Neither Eating Bread Nor Drinking Water: Moses on the Mount and Christ in the Desert
Old Testament: Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9, 18
And he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights: he neither ate bread nor drank water, and he wrote upon the tables the ten words of the covenant. ... When I went up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, the tables of the covenant which the Lord made with you: and I continued in the mount forty days and nights, neither eating bread, nor drinking water. ... And I fell down before the Lord as before, forty days and nights neither eating bread, nor drinking water, for all your sins, which you had committed against the Lord, and had provoked him to wrath:
Old Testament, also: Deuteronomy 8:3
He afflicted thee with want, and gave thee manna for thy food, which neither thou nor thy fathers knew: to shew that not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.
New Testament: Matthew 4:1-4
Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the desert, to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards he was hungry. And the tempter coming said to him: If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. Who answered and said: It is written, Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God.
The connection
Moses fasted twice on the mountain, forty days and forty nights each time, "neither eating bread, nor drinking water". The first fast was to receive the tables of the covenant; the second was after Israel had made the calf, and he lay before the Lord "for all your sins" until the people were spared (Exodus 34:28; Deuteronomy 9:9, 18). Moses came down with his face shining, carrying the Law. Jesus is led into the desert and fasts the same term, "forty days and forty nights", and then is hungry. The first temptation is put to Him where Israel failed in the wilderness, in the matter of bread, and He answers with the sentence Moses had written for that very failure: "Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God" (Deuteronomy 8:3; Matthew 4:4). Where the people murmured for food and made a calf while their mediator fasted, the new Mediator fasts and does not murmur, and afterwards goes up another mountain, where Moses and Elias are seen speaking with Him. The Fathers put the three fasts side by side. St Irenaeus: "Fasting forty days, like Moses and Elias, He afterwards hungered, first, in order that we may perceive that He was a real and substantial man." St Augustine sets the same three in order and draws the Church's Lent out of them: "The Fast of Forty Days has its warrant both in the Old Testament, from the fasting of Moses and of Elijah, and in the Gospel from the fact that our Lord fasted the same number of days; proving thereby that the Gospel is not at variance with the Law and the Prophets." The Catechism says the same of the season: "By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert" (CCC 540).
Moral sense
Moses did not fast to prove anything. The first time he fasted he was receiving; the second time he was pleading for people who had already betrayed him, and he stayed on his face until they were spared. That is what intercession costs, and it is why the Church fasts for others and not only for herself. Christ's fast shows the other half. The tempter comes when the fast is over and the hunger is real, which is where temptation always comes, at the end of the effort rather than the beginning. His answer is not a display of strength but a line of Scripture, and it is the line that Israel had been given and forgotten. A soul that has stored up the word of God has an answer ready when it is hungry; a soul that has not will argue with the devil in its own words and lose.
Anagogical sense
The forty days end, in both stories, in a face made bright. Moses came down from the mountain and his face shone so that Israel could not look at him, and he veiled it. Christ comes out of the desert to His ministry and then goes up the mountain of the Transfiguration, where "his face did shine as the sun", and Moses himself stands beside Him and speaks (Matthew 17:2-3). The veil comes off there, and it is the pledge of what is promised to the body: the just shall shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Lent's forty days are the same road in miniature, a fast that ends in Easter light, and the whole of this life is a fast that ends in the face of God unveiled.
The Fathers
St Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.21: "Fasting forty days, like Moses and Elias, He afterwards hungered, first, in order that we may perceive that He was a real and substantial man." St Augustine, Letter LV: "The Fast of Forty Days has its warrant both in the Old Testament, from the fasting of Moses and of Elijah, and in the Gospel from the fact that our Lord fasted the same number of days; proving thereby that the Gospel is not at variance with the Law and the Prophets."
Warrant
Patristic because Matthew does not name Moses at the temptation, though he comes close: Christ answers the tempter by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3, so the scene is argued out of the same book that records Moses' fast. The Greek phrase has the same words in a different order, the Septuagint of Exodus 34:28 reading tesserakonta hemeras kai tesserakonta nyktas and Matthew 4:2 hemeras tesserakonta kai nyktas tesserakonta. St Irenaeus (Against Heresies V.21) and St Augustine (Letter LV, The Harmony of the Gospels) set the fasts of Moses, Elias and Christ together, and Augustine reads Moses and Elias as the Law and the Prophets. The site already has an entry on Elias' forty days to Horeb, which this one stands beside rather than replaces. Forty is a common biblical measure, of the flood, the wilderness years and the days before the Ascension, so the weight here is on the fast itself and on the quotation from Deuteronomy, not on the number alone.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 540.
The verses
Exodus 34:28 · Deuteronomy 9:9 · Deuteronomy 9:18 · Deuteronomy 8:3 · Matthew 4:1 · Matthew 4:2 · Matthew 4:3 · Matthew 4:4
