And he humbled you and let you 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 alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
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.
Why God humbles
God Himself allowed the hunger. One writer sees the same process at work in believers now.
C. H. MackintoshWe 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:
The Christian's FriendTwo 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.
Bread they did not know
The manna was new to Israel and new to their ancestors. One writer explains where it came from and what it pictures:
Leslie M. GrantThe 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.
The word as daily food
Bread does keep the body alive. But a second supply keeps the soul alive:
C. H. MackintoshThis 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.
C. H. MackintoshNote 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 tests
The word that feeds also examines. William Kelly shows how:
William KellyThis 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.
Christ and the tempter
Jesus answered the tempter with this verse. One writer shows what His refusal of bread meant:
J. A. TrenchWith 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.
C. H. MackintoshIt 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."
Summary
- 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.