When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor drink water:
All Commentaries on Deuteronomy 9:9 Go To Deuteronomy 9
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
This is why Moses fasted for forty days, and Elijah, and the Mediator himself, our Lord Jesus Christ: because in this timebound state of ours restraint from bodily attractions and allurements is very necessary. The people also spent forty years wandering in the desert, and forty days of rain produced the flood. The Lord spent forty days after his resurrection with his disciples, to convince them of the reality of his risen body. This suggests that in this life, in which we are in exile away from the Lord, the number forty stands, as I have just said, for our need to celebrate the memorial of the Lord’s body, which we do in the church until he comes.
