Deuteronomy 8: Verse-by-Verse Commentary (with Videos)

¹You must carefully follow every commandment I am giving you today, so that you may live and multiply, and enter and possess the land that the LORD swore to give your fathers.

²Remember that these forty years the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness, so that He might humble you and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep His commandments.

³He humbled you, and in your hunger He gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had known, so that you might understand that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

⁴Your clothing did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years.

⁵So know in your heart that just as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

⁶Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God, walking in His ways and fearing Him.

⁷For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and springs that flow through the valleys and hills;

⁸a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey;

⁹a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and whose hills are ready to be mined for copper.

¹⁰When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.

¹¹Be careful not to forget the LORD your God by failing to keep His commandments and ordinances and statutes, which I am giving you this day.

¹²Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses in which to dwell,

¹³and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all that you have is multiplied,

¹⁴then your heart will become proud, and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

¹⁵He led you through the vast and terrifying wilderness with its venomous snakes and scorpions, a thirsty and waterless land. He brought you water from the rock of flint.

¹⁶He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers had not known, in order to humble you and test you, so that in the end He might cause you to prosper.

¹⁷You might say in your heart, “The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me.”

¹⁸But remember that it is the LORD your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant that He swore to your fathers even to this day.

¹⁹If you ever forget the LORD your God and go after other gods to worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish.

²⁰Like the nations that the LORD has destroyed before you, so you will perish if you do not obey the LORD your God.