Deuteronomy 8
New American Standard Bible
God’s Gracious Dealings
8 “All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, so that you (A)may live and increase, and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. 2 (B)And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has (C)led you in the wilderness these forty years, in order to humble you, (D)putting you to the test, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and let you go hungry, and fed you with the manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, in order to make you [a]understand that (E)man shall not live on bread alone, but man shall live on everything that comes out of the mouth of the Lord. 4 (F)Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. 5 (G)So you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. 6 Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to [b]fear Him. 7 For (H)the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of streams of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in valleys and hills; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; 9 a land where you will eat food without shortage, in which you will not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. 10 When (I)you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.
11 “Be careful that you do not (J)forget the Lord your God by failing to keep His commandments, His ordinances, and His statutes which I am commanding you today; 12 otherwise, (K)when you eat and are satisfied, and you build good houses and live in them, 13 and when your herds and your flocks increase, and your silver and gold increase, and everything that you have increases, 14 then your heart will [c]become proud and you will (L)forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of [d]slavery; 15 He who led you through (M)the great and terrible wilderness, with its (N)fiery serpents and scorpions, and its thirsty ground where there was no water; He who (O)brought water for you out of the rock of flint. 16 In the wilderness it was He who fed you manna (P)which your fathers did not know, in order to humble you and in order to (Q)put you to the test, to do good for you [e]in the end. 17 Otherwise, (R)you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’ 18 But you are to remember the Lord your God, for (S)it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, in order to confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. 19 And it shall come about, if you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and serve and worship them, (T)I testify against you today that you will certainly perish. 20 Like the nations that the Lord eliminates from you, so (U)you shall perish, because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God.
Footnotes
- Deuteronomy 8:3 Lit know
- Deuteronomy 8:6 Or revere
- Deuteronomy 8:14 Lit be high
- Deuteronomy 8:14 Lit slaves
- Deuteronomy 8:16 Lit at your end
Deuteronomy 8
The Message
8 1-5 Keep and live out the entire commandment that I’m commanding you today so that you’ll live and prosper and enter and own the land that God promised to your ancestors. Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child.
6-9 So it’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him. God is about to bring you into a good land, a land with brooks and rivers, springs and lakes, streams out of the hills and through the valleys. It’s a land of wheat and barley, of vines and figs and pomegranates, of olives, oil, and honey. It’s land where you’ll never go hungry—always food on the table and a roof over your head. It’s a land where you’ll get iron out of rocks and mine copper from the hills.
10 After a meal, satisfied, bless God, your God, for the good land he has given you.
11-16 Make sure you don’t forget God, your God, by not keeping his commandments, his rules and regulations that I command you today. Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see your herds and flocks flourish and more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God,
the God who delivered you from Egyptian slavery;
the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions;
the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock;
the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you.
17-18 If you start thinking to yourselves, “I did all this. And all by myself. I’m rich. It’s all mine!”—well, think again. Remember that God, your God, gave you the strength to produce all this wealth so as to confirm the covenant that he promised to your ancestors—as it is today.
19-20 If you forget, forget God, your God, and start taking up with other gods, serving and worshiping them, I’m on record right now as giving you firm warning: that will be the end of you; I mean it—destruction. You’ll go to your doom—the same as the nations God is destroying before you; doom because you wouldn’t obey the Voice of God, your God.
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New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson