Bible verses about temptation

The way out comes with the strength to bear it

1 Corinthians 10:13, at the top of the list, promises two things in one sentence: the way of escape, and that you may be able to endure it. The word for the way of escape is ekbasis (1545), which Thayer’s lexicon defines as “an egress, way out”, and the noun occurs twice in the New Testament. Vincent’s Word Studies says that in classical Greek it was used “especially, of a way out of the sea”, and later of a landing-place. Its other use is Hebrews 13:7, where it means the way a life came out in the end: the end of their conversation in the King James, the results of their conduct in the modern rendering.

Endure in the modern rendering and bear in the King James are hupophero (5297), which Thayer glosses “to bear by being under, bear up (a thing placed on one’s shoulders)”. Vincent says of it: “Not the same as escape”, and “Often the only escape is through endurance.” Jamieson-Fausset-Brown reads the clause the same way: “Not, He will take it away” (commentaries on 1 Corinthians 10:13). The way out is not always a door that closes behind you.

The list prints the verse with the one before it, a warning: let him who thinks he stands be careful that he doesn’t fall. The Cambridge Bible calls 10:13 “A consolation, as the last verse was a warning.” The verse after it says what to do with the way out:

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.1 Corinthians 10:14 · World English Bible

This is also the verse behind “God won’t give you more than you can handle”, which is not in the Bible. The saying did not come from nowhere. The Greek word for temptation, peirasmos, can also mean a trial, and Matthew Poole’s commentary says that whether Paul means afflictions here as well “cannot certainly be determined; what he saith is true of all”. But the saying stretches the verse twice: from temptation to everything, and from a way out to a weight limit. Paul writes elsewhere of being weighed down beyond our power (2 Corinthians 1:8), and our post on what to say to someone who is grieving explains why the saying should not be said at a funeral.

In 1611, tempt also meant test

Genesis 22:1 surprises people who read the King James:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.Genesis 22:1 · King James Version

The modern rendering has God tested Abraham. The Hebrew verb is nasah (5254), which the King James renders tempt here and prove in Deuteronomy 8:2. In 1611 tempt could still mean to test with no suggestion of evil, and Noah Webster’s dictionary of 1828 still gives that sense: “In Scripture, to try; to prove; to put to trial for proof”, with this verse as its example (Webster 1828). MacLaren, on this verse, puts the difference this way: “Temptation says: ‘Do this pleasant thing; do not be hindered by the fact that it is wrong.’ Trial, or proving, says: ‘Do this right and noble thing; do not be hindered by the fact that it is painful.’” (commentaries on Genesis 22:1)

It is a rare use even in the King James. Its Old Testament has the verb tempt in twelve verses, and in eleven of them the one being tempted is God: at Massah in Exodus 17, in Numbers 14:22, in Psalms 78, 95 and 106, in Isaiah 7:12 and Malachi 3:15, and in Deuteronomy 6:16, Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God, which Jesus quotes in Matthew 4. Genesis 22:1 is the only one in which God tempts someone. That count is ours, from the King James text.

James 1, part of it in the list, uses one Greek family for both senses. At 1:2 and 1:12 peirasmos is something to count as joy and to endure, and the interlinear glosses both “trials”; at 1:13 the verb from the same family is being tempted to do wrong (interlinear). Both our translations say temptation or tempted all three times, so the toggles cannot show you the turn. James shows it by drawing a line. God, he says, can’t be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. The word for can’t be tempted, apeirastos (551), occurs only there. Then he says where temptation does come from.

Drawn out, then taken with bait

James 1:14 uses two verbs from hunting and fishing. Drawn away is exelko (1828), which occurs only there; Thayer’s lexicon says “the metaphor is taken from hunting and fishing: as game is lured from its covert, so man by lust is allured from the safety of self-restraint to sin.” Enticed is deleazo (1185), from delear, a bait: “properly, to bait, catch by a bait”. It occurs three times, here and twice in 2 Peter 2. The Benson Commentary and Jamieson-Fausset-Brown both read it as a fish taken on a hook (commentaries on James 1:14).

The picture is older than James. Plato’s Timaeus calls pleasure megiston kakou delear (69d), “a most mighty lure to evil” in the Loeb translation (English), using the noun James’s verb is built on. Cicero repeats it in On Old Age: Plato, he says, calls pleasure escam malorum, the bait of evils, because by it people are caught like fish (Latin text, chapter 13). James names neither. What he adds is the next verse, where the picture changes from fishing to birth: desire conceives, gives birth to sin, and sin, full grown, brings forth death.

The second bringeth forth in the King James, produces in the modern rendering, is apokueo (616), which Thayer glosses “to bring forth from the womb, give birth to”, and which the Expositor’s Greek Testament says is “strictly speaking, only used of the mother.” It occurs twice in the New Testament. The second time is three verses later:

Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.James 1:18 · World English Bible

Barnes says the word is “perhaps designedly used here in contrast”, and the Cambridge Bible that it is used “to emphasise the contrast between the process which ends in death and that which issues in a higher life” (commentaries on James 1:18). Desire gives birth to sin, and three verses later God gives birth to us, with the same verb. Neither of our translations uses the same English word in both places, so you would not see it from the text alone.

Every answer came from Deuteronomy

Matthew 4 is the passage behind “Jesus was tempted”. He answers the devil three times, and Ellicott points out that “The words of all the three answers to the Tempter come from two chapters of Deuteronomy” (commentaries on Matthew 4:4): 8:3 for the bread, 6:16 for the temple, 6:13 for the kingdoms. Deuteronomy 8 opens by saying why Israel spent forty years in the wilderness:

You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.Deuteronomy 8:2 · World English Bible

To test you is nasah again, the verb of Genesis 22:1 (interlinear). The Cambridge Bible: “The forty years were to the Jews what the forty days are to Jesus.” He answers from the chapter that describes the forty years.

The second answer is where our two translations part. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, and the King James says tempt in both places: Ye shall not tempt the LORD your God in Deuteronomy, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God in Matthew. The modern rendering keeps tempt in Deuteronomy and says test here:

Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’”Matthew 4:7 · World English Bible

One sentence, quoted, and given two ways by the same translation. The devil’s line just before it is a quotation too, from Psalm 91, and our page on Psalm 91 covers that exchange.

Hebrews, in the list twice, draws the conclusion: he was in all points tempted like as we are (4:15), and because he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted (2:18). The verb for help is boetheo (997), which Thayer derives from the words for a cry and for running: “properly, to run to the cry (of those in danger)”. It is the verb of the Canaanite woman’s plea in Matthew 15:25 and of the father’s in Mark 9:24, and Hebrews 4:16 uses its noun: grace to help in time of need.

Run from it, and stand up to the devil

The letters of the New Testament use the verb flee, pheugo (5343), six times. Four are Paul telling a reader to run: from sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18), from idolatry (10:14), from the love of money (1 Timothy 6:11, after 6:10), and from youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22, in the list). One is Hebrews 11:34, people who escaped the sword. The sixth is James 4:7, and there the one who runs is the devil: Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Resist is anthistemi (436), and 1 Peter 5:9, also in the list, uses the same verb for the same opponent. The instruction for the thing is to run, and the instruction for the devil is to stand.

Twice, Paul’s flee is followed at once by another verb: flee these things, and follow after righteousness (1 Timothy 6:11), and Flee from youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness (2 Timothy 2:22). The second verb is dioko (1377), to pursue, the same verb the New Testament uses for persecuting someone. The running has somewhere to go, and in 2 Timothy, people to go with: with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

Joseph, in Genesis 39, is the example everyone uses, and the verse before the one in the list matters. As she spoke to Joseph day by day, he didn’t listen to her, to lie by her, or to be with her (39:10): he refused for days and kept out of her company, and when he was caught alone in the house he did not argue. He left his garment in her hand, and fled, and got him out. It did not go well for him. Eight verses later he is in prison on her word.

The first time the Bible says sin

Neither of our translations uses the word sin before Genesis 4:7, which is in the list, and when it arrives it is an animal at a door. The verb is rabats (7257), which Strong’s glosses “to crouch (on all four legs folded, like a recumbent animal)”, and MacLaren says it “is employed only to express the crouching of an animal, and frequently of a wild animal” (commentaries on Genesis 4:7). It is also the verb in Psalm 23:2, where the shepherd makes me lie down in green pastures (interlinear): the same posture for a sheep at rest and for something waiting at the door. Our page on Psalm 23 has the whole psalm.

What the second half of the verse means is not settled. The King James has unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him; the modern rendering has Its desire is for you, but you are to rule over it. Ellicott points out that sin is feminine in the Hebrew while the verb and pronouns are masculine, and reads the line as being about Abel; MacLaren reads it as sin, crouching and wanting its victim. We are not going to settle it. Both readings leave the first half standing. Cain is told, before he does anything, that it is at the door, and that doing well is still open to him: If you do well, won’t it be lifted up? The next verse is the field, and his brother.

When it is someone else who fell

Galatians 6:1 is for the person who has to deal with somebody else’s lapse. Restore is katartizo (2675), the verb Matthew 4:21 uses for James and John mending their nets, a few verses after the wilderness, and Ellicott adds that it “is also found as a medical term for setting dislocated limbs.” Then the sentence changes number. It begins with you who are spiritual, plural, and ends looking to yourself so that you also aren’t tempted, singular. Meyer calls it “a transition to the singular, giving a more individual character to the address” (commentaries on Galatians 6:1).

What this page is not

• It is not the page on habits. If the trouble is something that is not wrong, just running you, our verses about self-control are about that, including the slogan in 1 Corinthians 6:12 and Paul’s what I hate, that I do in Romans 7.
• It is not about addiction. If what you cannot stop is drinking, drugs or gambling, it may be a health condition, and it can be treated as one. The National Institute on Drug Abuse calls substance use disorders treatable (NIDA), and asking for that help is not a failure of anything on this page.
• It is not the page for afterwards. If you have already given in, our pages on regret and shame start there.