the way of mischief-makers.
O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you, even as it was prescribed for those before you, that ye may ward off (evil);
Muslims fast every year in Ramadan, from dawn to sunset for a month, and many fast on other days too. They see Jesus’s fast as part of the same path of the prophets: drawing near to God by giving up food and drink for his sake.
6Objections and responses
“Jesus’s fast was unique: he was preparing to defeat Satan.”
Response: Moses also fasted forty days before receiving God’s Law (Exodus 34:28), and Elijah went forty days to the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:8). Jesus followed the same pattern as the prophets before him.
“Christians do not have to fast in a fixed way.”
Response: That is true for most churches today. But the earliest Christians fasted on fixed days each week, as the Didache shows. Muslims keep a fixed fast, which is closer to the practice of Jesus’s first followers.
7Conclusion
Both sides agree that Jesus fasted forty days, as Moses had before him. Christians see a Son who succeeded where Israel failed. Muslims see a prophet walking the same path of fasting and devotion that the prophets walked, and that Muslims follow in Ramadan.
Read Matthew 4:1–11 and Exodus 34:27–35 together.
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Sources
- Bible, King James Version:Matthew 4:1Matthew 4:2Exodus 34:28Deuteronomy 9:91 Kings 19:8
- Qur’an, translated by M. Pickthall:Qur’an 7:142Qur’an 2:183
- R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (2007)
- The Didache, chapter 8