Please read carefully through the arguments and counterarguments.

Interpretation 1: Jesus must make the Wilderness a Paradise again

Summary: Many commentators argue as follows: Adam, because he allowed himself to be tempted by the devil to disobey the LORD, caused Paradise to become a wilderness. By resisting the temptations of Satan and by remaining obedient to his Father, Christ will now make the wilderness into a paradise again.

Arguments in favour of this view:

1.  According to the prophets, who more than once characterized the situation in which God’s people found themselves as being the wilderness, the promised Messiah would come to restore paradise (see Isaiah 35:1–2; Isaiah 11:1–9).

2.  Mark 1:13 shows that Jesus was already allowed to experience something of a paradise-like atmosphere after he had resisted the tempter.

Arguments against this view:

This argument is certainly a theological truth, but exegesis forces us to draw a different conclusion: being faced with all three temptations, Jesus reminds Satan not of the paradise situation, but of the journey of God’s people through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land of Canaan. In the face of all three temptations, he quotes from what Moses told God’s people in the book of Deuteronomy.

Interpretation 2: Jesus is Azazel on the Day of Atonement

Summary: Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the goat Azazel, which was led into the wilderness on the Great Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:10).

Arguments in favour of this view:

By allowing himself to be baptized by John, Jesus declared himself willing to take the sins of God’s people upon himself and pay for them. As the scapegoat, he now has to go into the wilderness.

Arguments against this view:

Again, dogmatically, this line can certainly be drawn. But exegetically it falls short.

1.  At the same time, Jesus was also the goat that was sacrificed to God on the Day of Atonement as a sin offering.

2.  The goat Azazel did not return from the wilderness but had to die there. However, Christ did return from the wilderness after about a month and a half.

3.  This also does not explain the fact that Jesus quotes the book of Deuteronomy three times to Satan.

Interpretation 3: Jesus is to prepare the way for the Lord in the wilderness

Summary: It is not John the Baptist who was to go into the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord (cf. Matthew 3:3), but the Messiah whose coming he announced. This is how the quote from Isaiah 40:3 should be read. Therefore, after accepting that task, Christ is also immediately led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit.

Arguments in favour of this view:

1.  In Mark 1:2, before the quote from Isaiah 40:3, a quotation from Malachi 3:1 is first given. The Angel in Malachi 3:1 does not refer to John the Baptist, but to the Messiah (thus also a very ancient Jewish explanation). The translation of “messenger” in some Bibles is not correct. The Hebrew has always used the same word for an angel. In Malachi 3:1 it refers back to the Angel of the covenant who goes with God’s people on behalf of the LORD. This Angel has the power to forgive sins, but also to punish them (Exodus 23:20–22). This Angel is a special appearance of the LORD himself in the OT. Compare Exodus 13:21 with Exodus 14:19; Joshua 5:13–15, Judges 6:11 with Judges 11:14. In this Angel, God the Son already acted in the OT.

This Angel, according to Malachi 3:1, is going to prepare the way by which the LORD can return to his people.

2.  Because of the connection of Malachi 3:1 to Isaiah 40:3 in Mark 1:2–3, not only in the Gospel of Mark, but also in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the call in the quotation from Isaiah 40:3 should be read as a call to which the Angel of the covenant is going to respond. Therefore, after his baptism and his indication from heaven that he is the promised Servant of the LORD (Matthew 3:17), the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness.

Arguments against this view:

Exegetically, this explanation is entirely acceptable. But it still does not answer the question of whether, and if so, why Christ is appealing three times to Moses’ retrospective on the wilderness period (see Deuteronomy 1:19; Deuteronomy 8:2–4) when confronted by Satan.

Interpretation 4: Jesus identifies with the time of Israel's punishment

Summary: Christ identifies with the time of punishment where God’s people had to spend forty years in the wilderness.

Arguments in favour of this view:

1.  Just as the LORD caused the prophet Elijah to walk forty days and nights in the wilderness—the reverse way of the route God’s people had travelled for forty years before punishment (1 Kings 19:8)—so too the Holy Spirit brings Christ to stay for forty days and nights in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). However, Christ chose to do this.

2.  During the journey of God’s people through the wilderness, Satan was also constantly present with his temptations to tempt the people to rebel against God and disobey him. God’s Word shows how the people were too weak to resist Satan’s temptations. Therefore, even after forty years, the Promised Land of Canaan did not bring them true peace. Jesus, as the Christ, has now come to resist and defeat Satan, in order to prepare the way for God’s people to the heavenly Canaan.

3.  His way through the wilderness therefore became, as it had been for Israel, a way of food deprivation and expecting the daily food from God—the God who speaks and it is there (Deuteronomy 8:3). It became a way of faith in God’s protective closeness, without trying the LORD and challenging him to prove his promises first (Exodus 17:7 and Deuteronomy 6:16). It also became a road on which only the LORD deserves thanks and praise at the end of the journey and upon reaching the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 34:1–4; Deuteronomy 6:10–13; Deuteronomy 10:20–21).