Deuteronomy 8

¹ ‘All the commandments I enjoin on you today you must keep and observe so that you may live and increase in numbers and enter into the land that Yahweh promised on oath to your fathers, and make it your own.

² Remember how Yahweh your God led you for forty years in the wilderness, to humble you, to test you and know your inmost heart – whether you would keep his commandments or not.

³ He humbled you, he made you feel hunger, he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known, to make you understand that man does not live on bread alone but that man lives on everything that comes from the mouth of Yahweh.

⁴ The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet were not swollen, all those forty years.

⁵ Learn from this that Yahweh your God was training you as a man trains his child,

⁶ and keep the commandments of Yahweh your God, and so follow his ways and reverence him.

⁷ ‘But Yahweh your God is bringing you into a prosperous land, a land of streams and springs, of waters that well up from the deep in valleys and hills,

⁸ a land of wheat and barley, of vines, of figs, of pomegranates, a land of olives, of oil, of honey,

⁹ a land where you will eat bread without stint, where you will want nothing, a land where the stones are of iron, where the hills may be quarried for copper.

¹⁰ You will eat and have all you want and you will bless Yahweh your God in the rich land he has given you.

¹¹ ‘Take care you do not forget Yahweh your God, neglecting his commandments and customs and laws which I lay on you today.

¹² When you have eaten and had all you want, when you have built fine houses to live in,

¹³ when you have seen your flocks and herds increase, your silver and gold abound and all your possessions grow great,

¹⁴ do not become proud of heart. Do not then forget Yahweh your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery:

¹⁵ who guided you through this vast and dreadful wilderness, a land of fiery serpents, scorpions, thirst; who in this waterless place brought you water from the hardest rock;

¹⁶ who in this wilderness fed you with manna that your fathers had not known, to humble you and test you and so make your future the happier.

¹⁷ Beware of saying in your heart, “My own strength and the might of my own hand won this power for me”.

¹⁸ Remember Yahweh your God: it was he who gave you this strength and won you this power, thus keeping the covenant then, as today, that he swore to your fathers.

¹⁹ Be sure that if you forget Yahweh your God, if you follow other gods, if you serve them and bow down before them – I warn you today – you will most certainly perish.

²⁰ Like the nations Yahweh is to destroy before you, so you yourselves shall perish, for not having listened to the voice of Yahweh your God.