And thou shalt remember all the way which Jehovah thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments or not.
Forty years after Egypt, Moses tells a new generation to look back over the whole road God led them by. Why the long detour, with all its hunger and humbling, for a people He had already rescued?
Memory has work to do in the heart:
Why, we may ask, were Israel told to "remember the whole way" by which the Lord their God had led them? Certainly, to draw out their hearts in praise for the past, and to strengthen their confidence in God for the future. So it must always be. "We'll praise Him for all that is past, and trust Him for all that's to come."
And the humblings belong in the review just as much as the rescues:
We are to dwell with thankfulness on the striking mercies and rescues that come from our Father's hand. But we are to dwell just as much on the "humblings" and the "provings" of His wise, faithful and holy love. All these things are full of the richest blessing to our souls. People sometimes call them "mercies in disguise." They are not. They are plain, obvious, unmistakable mercies. We shall praise our God for them all through the golden ages of that bright eternity which lies ahead of us.
The desert has a fixed place in the story. It lies between two points, and God set both:
He does not bring us into the desert until we are out of Egypt... The story of redemption in Egypt says not one word about the wilderness. But once the Israelites have gone through it, Deuteronomy 8 looks back over the wilderness... He adds another thing — "to do you good at your latter end." Redemption was at the beginning, Canaan at the latter end; the wilderness comes between the two. Through the wilderness we have God with us, and for us, not charging anything against us, but exercising our hearts.
Self-knowledge comes slowly. The early days of faith give little of it:
Here is a wonderful point of knowledge. Who can claim it? Who can reach the depths of a human heart? Who can trace its windings and mazes? The details of a wilderness life tend to bring out much of the evil that is in us. At the beginning of our Christian life, the present joy of deliverance takes us up almost completely. So we know very little of the real character of our nature. It is as we get on, from stage to stage of our desert course, that we become acquainted with self.
God already knows what is in the heart. The point is to have it out with Him:
Now God says, "Your heart and Mine want to have a little talk together. I am going to show you what is in your heart, and to show you that I know it." He has brought you to Himself. Suppose you never bring out to Him all that is in your heart. Do you think it will be all right between you?
The road itself is chosen for that work:
God leads us by a trying and rough path... to bring the wrong and the pride in our hearts to light. God loves us too well to allow us to be deceived about our true character... He puts us in the very circumstances that bring it out. Not one of us can escape this testing and sifting.
The test comes down to hunger, and to what a person will live on:
This is another chapter our Lord quotes from when He was tempted. "And He humbled you, and 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 does not live by bread only." What exercise of faith was there in that? "But by every word that comes out of the mouth of Jehovah man lives." This is exactly what does put man to the proof morally. The word of God tests him. Does he submit to it? Does he live on it? Does he delight in it? Is his food to do the will of God, as the Lord Jesus proved His food was?
- Redeemed first. The desert comes after Egypt, never before. God tests people He has already rescued, and Canaan waits at the far end.
- Humbled next. Early joy leaves our self-confidence untouched. The long road empties it out. We learn our own hearts stage by stage.
- Opened up. The testing tells God nothing new. It brings what is in us out into the open with Him, so we leave nothing unsaid between His heart and ours.
- Tested by the word. Hunger with only God's word to live on is the real examination — whether we will submit to it, feed on it, and delight in it.
- Remembered last. Look back over every stage. The humblings turn out to be mercies — praise for the past, confidence for what lies ahead.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with the manna, which thou hadst not known, and which thy fathers knew not; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread alone, but by everything that goeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live.
Deuteronomy 8:3 looks back over forty years and explains why God let His people go hungry before He fed them. Hunger, then bread from heaven, taught one lesson: how a human being is meant to live. Jesus later used this verse to answer Satan in the wilderness.
God Himself allowed the hunger. One writer sees the same process at work in believers now.
We too have to be humbled and proved, and made to know what is in our hearts. It is very profitable and morally wholesome. When we first set out to follow the Lord, we know very little of the depths of evil and folly in our hearts. As we go on in daily life we begin to prove the reality of things. We find out the depths of evil in ourselves. We find out how hollow and worthless everything in the world is. And we find out our urgent need of complete dependence on the grace of God, every moment.
Another writer notes the order here — first the emptying, then the supply:
Two other things belong to this lesson — being left without, and being sustained in secret. "He let you hunger and fed you with manna." He withheld from us what we craved, and then fed us with heavenly food.
The manna was new to Israel and new to their ancestors. One writer explains where it came from and what it pictures:
The food God gave Israel was miraculous. It was unknown before, and no land they passed through produced it. The manna speaks of the Word of God concerning Christ in His lowly path of humiliation on earth. Their wilderness experience should have taught Israel that they depended completely on the Word of God.
Bread does keep the body alive. But a second supply keeps the soul alive:
This is the only true, the only safe, the only happy attitude for man — hanging in earnest dependence on "every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD." Through His word it brings the soul into direct, living, personal contact with the Lord Himself. As bread sustains natural life, so the word of God sustains spiritual life. It is not merely going to the Bible to find doctrines there, or to have our opinions confirmed. It is going to the Bible for the staple food of life.
The little word "every" carries weight of its own.
Note the force and value of the expression "every word." It shows clearly that we cannot do without a single word that has come from the mouth of the LORD. We want it all. We cannot tell the moment when some emergency may arise for which Scripture has already provided.
The word that feeds also examines. William Kelly shows how:
This is exactly what puts man to the proof morally. The word of God tests whether he submits to it, whether he lives on it, whether he delights in it. It tests whether his food is to do the will of God, as the Lord Jesus proved His food was.
Jesus answered the tempter with this verse. One writer shows what His refusal of bread meant:
With all divine resources always at command, it would have been simple for Him to help Himself to bread. But He would not use power to take Himself out of any consequence of the place He had entered as man. Man's place was to obey, and by keeping that place perfectly He defeated the enemy. He waits, therefore — He will act, even in the matter of taking necessary food, only when there is a word from God for it. But more than that, He lived by it — not merely a path outwardly directed by the word, but an inward life formed by it.
Notice what Jesus does not argue. Satan had challenged His sonship; the reply says nothing about it.
It is as though our Lord Christ had said to the adversary: "Whether I am the Son of God or not is not the question now. The question is how man is to live. Scripture alone answers it. Whoever I am, the Scripture is the same."
- Hunger — God allowed the want first, to humble and to show His people what was really in their hearts.
- Manna — He then fed them with bread they had never seen, food no land they crossed had produced.
- Lesson — the miracle taught the principle: bread keeps the body, but a person truly lives by what God speaks.
- Every word — not a favourite passage but the whole of Scripture. Keep it ready for the emergency you cannot yet foresee.
- Christ — He met the tempter with this verse. He waited for God's word before taking bread, and lived out the lesson Israel had failed to learn.
Thy clothing grew not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.
The forty years in the wilderness end with a small detail: clothes that did not wear out and feet that did not swell. Why does God point a tested, disciplined people to something so ordinary?
What strikes one writer first is not the size of the miracle. It is that God gave attention at all to something so ordinary.
What marvellous grace shines out in these words! Only think, reader, of the Lord watching over His people so closely that their clothes would not wear out and their feet would not swell! He not only fed them, but clothed them and cared for them in every way. He even stooped to look after their feet, so the sand of the desert might not injure them! For forty years He watched over them with all the tenderness of a father's heart. What will not love undertake to do for the one it loves? The Lord had set His love on His people, and this one blessed fact secured everything for them, if only they had understood it. Every need Israel had, from Egypt to Canaan, was secured to them and covered by this one fact: the Lord had undertaken to act for them.
Stretch the small detail over forty years and it stops being small. One writer ties it to the correction in the next verse, and to what that correction proves.
They were also reminded that while God tested them in the wilderness He performed a miracle on their behalf lasting forty years. We venture to say that no one else has ever had clothes that lasted so many years without growing old and wearing out. There was of course the chastening spoken of in verse 5. This may have helped to dull their sense of the miracle. But even this chastening came on them because God had brought them into relationship with Himself. Men chasten their own sons and not others.
The same forty years held both the correction and the care. Neither cancels the other.
A person has a great deal to learn after he is redeemed... God was thinking about Israel's very clothes and their feet, yet He gave them all the discipline and correction needed to show them themselves. Then their unbelief made them refuse to enter the land of Canaan. They would not go up and fight the Amorites. Yet in His grace He turned round in unfailing love and patience, and lived with them through all the forty years of their wilderness journeys.
The wilderness was hard on Israel. One writer looks at what it gave God: a place to show His heart.
In heaven there will be no broken hearts, no trials, no hunger, no thirst. But here the blessed God finds a place suited to show that His heart is equal to it all. The difficulties, trials and sorrows His people pass through only give Him the chance to show how He can care for His own. The blessed God took charge of the clothes and feet of His people for forty years! How wonderful! It is the greatness of His love that enables Him to enter into it all — nothing too great and nothing too small for His care and interest.
Israel's history was theirs, with promises that belonged to them as a nation. Even so, this verse is written down for us to learn from.
Individually we get much comfort for our hearts, and instruction too, from God's dealings with Israel. Besides great truths about God's nature, what happened to them happened to them as examples, and is written for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. See, for instance, Deuteronomy 8:2-4, which is the history of God's dealings with them in the wilderness. So we too, in a spiritual sense, are put through the wilderness, and learn God's care of us and our continual dependence on Him for every need and each step of the way. God took care even of the wearing out of their coats all that time, while He sought to teach them what they were.
The wilderness threatened more than their clothing. The same watchful care runs on into our own years.
Their travel was hard, through "that great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground," and among constant enemies. Yet divine power sustained and guarded them on every hand. This was a sign that the eyes of the Lord were always on the needs of His people. God has provided for us and kept us just as miraculously, if in another way, in the past year of our pilgrimage... Remembering the way by which He has led us, we can surely all testify that, according to His faithful word, He has never left us or forsaken us.
- Love undertakes. God set His love on Israel, and that one fact secured everything they needed from Egypt to Canaan — clothes included.
- Love stoops. The proof of that love is not the grand miracle but the small one: He watched their feet so the desert sand would not hurt them.
- Love corrects. The same forty years held both the care and the correction. The correction came because they were sons, not strangers.
- Love uses the desert. Trials give God His occasion to show a care that misses nothing, great or small.
- Love is remembered. Count what has not worn out on your own road. Looking back, we can testify — He has never left us.
And know in thy heart that, as a man chasteneth his son, so Jehovah thy God chasteneth thee;
Moses has just walked Israel back through forty years of hunger, provision, and clothes that never wore out. Now he tells them what all of it meant: a father was training his son. The verse asks for a deliberate act of thought — read the hard parts of the journey as love, not as rejection.
The word means more than punishment. In Scripture it belongs to the language of family.
This is mostly linked in Scripture with love and sonship, and it implies "instruction" and "discipline." He who loves chastens. At the time, chastening does not seem joyful but painful. Yet afterward it yields the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who are trained by it.
The comparison Moses uses is not decorative. It rests on a fact everyone recognises about families — a man corrects the children who belong to him.
There was, of course, the chastening that verse 5 speaks of. But even this chastening came upon them because they were a people brought into relationship with God. Men chasten their own sons and not others.
Verse 5 is the key to the whole chapter. The supply and the shortage, the road and the weariness, all trace back to the same source.
This accounts for it all. The hunger and the food, the trackless desert and the guiding pillar, the sickness and the healing — all tell of the same thing, a Father's hand, a Father's heart. An earthly father will have to use the rod of discipline as well as give the kiss of affection. He must give the rebuke as well as express his approval, and chasten as well as provide supplies. So it is with our heavenly Father.
Food and clothing are the easy part of a father's love. The rod is the part no son welcomes.
It is all very well for a son to receive food and clothing from a father's hand, and to have all his comforts provided by a father's thoughtful love. But he does not like to see him taking down the rod. And yet that dreaded rod may be the very best thing for the son. It may do for him what no material benefits or earthly blessings could achieve. It may correct some bad habit, or free him from some wrong tendency, or save him from some evil influence.
"Know then in your heart" is an instruction, not a suggestion. It asks for a settled conclusion about where our troubles come from. That conclusion shapes what Moses says next.
Thinking over our various trials and sorrows, we are to learn to connect them with the Lord's own hand. We are to understand that they are His chosen instruments for needed discipline. He tells us, further, that the end of God's chastening is that we might share His holiness. This matches the conclusion Moses draws in our chapter: "Therefore you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to fear Him." How calmly, then, we may leave ourselves in the Lord's hands.
Grief raises a question. Faith has its answer ready before the question comes.
The enemy suggests the question, "Is this love?" Faith replies, without hesitation and without reserve, "Yes!" It is all love, perfect love — the death of the child, the loss of the property, the long, heavy, painful illness. All the sorrow, all the pressure, all the inner testing, the deep waters and dark shadows — all, all is love, perfect love and unerring wisdom. I am sure of it, even now. I do not wait to know it later, when I shall look back on the path from the full light of the glory. I know it now.
What was true for Israel in the desert holds for God's people still.
This blessed word holds good at all times and in all circumstances, whether God disciplines one person or a whole company. Our Father never departs from this principle, never uses the rod except at the prompting of perfect love. Holiness is the end, love the motive. What is more, true discipline is only one of the forms in which true love is active.
- Relationship first. A man disciplines his own son and not somebody else's; the correction is evidence of the bond, not a threat to it.
- Love's second form. The same love that supplies food and clothing also takes down the rod, because the rod reaches what comfort cannot.
- Everything included. Hunger and food, desert and guidance, sickness and healing — one Father's hand lies behind the whole road.
- A verdict to settle. "Know in your heart" asks for a conclusion reached now, not one you delay until you can look back from the end of the road.
- Holiness the end, love the motive. That order never changes, and it leads straight to Moses' next word — keep His commandments, walk in His ways, fear Him.
and thou shalt keep the commandments of Jehovah thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.
This verse turns on one small word: "therefore." Forty years of humbling, testing, manna and a Father's discipline now become three demands: keep, walk, fear.
The command does not stand alone. It rests on what God had already done for the people. It also points forward.
The word "therefore" had a backward and a forward force. It was meant to lead the heart back over the past dealings of the Lord, and forward into the future. They were to think of the remarkable history of those forty years in the desert. There was the teaching, the humbling, the testing, the watchful care, the gracious ministry and the full supply of all their need. There was the manna from heaven and the stream from the struck rock. There was the care of their garments and of their very feet, and the wholesome discipline for their moral good. What powerful moral motives were here for Israel's obedience!
Moses does not only argue from what God has done. He also holds out what God is about to give.
Insisting that Israel remember to keep God's commandments, Moses gave them an incentive. It was the Lord's promise to bring them into "a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of the valleys and hills." There they would lack nothing, in a land producing iron and copper.
The chastening described just before this verse is not punishment from a stranger. It is how a father treats a son, and it trains the very obedience this verse asks for.
There was of course the chastening that verse 5 speaks of. But even this chastening came upon them because they were a people brought into relationship with God. Men chasten their own sons and not others. This is exactly the principle applied to ourselves in Hebrews 12. We are further told that no chastening is a joyful matter. Yet afterwards it yields "the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are trained by it." Israel was to be trained to keep the commandments, walk in God's ways and fear Him, as verse 6 states. This was all the more so, since God would bring them into a land of much earthly prosperity, while He brings us into a wealth of spiritual blessing.
The fear asked for here belongs to a family, not a courtroom.
What is the fear of the Lord? It is not the fear of a guilty conscience that fears the policeman, the magistrate or the judge. It is the fear of a son who is afraid to displease his father. It is a son's fear, born of love.
The desert is where a will gets crossed. Two responses to that can look the same from outside.
The second lesson of the wilderness is subjection: how few of us know what it is! I do not mean resignation. Resignation means that you endure it because you cannot help it. Subjection means that you fall in with the will of God as the delight of your heart. The wilderness is the place where your will may be crossed again and again. That is just the place to draw out the subjection of your heart.
The same three demands appear again later in Deuteronomy. There Moses adds a reason, and the reason is our own good.
"And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, to love Him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. To keep the commandments of the Lord, and His statutes, which I command you this day, for your good." It was all for their real good, their deep, full blessing, to walk in the way of the divine commandments. The path of whole-hearted obedience is the only path of true happiness. And blessed be God, those who love the Lord can always walk it.
- Remember. The word "therefore" sends the heart back over forty years of teaching, humbling, testing and daily supply. God asks obedience on the basis of what He has already done.
- Relationship. The discipline behind this command marks them out as sons, not strangers. Men correct their own children, and Hebrews 12 applies the same principle to believers.
- Reverence. To fear Him is not the dread of a guilty conscience before a judge, but a son's fear of displeasing a father he loves.
- Response. Walking in His ways is subjection, not resignation. It means taking God's will as the delight of the heart, even where that will cuts across our own.
- Reward. The forward look is a good land of springs and plenty. Whole-hearted obedience is itself the path to our good and our happiness.