Chapter Eight

A reminder to Israel of God’s past mercies and an indication of those to come — An exhortation to be grateful and obedient to God.

Deuteronomy 8:3. He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, in order to make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but by every [word] that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord man lives. God “fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know” — that is, your ancestors who lived before the people came out of Egypt — in order to make you understand that “man does not live by bread alone” (by bread that grows in the natural course of things), “but by every word that comes by the word of the gracious and almighty Lord.”

Deuteronomy 8:7. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams of water, springs, and lakes flowing from valleys and hills. Deuteronomy 8:8. A land [with] wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranate trees, a land [with] olive trees and honey. Deuteronomy 8:9. A land in which you will eat bread without scarcity and will lack nothing in it, a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. At the present time Palestine is not distinguished by such an abundance of natural riches.