Scripture Daily

Context No. 251 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 8:1-10: in context

1You shall observe to do all the commandments which I command you today, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD swore to your fathers. 2You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3He humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know, that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of the LORD’s mouth. 4Your clothing didn’t grow old on you, neither did your foot swell, these forty years. 5You shall consider in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you. 6You shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him. 7For the LORD your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs, and underground water flowing into valleys and hills; 8a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey; 9a land in which you shall eat bread without scarcity, you shall not lack anything in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig copper. 10You shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which he has given you.

Moses is getting Israel ready to walk into a rich land after forty years in the desert, and this passage is a memory exercise. Before he lets them taste the abundance, he makes them look back hard at the road that brought them to it. Remember, he says, the whole way the LORD led you these forty years in the wilderness.

The wilderness, he tells them, was not pointless. It was meant to humble them and test them, to bring out what was really in their hearts, and even the hunger had a purpose. God let them go hungry and then fed them manna, a food they had never seen, to teach them that a person does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Their survival had never come from their own stores. He adds the tender, small proofs: your clothes did not wear out, your feet did not swell, and God disciplined you the way a father disciplines a son. Then he describes the land ahead, and it is lavish, streams and springs, wheat and barley, vines and figs and pomegranates, olive oil and honey, hills with iron and copper in them. You will eat and be full, he says, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land.

The whole point is to hold the lean years in mind at the exact moment of plenty, because it is fullness, not hunger, that makes people forget who fed them. The danger was never the desert. It was the full table. When my table is full, what lean stretch am I most tempted to stop remembering, along with who carried me through it?

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