Deuteronomy 8:1-9

1 Carefully obey every command I give you today. Then you will live and grow in number, and you will enter and take the land the Lord promised your ancestors.

2 Remember how the Lord your God has led you in the desert for these forty years, taking away your pride and testing you, because he wanted to know what was in your heart. He wanted to know if you would obey his commands.

3 He took away your pride when he let you get hungry, and then he fed you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever seen. This was to teach you that a person does not live by eating only bread, but by everything the Lord says.

4 During these forty years, your clothes did not wear out, and your feet did not swell.

5 Know in your heart that the Lord your God corrects you as a parent corrects a child.

6 Obey the commands of the Lord your God, living as he has commanded you and respecting him.

7 The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with rivers and pools of water, with springs that flow in the valleys and hills,

8 a land that has wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey.

9 It is a land where you will have plenty of food, where you will have everything you need, where the rocks are iron, and where you can dig copper out of the hills.

Deuteronomy 8:1-9 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 8

In this chapter Moses repeats the exhortation to observe the commands of God, and urges the Israelites to it, from the consideration of the great and good things God had done for them in the wilderness, and even in those instances which were chastisements, and were of an humbling nature, De 8:1-6, and on the consideration of the blessings of the good land they were going to possess, De 8:7-9 for which blessings they are exhorted to be thankful, and are cautioned against pride of heart through them, and forgetfulness of God, and of his goodness to them while in the wilderness, and when brought into the land of Canaan, which they were to ascribe to his power and goodness, and not their own, De 8:10-18, and the chapter is concluded with a warning against idolatry, lest they perish through it as the nations before them, De 8:19,20.