Deuteronomy 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Moses tells Israel to carefully keep all the commands so that they may live and go in and take the land the LORD promised their ancestors. He tells them to remember the forty years in the desert, when God humbled and tested them with hunger and fed them manna, and disciplined them as a father disciplines a son. He describes the good and well-supplied land ahead, and warns that once they are full and wealthy their hearts may grow proud and forget the LORD who brought them out of Egypt. He tells them to remember that God gives them the power to gain wealth, and warns that if they forget him and serve other gods they will perish like the nations being destroyed before them.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • The speaker gives commandments to the hearers this day.
   • The hearers are to observe and do all the commandment given them.
   • The purpose is that they may live.
   • The purpose is that they may multiply.
   • The purpose is that they may go in and possess the land.
   • The LORD swore that land to their fathers.
2. 8:2
   • The hearer is to remember all the way the LORD his God led him.
   • The LORD led him forty years in the wilderness.
   • The leading was to humble him.
   • The leading was to test him.
   • The testing was to know what was in his heart.
   • What was to be known is whether he would keep the LORD's commandments or not.
3. 8:3
   • The LORD humbled him.
   • The LORD let him go hungry.
   • The LORD fed him with manna.
   • He had not known the manna before.
   • His fathers had not known the manna.
   • The purpose was to make him know that man does not live by bread alone.
   • Man lives by everything that comes out of the mouth of the LORD.
4. 8:4
   • His clothing did not wear out on him.
   • His foot did not swell.
   • This lasted forty years.
5. 8:5
   • The hearer is to know in his heart something.
   • A man disciplines his son.
   • In the same way the LORD his God disciplines him.
6. 8:6
   • The hearer is to keep the commandments of the LORD his God.
   • He is to walk in the LORD's ways.
   • He is to fear the LORD.
7. 8:7
   • The LORD his God is bringing him into a good land.
   • It is a land of streams of water.
   • It has springs and deep waters.
   • The waters flow out in the valley and in the hill country.
8. 8:8
   • It is a land of wheat and barley.
   • It is a land of vines, fig trees, and pomegranates.
   • It is a land of olive oil and honey.
9. 8:9
   • In that land he will eat bread without scarcity.
   • He will lack nothing in it.
   • The stones of that land are iron.
   • From its hills he can mine copper.
10. 8:10
    • He will eat and be satisfied.
    • He is then to bless the LORD his God.
    • The blessing is for the good land the LORD gave him.
11. 8:11
    • The hearer is to guard himself lest he forget the LORD his God.
    • Forgetting means not keeping the LORD's commandments, judgments, and statutes.
    • The speaker commands those commandments this day.
12. 8:12
    • The danger is that he will eat and be satisfied.
    • The danger is that he will build good houses.
    • The danger is that he will dwell in them.
13. 8:13
    • His herds and flocks will multiply.
    • His silver and gold will increase.
    • All that he has will increase.
14. 8:14
    • His heart will become lifted up.
    • He will forget the LORD his God.
    • The LORD brought him out of the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD brought him out of a house of slaves.
15. 8:15
    • The LORD led him through the great and terrible wilderness.
    • In that wilderness were burning serpents and scorpions.
    • It was a thirsty place with no water.
    • The LORD brought water out of the flint rock for him.
16. 8:16
    • The LORD fed him manna in the wilderness.
    • His fathers had not known that manna.
    • The purpose was to humble him.
    • The purpose was to test him.
    • The purpose was to do him good in his latter end.
17. 8:17
    • He may say in his heart something.
    • He may say that his own power and the strength of his hand produced this wealth for him.
18. 8:18
    • The hearer is to remember the LORD his God.
    • It is the LORD who gives him power to get wealth.
    • The purpose is to establish the LORD's covenant.
    • The LORD swore that covenant to his fathers.
    • That establishing continues as it is this day.
19. 8:19
    • The condition is that he wholly forgets the LORD his God.
    • The condition is that he walks after other gods.
    • The condition is that he serves them.
    • The condition is that he bows down to them.
    • The speaker testifies against them this day.
    • The testimony is that they will surely perish.
20. 8:20
    • The LORD destroys nations before them.
    • They will perish as those nations perish.
    • The reason is that they would not listen to the voice of the LORD their God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1

Moses is speaking, in the plains of Moab, to the generation of Israelites about to cross the Jordan into Canaan; "today" and "this day" throughout the chapter refer to the day of this speech. In the Hebrew, most of the chapter addresses the whole nation as though it were a single person, "you" singular, which modern English cannot show, since our "you" is both singular and plural.

8:2

The forty years refers to the period between the escape from Egypt and this moment, during which the people lived as nomads in the Sinai and Negev deserts rather than entering Canaan directly. The Hebrew word behind "test" is the ordinary word for putting something to the proof, as one tests metal, not for luring someone into wrongdoing.

8:3

Manna was the food the Israelites are said to have gathered each morning in the desert; it is described elsewhere as fine, flaky, white, and tasting of honey wafers. The name itself comes from the Hebrew question *man hu*, roughly "what is it?", the point being that it was something unrecognizable, with no name of its own. "Bread" here, as often in Hebrew, stands for food in general, not one baked item.

8:4

Swollen feet were the standard mark of long marching on foot; the two details together, clothes and feet, are a compact way of saying the people came through forty years of travel without the wear that travel normally costs.

8:5

The Hebrew word covers a father's whole training of a son: instruction, correction, and punishment together. It is closer to "bring up" or "discipline" than to "punish."

8:6

"Fear" in the King James sense here translates a Hebrew word that ranges from terror to reverence; used of God in these speeches it means awe and serious regard, not fright. "Walk in his ways" is a Hebrew idiom for conduct, the road you walk is the life you lead.

8:7

This description is aimed at people who had lived in Egypt, where crops depended on the Nile flooding and on water hauled by hand into irrigation channels. A land watered by its own streams and springs was a genuinely different and better prospect for a farmer.

8:8

These seven crops (wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, honey) were the staples of the land, and the list became a standard summary of its produce. "Honey" may mean wild bees' honey or the thick syrup boiled from dates; the Hebrew word covers both.

8:9

"Brass" in 1611 English meant copper or bronze; brass as we know it, an alloy of copper and zinc, was not yet in use. Copper was mined in the Arabah, the valley south of the Dead Sea. "Whose stones are iron" means rock containing iron ore, not that the stones themselves are metal.

8:10

The Hebrew verb translated "bless" works in both directions: God blesses people by giving them good, and people bless God by acknowledging and thanking him for it. Here it is the second sense, the origin of the Jewish practice of saying a blessing after a meal.

8:11

Three overlapping Hebrew terms are being piled up: *mitzvot*, direct orders; *mishpatim*, rulings of the kind a judge hands down, often case law; and *huqqim*, fixed decrees or set customs. Ancient legal language commonly stacked such words for completeness rather than drawing sharp distinctions between them.

8:12

The Israelites had lived in tents for forty years. Building solid houses meant they had finally settled down for good.

8:13

Wealth in this world was counted in livestock and in weighed metal. Coins had not been invented yet, so silver and gold were held as lumps, bars, rings or jewelry and weighed out on scales when you needed to pay for something.

8:14

"House of slavery" is a fixed Hebrew phrase for Egypt, used repeatedly in these books; "house" here means household or place of service, as one might say "the workhouse." A "lifted-up heart" is the Hebrew idiom for arrogance, the heart being thought of as the seat of thought and will, not of feeling.

8:15

"Fiery serpents" translates *seraphim*, literally "burning ones", venomous snakes, so called either from the burning pain of the bite or from a coppery appearance; an episode with them is told in Numbers 21. Flint is one of the hardest common stones, so "rock of flint" names the least likely place on earth for water to come from.

8:16

"Thy latter end" means how things turn out for you later, the final outcome, not death.

8:17

To say something "in your heart" means to think it quietly to yourself.

8:18

A covenant was a formal, binding agreement between two parties, sworn with an oath and often with a ceremony, the ordinary word for a treaty between kings or a pact between men. The one meant here is the sworn promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of descendants and of this land.

8:19

"I testify against you" is courtroom language: the speaker is formally putting on record, before witnesses, a warning that can later be cited against the accused. Treaties of the period ended in exactly this way, with blessings for keeping the terms and curses for breaking them.

8:20

The nations are the peoples already living in Canaan, whose displacement is described in the preceding books. The point of the comparison is that Israel is being warned it holds the land on the same terms as anyone else, with no exemption.