Deuteronomy 8:1 - Meaning and Application

The command given here is the same as before: keep and do all God’s commandments. Their obedience had to be careful, complete, and rooted in the right heart. They were to obey with reverence for God as the Lord and their God, and with holy fear, meaning respect for his greatness, submission to his authority, and dread of his anger (Deuteronomy 8:6).

To move them to obedience, Moses points them back to the wilderness. They were to remember the whole way the Lord their God had led them for those forty years (Deuteronomy 8:2). Now that they were coming of age and ready to receive their inheritance, they needed to remember the discipline they had lived under in their years of training. The wilderness was like a school where God had boarded and taught them under tutors and guardians.

Those forty years were full of events worth remembering. They gave many reasons to obey God, and they were written down for that purpose. As the Passover was a memorial of their rescue from Egypt, so the Feast of Tabernacles remembered their journey through the wilderness. It is good for us to remember all the ways God has guided us in both providence and grace, so that we may gladly serve him and trust him. We should set up our own Ebenezer, a memorial stone of God’s help.

They were to remember the hardships they had faced. This was to humble them, so they would not grow proud because of the many miracles God had done for them. It was also to keep them from becoming overconfident, as if they would reach Canaan right away without any danger. God also used these trials to show what was in their hearts. He was proving them, so they and others could see their own stubbornness and sinfulness. God already knew their hearts perfectly, but they needed to learn that he had not chosen them because of anything good in them.

Many of the commands God gave them made sense only because they had been led through the wilderness. The instructions about manna are one example (Exodus 16:28). In this way, God tested them, just as the trees in the garden tested Adam and Eve, to see whether they would keep his commandments. He was also proving whether they would trust his promises and then obey his commands in reliance on those promises.

They also had to remember the supplies God gave them all along the way. God took special care of their food, clothing, and health, and what more did they need? He gave them manna for food (Deuteronomy 8:3). He allowed them to hunger first, and then fed them, so that their need would make the provision sweeter and God’s goodness more obvious. God often brings his people low so that he may have the honor of lifting them up. In this way, the manna of heavenly comfort is given to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6). To a hungry soul, even bitter food tastes sweet.

The manna was something neither they nor their fathers had known. Even if some knew of a kind of dew food in those lands, as some think, it had never come in such vast amounts, with such regularity, in all seasons, for so long, and in only one place. This was fully miraculous and had no example before it. The Lord created something new for their need. By this he taught them that man does not live by bread alone. God has appointed bread to strengthen human life, and it is usually the staff of life, but he is not limited to it. When he pleases, he can support and nourish his people without bread, or by means that seem very unlikely. We could even live on air if God set it apart for that purpose by his word. God is not bound to the usual means he uses, but can still carry out his kind purposes for his people without them.

Jesus used this verse to answer Satan’s temptation, when Satan told him to command stones to become bread (Matthew 4:3, Matthew 4:4). Christ’s answer was, in effect, “Why should I do that? My heavenly Father can keep me alive without bread.” Let none of God’s children distrust their Father or use sinful shortcuts to meet their needs. In one way or another, God will provide for them as they walk in duty and honest work, and they will truly be fed.

This also has a spiritual meaning. The word of God, received by faith as the revelation of God’s will and grace, is food for the soul. A life upheld by that word is fuller than the life merely sustained by bread. The manna pointed forward to Christ, the bread of life. He is the Word of God, and through him we live. May the Lord keep giving us that bread that lasts to eternal life, and not let us settle for food that only lasts for a moment.

Their clothes also lasted through the whole journey from Egypt to Canaan, at least for most of them. Though they had no new changes of clothing, their garments did not wear out or grow old on them (Deuteronomy 8:4). This was a standing miracle. It may have been even more striking if, as the Jews say, their clothes grew with them and stayed fitted to them. But it is clear that they came out of Egypt with bundles of clothing on their shoulders (Exodus 12:34), and these, along with what they wore, were enough until they reached a land where they could get new clothes.

By feeding and clothing them in this way, God humbled them. It was humbling to be tied for forty years to the same food, with no variety, and to the same style of clothing. In that way, he taught them that the good things he planned for them were pictures of greater things. Human happiness does not consist in purple clothes or fine linen, or in eating richly every day, but in being brought into covenant and fellowship with God, and in learning his righteous judgments. God’s law, given to Israel in the wilderness, was to be for them like food and clothing.

He also proved them, to see whether they could trust him when ordinary help and natural supports failed. In this way, he taught them to depend on providence and not to burden themselves with anxious care about what they would eat, drink, or wear.

Christ wanted his disciples to learn the same lesson (Matthew 6:25). He also taught it in a similar way when he sent them out without a purse or bag, yet saw to it that they lacked nothing (Luke 22:35).

God also cared for their health and comfort. Even though they traveled on foot through a dry country, over rough and untrodden ground, their feet did not swell. God kept them from harm through the hardships of the journey, and we should remember mercy like this with gratitude. Those who follow God’s lead are not only safe, but also at peace. Our feet do not swell while we stay in the path of duty. It is the way of sin that is hard (Proverbs 13:15). God had promised to keep the feet of his saints, his holy people (1 Samuel 2:9).

They must also remember the discipline they had been under in those years, as verse 5 says. During their years of training, they had been kept under strict discipline, and not without reason. As a man disciplines his son for his good, because he loves him, so the Lord your God disciplines you. God is a loving and tender Father to all his children, yet when needed, they will feel the pain of the rod. Israel did. They were disciplined so they would not be condemned, disciplined with human means. God did not act like a man who wounds and kills his enemies, aiming at their ruin. He acted like a father who disciplines his son, aiming at his happiness and good. In this way, God disciplined and taught them (Psalm 94:12).

They were to take this to heart. That means they were to admit from their own experience that God had corrected them with fatherly love. That should lead them to show him childlike reverence and obedience. Because God has disciplined you as a father, therefore you must keep his commandments (verse 6). This is the right use we should make of all our troubles. Let them stir us up and strengthen us in our duty.

So they are told to look back on the wilderness. Moses also directs them to look ahead to Canaan, the land God was now bringing them into. No matter where we look, our past experience and our future hope should both give us reasons to obey.

The land they were about to possess is described as a very good land, full of everything desirable (verses 7-9). It was well-watered, like Eden, the garden of the Lord. It had brooks, springs, and deep wells, all of which helped the soil produce well. Perhaps there was even more water there now than in Abraham’s time, because the Canaanites had found and dug wells. In that way, Israel would benefit from both God’s bounty and the work of others.

The ground also produced an abundance of all good things, not only for basic needs, but also for comfort and enjoyment. In their fathers’ land they would have enough bread. It was a grain land, a land of wheat and barley, where ordinary farming would give them food without shortage. It was a fruitful land, never made barren except because of the sin of those who lived there. They would have not only enough water to drink, but also vines, whose fruit was given to make the heart glad. If they wanted rich foods, they would not need to send far away for them. Their own land had fig trees, pomegranates, olives of the best kind, and honey, or perhaps date palms, as some think the word means.

Even the soil itself was rich. It may seem that they had no silver or gold, since those were later brought as gifts by the princes of Sheba (Psalm 72:10, Psalm 72:15). Yet they had plenty of the more useful metals, iron and brass. Iron ore and brass mines were found in their hills (Job 28:2).

These things are mentioned for several reasons. First, they show the great difference between the wilderness God had led them through and the good land he was bringing them into. Those who bear hardship with patience and submission, and who learn humility through it, are best prepared for better times.

Second, these blessings show how much they owed God in thankfulness, and also how much their own good depended on obeying him. The only way they could keep possession of that good land was to stay in the path of duty.

Third, they show what a picture the land was of better things to come. Whatever others may have seen, Moses likely saw in it a picture of the better country. The gospel church is the New Testament Canaan, watered by the Spirit in his gifts and graces, planted with trees of righteousness, and bearing righteous fruit. Heaven is the good land, where nothing is lacking and where there is fullness of joy.