The chapter
Simply Jesus spends forty days in the desert being tested, and answers each test with a line of scripture. He goes back to Galilee, and in his own town he reads from Isaiah in the synagogue and says the passage has come true today. The room turns on him within nine verses and tries to throw him off a cliff. He walks out through them, and in the next town he teaches, silences a demon, cures Simon's mother-in-law and heals until sunset.
Context This chapter is where the book states its own programme, and it does it twice: once by quoting Isaiah at verses 18 and 19, and once by naming the two people Elijah and Elisha were sent to, both of them foreigners. The reaction in the synagogue is not to the reading, which they admire at verse 22, but to those two examples at verses 25 to 27. The chapter is also the first place where the book shows its habit of ending a scene somewhere other than where the parallel accounts end it.
Verses 1-13
Simply The devil tests him three times: turn a stone into bread, take all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for worship, and jump from the top of the temple because scripture promises angels will catch you. Jesus answers all three with scripture. The devil leaves him, the text says, until another time.
Context Matthew 4 has the same three tests in a different order, and both books can be opened here and compared. Here it is bread, then the kingdoms, then the temple; at Matthew 4:5 to 9 it is bread, then the temple, then the kingdoms. So the two accounts end in different places: this one finishes in Jerusalem, on the temple, which is the city this book will end in and the building it opened in at 1:9. Verse 13 is the other thing to notice. The devil goes away UNTIL ANOTHER TIME, and he does nothing in this story again until 22:3, where Satan enters Judas. He is talked about in between, at 8:12, 10:18, 11:18 and 13:16, but he does not act.
Verses 14-30
Simply In the synagogue at Nazareth he reads from Isaiah about being anointed to bring good news to the poor, release to prisoners and sight to the blind, then sits down and says the passage has been fulfilled today, while they listen. At first they admire him and ask whether he is not Joseph's son. Then he reminds them that in the famine Elijah was sent to one widow, a foreigner, and that Elisha cleansed one leper, a Syrian. They drive him out of town to throw him off a hill, and he walks away through the middle of them.
Context The reading stops in the middle of a sentence, and the stop is the point. Isaiah 61:2, which can be opened here, reads THE YEAR OF FAVOUR AND THE DAY OF VENGEANCE OF OUR GOD. Verse 19 ends at the year of favour and closes the book. The quotation also does not match the Isaiah served in this app word for word, and this file reports that rather than explaining it, because which text was being read is a manuscript question the corpus cannot settle. The two examples he gives can both be opened too: 1 Kings 17:9 sends Elijah to Zarephath in Sidon, and 2 Kings 5:1 makes Naaman the commander of a Syrian army. Both are outsiders, and that is what empties the room. One figure in the passage does not agree with the corpus: verse 25 says the sky was shut three years and six months, and 1 Kings 18:1 says the word came to Elijah in the third year. James 5:17 gives three years and six months as well. The file leaves the two figures standing next to each other.
Verses 31-44
Simply At Capernaum his teaching astonishes people because it carries authority. A man with an unclean spirit shouts out that he knows who Jesus is, and Jesus tells it to be quiet and come out, and it does, without hurting the man. He then goes to Simon's house and cures his mother-in-law of a high fever, and at sunset the whole town brings its sick. He tells the crowds he has to go to the other towns too.
Context The demons are the only ones in the chapter who say the right thing, at verses 34 and 41, and they are the only ones told to be silent. The people at Nazareth had the words in front of them and asked whether this was Joseph's son. Simon appears here at verse 38 before he has been called, which happens at 5:8 to 11, so the reader meets his house before his name in the list. Verse 39 uses the same verb for the fever as verse 35 used for the spirit: he REBUKES it. That is this book's vocabulary rather than a claim about what a fever is.