The holy city. Matthew alone calls Jerusalem by this name, in accordance with the general intent of his gospel to connect the old economy with the new.

Pinnacle of the temple (to pterugion tou ierou). Pinnacle, from the Latin pinnaculum, a diminutive of pinna or penna (a wing), is a literal translation of pterugion, which is also a diminutive (a little wing or winglet). Nothing in the word compels us to infer that Christ was placed on the top of a tower or spire, which is the popular meaning of pinnacle. The word may be used in the familiar English sense of the wing of a building. Herod's temple had two wings, the northern and southern, of which the southern was the higher and grander; that being the direction in which the chief enlargement of the temple area made by Herod was practicable. That enlargement, according to Josephus, was effected by building up walls of solid masonry from the valley below. At the extremity of the southern side of the area, was erected the "royal portico," a magnificent colonnade, consisting of a nave and two aisles, running across the entire space from the eastern to the western wall. Josephus further says, that "while the valley of itself was very deep, and its bottom could scarcely be seen when one looked down from above, the additional vastly high elevation of the portico was placed on that height, insomuch that, if any one looked down from the summit of the roof, combining the two altitudes in one stretch of vision, he would be giddy, while his sight could not reach to such an immense depth." This, in comparison with the northern wing, was so emphatically the wing of the temple as to explain the use of the article here, as a well-known locality. The scene of the temptation may have been (for the whole matter is mainly one of conjecture) the roof of his portico, at the southeastern angle, where it joined Solomon's Porch, and from which the view into the Kedron valley beneath was to the depth of four hundred and fifty feet.

The word temple (iJeron, lit., sacred place) signifies the whole compass of the sacred inclosure, with its porticos, courts, and other subordinate buildings; and should be carefully distinguished from the other word, naov, also rendered temple, which means the temple itself - the "Holy Place" and the "Holy of Holies." When we read, for instance, of Christ teaching in the temple (ieron) we must refer it to one of the temple-porches. So it is from the iJeron, the court of the Gentiles, that Christ expels the money-changers and cattle-merchants. In Matt. xxvii. 51, it is the veil of the naov which is rent; the veil separating the holy place from the holy of holies. In the account of Zacharias entering into the temple of the Lord to burn incense (Luke i. 9), the word is naov, the holy place in which the altar of incense stood. The people were "without," in the fore-courts. In John ii. 21, the temple of his body, iJeronwould be obviously inappropriate.

Robertson's NT Word Studies