Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Deuteronomy · About this commentary
He Humbled You and Let You Hunger
Deuteronomy 8:1-20
1 You 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 Yahweh swore to your fathers. · WEB
Forty years of hunger are explained as teaching, and the danger ahead is a sentence a full man says in his heart.
The chapter reads the wilderness backward and finds a purpose in it. God led them forty years that he might humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart Deuteronomy 8:2.
A test does not inform God of anything; it makes visible what was already there, to the one being tested. And what the humbling consisted of is stated without euphemism: he humbled you, allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna Deuteronomy 8:3.
The hunger came first. They were allowed to be hungry, and then fed with something they had never seen and could not grow, store or control — a supply that arrived daily and rotted if hoarded.
The lesson drawn is the sentence the Lord quotes when he is hungry in a wilderness of his own Matthew 4:4: man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh's mouth Deuteronomy 8:3.
It is not a claim that bread is unnecessary. It is a claim that the bread came from somewhere, and that whatever God says is enough to live on — which is exactly what a food that appeared each morning on no agricultural basis had demonstrated for four decades.
Two small notes follow. Your clothing didn't grow old on you, neither did your foot swell Deuteronomy 8:4. And the relationship is named: as a man disciplines his son, so Yahweh your God disciplines you Deuteronomy 8:5. The forty years were not a sentence served but a father's training.
The land is then described in a way calculated to produce longing — brooks, springs, wheat, barley, vines, figs, pomegranates, olives, honey, and hills you can mine Deuteronomy 8:7–9. Everything the wilderness withheld.
And the instruction attached to it is one line: you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless Yahweh your God for the good land Deuteronomy 8:10. Thanks after the meal rather than before it, which is the harder end to remember.
The warning is then built as a sequence, and each step is innocent. Eaten and full; fine houses built and lived in; herds multiplied; silver and gold multiplied Deuteronomy 8:12–13. Nothing wrong has happened yet.
The wrong thing is the next clause: then your heart might be lifted up, and you forget Yahweh your God Deuteronomy 8:14. And the forgetting is given its exact wording two verses later — a sentence nobody says out loud: my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth Deuteronomy 8:17.
Against it stands the correction, and it does not deny the man's effort. You shall remember Yahweh your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth Deuteronomy 8:18. The strength was real and it was issued.
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