The chapter
Simply Jesus is led into the wilderness, fasts forty days, and is tested three times. He then hears that John has been arrested, moves to Capernaum by the sea, begins to preach, and calls four fishermen away from their nets.
Context The chapter turns on the same hinge twice: a wilderness that repeats an older wilderness, and a move to Galilee that Matthew reads as a prophet's sentence coming true.
Verses 1-11
Simply Three tests: turn stones into bread, throw yourself from the temple, take all the kingdoms of the world by worshipping me. Each is answered with a line of scripture, and then the devil leaves him.
Context All three answers come from one book and almost from one stretch of it, Deuteronomy 6 to 8, which is Moses telling Israel to remember the forty years in the wilderness where God humbled them and tested them. Forty days are answering forty years, and the reader can open the three passages and see it. One difference is worth noticing: at verse 10 Matthew has you shall WORSHIP the Lord your God and serve him ONLY, where Deuteronomy 6:13 has you shall FEAR the Lord your God and serve him, without the word only.
Verse 6
Simply At the temple the devil quotes scripture back: he will command his angels concerning you, and they will bear you up so you do not strike your foot on a stone.
Context This is the one place in the chapter where a reader should open the source and read the whole sentence. The psalm says he will command his angels concerning you, TO GUARD YOU IN ALL YOUR WAYS, and then that they will bear you up. The quotation in Matthew goes straight from the first clause to the third and the middle one is not there, in either served edition. What that omission means is not something the text says and not something this file decides. That it is missing is something anyone can check.
Verses 12-17
Simply When John is arrested Jesus withdraws to Galilee, leaves Nazareth, and settles at Capernaum by the sea, in the old territory of Zebulun and Naphtali. Then he begins to preach, in John's own words: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Context Matthew quotes Isaiah on a people in darkness who have seen a great light, and he has chosen a passage about the two territories he has just named, which is why he names them. NOTE FOR THE READER FOLLOWING THE REFERENCE: the two served editions number Isaiah differently here, chapter 8 having 22 verses in the World English Bible and 23 in Segond 1910, so the great light stands at Isaiah 9:2 in one and 9:1 in the other, and the link opens the chapter rather than a verse. The first sentence Jesus preaches is word for word the sentence John was preaching in chapter 3, and Matthew places it immediately after John is silenced.
Verses 18-25
Simply By the sea he calls two pairs of brothers, Simon and Andrew casting a net, then James and John mending theirs with their father. They leave the nets, the boat and the father, and follow.
Context The verbs are the point and the text does not soften them. Twice it says immediately, and what is left behind is listed rather than implied: the net, then the boat and their father. Matthew gives no reason and reports no conversation. The chapter closes with crowds arriving from far outside Galilee, which is how he sets up the sermon that follows.