Lukas 4:2

4:2 where for forty days he endured temptations ¹  from the devil. He ²  ate nothing ³  during those days, and when they were completed, ⁴  he was famished.

Lukas 11:52

11:52 Woe to you experts in religious law! You have taken away ⁵  the key to knowledge! You did not go in yourselves, and you hindered ⁶  those who were going in.”

Lukas 17:21-22

17:21 nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is ⁷  in your midst.” ⁸ 

The Coming of the Son of Man

17:22 Then ⁹  he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days ¹⁰  of the Son of Man, and you will not see it.

Lukas 24:24

24:24 Then ¹¹  some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” ¹² 

[4:2]  ¹ tn Grk “in the desert, for forty days being tempted.” The participle πειραζόμενος (peirazomeno") has been translated as an adverbial clause in English to avoid a run-on sentence with a second “and.” Here the present participle suggests a period of forty days of testing. Three samples of the end of the testing are given in the following verses.

[4:2]  ² tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[4:2]  ³ sn The reference to Jesus eating nothing could well be an idiom meaning that he ate only what the desert provided; see Exod 34:28. A desert fast simply meant eating only what one could obtain in the desert. The parallel in Matt 4:2 speaks only of Jesus fasting.

[4:2]  ⁴ tn The Greek word here is συντελεσθείσων (suntelesqeiswn) from the verb συντελέω (suntelew).

[4:2]  sn This verb and its cognate noun, sunteleia, usually implies not just the end of an event, but its completion or fulfillment. The noun is always used in the NT in eschatological contexts; the verb is often so used (cf. Matt 13:39, 40; 24:3; 28:20; Mark 13:4; Rom 9:28; Heb 8:8; 9:26). The idea here may be that the forty-day period of temptation was designed for a particular purpose in the life of Christ (the same verb is used in v. 13). The cognate verb teleiow is a key NT term for the completion of God’s plan: See Luke 12:50; 22:37; John 19:30; and (where it has the additional component of meaning “to perfect”) Heb 2:10; 5:8-9; 7:28.

[11:52]  ⁵ sn You have taken away the key to knowledge is another stinging rebuke. They had done the opposite of what they were trying to do.

[11:52]  ⁶ tn Or “you tried to prevent.”

[17:21]  ⁷ tn This is a present tense in the Greek text. In contrast to waiting and looking for the kingdom, it is now available.

[17:21]  ⁸ tn This is a far better translation than “in you.” Jesus would never tell the hostile Pharisees that the kingdom was inside them. The reference is to Jesus present in their midst. He brings the kingdom. Another possible translation would be “in your grasp.” For further discussion and options, see D. L. Bock, Luke (BECNT), 2:1414-19.

[17:22]  ⁹ tn Here δέ (de) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[17:22]  ¹⁰ sn This is a reference to the days of the full manifestation of Jesus’ power in a fully established kingdom. The reference to “days” instead of “day” is unusual, appearing only here and in v. 26, but it may be motivated merely by parallelism with the “days” of Noah there and the “days of Lot” in v. 28.

[24:24]  ¹¹ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the narrative.

[24:24]  ¹² tn Here the pronoun αὐτόν (auton), referring to Jesus, is in an emphatic position. The one thing they lacked was solid evidence that he was alive.