Texts in Conversation
Deuteronomy 8 highlights a forty-year period in the wilderness meant to humble and test Israel, but the Greek Septuagint translation removes the explicit mention of forty years, perhaps in an attempt to harmonize the narrative timeline.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Deuteronomy 8:2
Hebrew Bible
1 You must keep carefully all these commandments I am giving you today so that you may live, increase in number, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 2 Remember the whole way by which he has brought you these 40 years through the wilderness so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not. 3 So he humbled you by making you hungry and then feeding you with unfamiliar manna. He did this to teach you that humankind cannot live by bread alone, but also by everything that comes from the Lord’s mouth. 4 Your clothing did not wear out nor did your feet swell all these 40 years.
Date: 750–400 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
LXX Deuteronomy 8:2
Septuagint
1 You shall observe to do all the commands which I charge you today, that you may live and be multiplied, and enter in and inherit the land, which the Lord your God swore to your fathers. 2 And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you in the wilderness, that he might afflict you, and try you, and that the things in your heart might be made manifest, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he afflicted you and straitened you with hunger, and fed you with manna, which your fathers did not know; that he might teach you that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live. 4 Your garments did not wear out on you, your feet were not painfully hardened, look, these forty years.
Date: 300–201 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The LXX differs from the Masoretic text by utilizing the plural form “commandments” instead of the collective singular “commandment”. Although the Masoretic text only calls God יהוה, the LXX uses the phrase, “the Lord your God” (κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὑμῶν). If the Israelites keep God’s commandments, they will live, become numerous, and inherit the land God promised to their fathers. The Israelites should remember how God led them in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2). Unlike 4Q30 and the Masoretic text, the LXX of Deuteronomy 8:2 does not mention forty years ..."
Christopher Winchester, “Thematic Association in the Gospel of Matthew: Situating Exegesis in the Gospel of Matthew in Its Second Temple Context” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2017), 188.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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