Deuteronomy 8 – A Warning Against Pride
A. God’s work of building humility in Israel during the wilderness years.
1. (1-2) God humbled and tested Israel.
“Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.
a. Every commandment…you must be careful to observe: God called Israel to complete obedience. This obedience was based on remembering what the LORD had done among them for forty years in the wilderness.
b. To humble you: God humbled Israel. By God’s direction, they had to depend completely on Him. There was nothing else and no one else to provide, guide, and protect them.
i. As God continues to deal with His people through the generations, He often humbles them. It is important for the believer to learn contentment and even joy in a humble, dependent place.
ii. “The snow-drift covers many a muckhill; so doth prosperity many a rotten heart.” (Trapp)
c. And test you: God tested Israel. One purpose of the testing was to know what was in their heart, and if they would be obedient even in humble, dependent seasons. It was not because God didn’t know their hearts, but because they didn’t know their hearts. Believers must constantly be corrected for their overestimation of themselves.
i. “It is important that we recognize that the meaning of this passage is not that God might know them, but that they might come to know themselves. God knows man perfectly. The important thing is that man should come to know himself.” (Morgan)
2. (3-5) God’s education of Israel in the wilderness.
So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. Your garments did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. You should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, so the LORD your God chastens you.
a. So He humbled you: All of God’s education begins here. Some never even make it past this first essential step. If believers are not humble and not teachable, there is then no point to the rest of any of God’s education.
b. Allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna: One aspect of God’s humbling work in Israel was to compel them to obvious, total dependence on the LORD. Israel had to rely on God beyond their own knowledge (which you did not know), and beyond their own ability.
i. F.B. Meyer observed that God allows several types of hunger in the life of His people, to teach them. He may allow a hunger for love, a hunger for recognition, or a hunger for comfort and ease. “These seasons of hunger are necessary for the discipline of life. But, thank God, He is able to satisfy us; and out of His riches in glory in Christ Jesus He can and will fulfill every need of ours.” (Meyer)
ii. Yet, God did not teach Israel only through hunger; He also taught them as He fed them manna. “Note carefully that they were not to learn through hunger only, but also through bread. This is very important. We are sometimes prone to think that God only speaks to us through limitation and suffering. It is not so. He speaks through prosperity and through joy. In the day of adversity He certainly speaks, and we generally listen. But He also is intending to teach us in the day of abounding gladness. Let us listen then also.” (Morgan)
c. That He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone: On the negative side, this was the lesson God wanted them to learn – that true life is found in more than full stomachs and material things. On the positive side, they had to learn that man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. Many today still live by bread alone, living only for material things, for what can be bought, sold, earned, or possessed materially.
i. This statement is a command, but it is also a simple statement of fact: man shall not live by bread alone. A person may exist by material things alone, but they will not live. The one who considers only the material yet thinks they have life is something like the living dead.
ii. Some people don’t live by God’s word because they only fight with God’s word: “The worst implement with which you can knock a man down, is the Bible; it is intended for us to live upon,—not to be the weapon of our controversies, but our daily food, upon which we rejoice to live.” (Spurgeon)
iii. Believers live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, not by every feeling or experience. “You have never received spiritual life by your own feelings. It was when you believed God’s Word that you lived; and you will never get an increase of spiritual life, and grow in grace, by your own feelings or your own doings. It must still be by your believing the promises and feeding on the Word.” (Spurgeon)
iv. It is the word of God that is our food and substance, and not our own dreams or imaginations. If someone is more excited about some dream or vision than about God’s word, then something is wrong. The prophet who has a dream, let him tell a dream; And he who has My word, let him speak My word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?” says the LORD. (Jeremiah 23:28)
v. God’s people must live by every word: “In places where they cut diamonds, they sweep up the dust, because the very dust of diamonds is valuable; and in the Word of God, all the truth is so precious that the very tiniest truth, if there be such a thing, is still diamond dust, and is unspeakably precious.” (Spurgeon)
vi. We may find life in every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD. “Oh, keep to the Word, my brothers! Keep to it as God’s Word, and as coming out of his mouth. Suck it down into your soul; you cannot have too much of it. Feed on it day and night, for thus will God make you to live the life that is life indeed.” (Spurgeon)
· Like bread, we need the word of God to live.
· Like bread, we need the word of God for growth.
· Like bread, we need the word of God for strength.
d. Man shall not live by bread alone: This was the passage of Scripture that Jesus quoted to Satan in the wilderness, when He was tempted to make bread out of stones to feed Himself after a long period of fasting (Matthew 4:3-4). Jesus knew that there was more to life than food, and that His Spirit-led and Scripture-dependent fasting brought Him life that miraculous bread, in that circumstance, could not. Jesus therefore refused to use divine power for something that was, in that situation, unnecessary and self-focused instead of focused on His God and Father.
i. “Our glorious David took this smooth and shining stone out of the clear and silvery brook of Scripture, and threw it at Goliath’s head, an example to us to meet temptations with the weapons of Scripture, not with the words or traditions of men.” (Spurgeon)
ii. When Jesus appealed to the word of God (Matthew 4:4), He appealed to its written form, not as a myth or oral tradition. It was the divinely inspired written word that Jesus considered to be the word of God.
iii. In some sense, the time Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-2) was a time He also was humbled, compelled in His humanity to even greater dependence upon God the Father. Israel did not always respond to God well in their seasons of greater humility and dependence, but Jesus always did.
iv. Food is a gift from God, to be gratefully received as it is sanctified with the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:4-5). Yet, the Scriptures are direct in their rebuke of those who serve their stomach (Romans 16:18), in the sense that the satisfaction of their stomach is an idol they serve (Philippians 3:19).
e. Your garments did not wear out: God did more than miraculously provide Israel with manna and water. He also preserved their garments and brought health to their well-traveled feet. The remarkable, gracious, generous provision of God to Israel in the wilderness was undeniable proof of His great love for them. It meant that when God chastened Israel, He did it with the goal of instruction and training, not as a mere demonstration of wrath.
i. Ginzberg related strange and mythical legends from the rabbis about these garments: “During their forty years’ march they had no need of change of raiment. The robe of purple which the angels clothed each one among them at their exodus from Egypt remained ever new; and as a snail’s shell grows with it, so did their garments grow with them. Fire could not injure these garments, and though they wore the same things throughout forty years, still they were not annoyed by vermin.”
3. (6-10) Blessings in the land for Israel.
“Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you.
a. Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God: If Israel would put their focus on every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD (Deuteronomy 8:3), then the LORD would take care of all the material things – and bring them into a materially abundant land supplied with water, flourishing with agriculture, and containing precious natural resources.
i. God is not against material things – except when they come between Him and us. God wanted to materially bless a spiritually obedient Israel. This is the simple principle Jesus would later explain: Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you (Matthew 6:33).
ii. “The reference to iron and copper in the hills is remarkably exact. Ancient copper mines and smelters have been discovered in recent years in the Arabah below the Dead Sea, and geological survey has demonstrated the presence of ores of copper and iron in the nearby hills.” (Thompson)
b. Then you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land which He has given you: Israel’s proper response to such gracious provision from God was worship and gratitude. They were to bless the LORD for receiving what they did not earn or deserve.
i. “No more graphically beautiful landscape of Canaan exists than in the word picture Moses painted here.” (Merrill)
B. A warning against pride.
1. (11-17) The danger of pride in the blessed life.
“Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—then you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth.’
a. Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments: When everything is fine and life is filled with abundance, the heart is easily lifted up in pride. It is easy to forget the LORD Himself and to forget it was all His gracious gift.
i. “The very blessing and abundance of the land, however, would tend to lull its inhabitants into a sense of complacency and self-sufficiency.” (Merrill)
ii. “Solomon’s wealth did him more hurt than ever his wisdom did him good.” (Trapp)
iii. Fiery serpents: “Serpents whose bite occasioned a most violent inflammation, accompanied with an unquenchable thirst, and which terminated in death. See on Numbers 21:6.” (Clarke)
b. My power and the might of my hand have gained me this wealth: The proud claim that one’s own power and might is the true source of one’s wealth is more commonly believed in the heart than said with the lips. Some people who claim to give glory and thanks to God believe in their heart that it was their own work.
i. “Such a claim is an arrogant elevation of self to the status of God.” (Thompson)
2. (18) The correcting principle against pride in the blessed life.
“And you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
a. Remember the LORD your God: In times of abundance, it is easy to forget the LORD, or to at least no longer seek Him with the urgency seen in times of great need.
b. It is He who gives you power to get wealth: Man naturally focuses on their own hard work and brilliance. Yet God gives the body, the brain, and the talent. It is all of God.
c. That He may establish His covenant: In the case of Israel, God blessed them according to and for the sake of His covenant. This would ultimately further His eternal purpose. Therefore, the people of God have no fundamental right to use their material blessing to further selfish purposes. Allowing for legitimate and appropriate enjoyment of God’s blessing, resources should be used to advance the kingdom of God.
3. (19-20) The penalty of pride in the blessed life.
Then it shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroys before you, so you shall perish, because you would not be obedient to the voice of the LORD your God.
a. If you by any means forget the LORD: Moses understood that forgetting God might have many causes, coming by several different means. Here, the context points to a proud, blessed, materially abundant Israel forgetting God. Worse, they might follow other gods and worship them.
b. I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish: Moses loved Israel, but he loved God more. Without hesitation, he would take the witness stand against a disobedient, proud Israel – and warn them before God that they will surely perish because of their pride and disobedience.
c. As the nations which the LORD destroys before you, so shall you perish: Israel would be tempted to look at the nations being judged in front of them, and to think, “We’re better than them, so we are safe. God would never deal with us that way.” But God would deal with them that way if they rose up in pride against Him. In His judgment, God did eventually use other nations to drive Israel out of the land, until He restored them from exile.
d. So you shall perish: Proud self-reliance would lead Israel to destruction, and the same is true for the people of God since.
i. In some sense, pride is the most Satanic of sins because it was by pride that Satan himself fell. Satan prizes a proud believer over the most notorious sinner because he looks at the proud believer and says, “Now there’s a man just like me!”
ii. Pride of face is obnoxious; pride of race is vulgar; but the worst pride is the pride of grace.
© 2017-2024 The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik – ewm@enduringword.com