Deuteronomy 8
Berean Standard Bible · Compare translations · 1446 BC – 1406 BC · Egypt & the Exodus · Tap a verse to copy, share or highlight ·
20 verses · 531 words · ~3 min read · ~4 min listen
Remember the LORD Your God
1You must carefully follow every commandment I am giving you today, so that you may live and multiply, and enter and possess the land that the Lord swore to give your fathers. 2Remember that these forty years the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.
3He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. 4Your clothing did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.
5So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 6Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and fearing Him.
7For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and springs that flow through the valleys and hills; 8a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; 9a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and whose hills are ready to be mined for copper. 10When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the Lord your God for the good land that He has given you.
11Be careful not to forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances and statutes, which I am giving you this day. 12Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses in which to dwell, 13and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied, 14then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
15He led you through the vast and terrifying wilderness with its venomous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty and waterless land. He brought you water from the rock of flint. 16He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble you and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.
17You might say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.” 18But remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers even to this day.
19If you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods to worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish. 20Like the nations that the Lord has destroyed before you, so you will perish if you do not obey the Lord your God.
Footnotes (1)
- a v3 Cited in Matthew 4:4and Luke 4:4
Study notes on this chapter · 1
Tested in the wilderness, answering from Deuteronomy
In each of the three temptations Jesus answers with a verse from Deuteronomy, the book that recalls Israel's forty years of testing in the wilderness. Many readers see a deliberate contrast: where Israel failed the tests of hunger, testing God and false worship, Jesus, as faithful Son, succeeds.
When: Deuteronomy's speeches are set on the plains of Moab (traditionally c. 1406 BC); the temptations came after Jesus' baptism, c. AD 27–29.
Ways people read this (2)
- The wording points to Jesus as the true Israel, the Son who does what Israel did not.
- Others emphasize the quotations as a model of how any believer answers temptation with Scripture.
Editorial note by BibleWay. Interpretations vary; dates are approximate scholarly estimates.