Forty is the Bible's number for a season of testing and preparation. The rain fell forty days and nights in the flood; Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness; Moses was on the mountain forty days; Elijah journeyed forty days to Horeb; Jonah gave Nineveh forty days to repent. Again and again, forty marks a stretch of trial that shapes God's people before what comes next.
Most significantly, Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil, before beginning his ministry — succeeding where Israel had failed. Forty is rarely comfortable, but it is never wasted: it is the length of the wilderness that prepares for the promised land, the fast that precedes the calling, the testing that gives way to a new beginning.
The Number Forty in Scripture
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.