Text -- Luke 4:8 (NET)

4:8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’”

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Luk 4:8

¹ tn Grk “And Jesus.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

² tc Most mss, especially the later ones (A Θ Ψ 0102 ˹³ Ï it), have “Get behind me, Satan!” at the beginning of the quotation. This roughly parallels Matt 4:10 (though the Lukan mss add ὀπίσω μου to read ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, σατανᾶ [{upage opisw mou, satana]); for this reason the words are suspect as a later addition to make the two accounts agree more precisely. A similar situation occurred in v. 5.

³ tn Or “You will prostrate yourself in worship before…” The verb προσκυνέω (proskunew) can allude not only to the act of worship but the position of the worshiper. See L&N 53.56.

⁴ tc Most later mss (A Θ 0102 Ï) alter the word order by moving the verb forward in the quotation. This alteration removes the emphasis from “the Lord your God” as the one to receive worship (as opposed to Satan) by moving it away from the beginning of the quotation.

sn In the form of the quotation in the Greek text found in the best mss, it is the unique sovereignty of the Lord that has the emphatic position.

⁵ sn A quotation from Deut 6:13. The word “only” is an interpretive expansion not found in either the Hebrew or Greek (LXX) text of the OT.