What stands out in Jesus’ rebuttal is the ‘malice’ or ‘craftiness’ or the ‘testing’ that these disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians pose to Jesus. I think the comparison in these words of Jesus can clearly be made against the words our LORD uses against Satan during his wilderness temptations. In Matthew 4.

So if Jesus speaks against these hypocrites with the same language he used against Satan in the wilderness, can we then conclude that these men were minions of Satan? Then can we also go so far as to conclude that Jesus is practicing what men failed to do in the Edenic encounter with the Serpent?

Jesus is portrayed in these encounters as both the New Adam and the GREAT Authority that only the Son of God can possess. What man failed to do in standing up against the temptations of the Serpent in the Garden, Jesus succeeded in doing in encounters like these with Satan.