And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The forty days and forty nights explicitly echoes Moses on the mountain (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah's journey to Horeb (1 Kings 19:8) — the great figures of the law and the prophets who sustained extended fasts in moments of divine encounter. Jesus' forty-day fast identifies him with both while pointing beyond both. He was hungry — Matthew does not minimize the physical reality. The incarnation is not a pretend humanity; Jesus experiences genuine physical need, genuine vulnerability, genuine temptability. The hunger that follows forty days without food is the condition in which the first temptation arrives: use your power to address your need. The vulnerability that makes the temptation real is the same vulnerability that makes his ultimate intercession credible.

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