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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 8

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. 5 Be keenly aware that just as a parent disciplines his child, so the Lord your God disciplines you. 6 So you must keep his commandments, live according to his standards, and revere him. 7 For the Lord your God is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks, springs, and fountains flowing forth in valleys and hills,⁠ 8 a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, 9 a land where you may eat food in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.⁠ 10 You will eat your fill and then praise the Lord your God because of the good land he has given you.⁠ 11 Be sure you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, ordinances, and statutes that I am giving you today. 12 When you eat your fill, when you build and occupy good houses,⁠ 13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything,⁠ 14 be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful wilderness of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from hard rock⁠ and 16 fed you in the wilderness with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful not to say, “My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth.” 18 You must remember the Lord your God, for he is the one who gives ability to get wealth; if you do this he will confirm his covenant that he made by oath to your ancestors, even as he has to this day. 19 Now if you forget the Lord your God at all and follow other gods, worshiping and prostrating yourselves before them, I testify to you today that you will surely be annihilated. 20 Just like the nations the Lord is about to destroy from your sight, so he will do to you because you would not obey him.

Texts in conversation

Compare Deuteronomy 8:15 and Psalm 114:8

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Deuteronomy 8 recalls the wilderness as a dangerous place where God brought water from rock to sustain Israel and teach humility. Psalm 114 reshapes this tradition by describing the rock itself turning into water.

Passages

Deuteronomy 8:15

Hebrew Bible
13 when your cattle and flocks increase, when you have plenty of silver and gold, and when you have abundance of everything, 14 be sure you do not feel self-important and forget the Lord your God who brought you from the land of Egypt, the place of slavery, 15 and who brought you through the great, fearful wilderness of venomous serpents and scorpions, an arid place with no water. He made water flow from hard rock and 16 fed you in the wilderness with manna (which your ancestors had never before known) so that he might by humbling you test you and eventually bring good to you. 17 Be careful not to say, “My own ability and skill have gotten me this wealth.”
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

Psalm 114:8

Hebrew Bible
3 The sea looked and fled; the Jordan River turned back. 4 The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. 5 Why do you flee, O sea? Why do you turn back, O Jordan River? 6 Why do you skip like rams, O mountains, like lambs, O hills? 7 Tremble, O earth, before the Lord—before the God of Jacob, 8 who turned a rock into a pool of water, a hard rock into springs of water.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

References

"... In this last couplet of verses, a parallel is clearly established between the skipping of the mountains / hills (verse 6) and the liquid element (verse 8). In parallel to the pair (5/7) of verses, it seems that this pair ensures that the mountains will also liquefy in the future. This point is confirmed by the use of the term ההפכי in verse 8, a participial form transforming the time frame. As stressed by Adele Berlin, “the time frame is no longer in the past but is now tenseless-timeless, suggesting that the God who changed the natural world before will change it again.” Such an interpretation, together with the previous considerations about the melting dimension of the epiphany of YHWH, invites us to reconsider the interpretation of verse 8. The transformation of rock into water is traditionally understood as the supply of drinkable water. This interpretation is supported by the parallel use, in the context of the divine supply of water to the Israelites, of the terms rock (צור) and flint (חלמיש) both in Psalm 114:8 and in Deuteronomy 8:15 ... However, this interpretation does not account for the strong differences between them: in Deuteronomy 8:15, YHWH is bringing out (המוציא) waters from the rock, while in Psalm 114:8, YHWH turns/transforms (ההופכי) the rock into waters. This difference is notable since the verb הפך is never used elsewhere in the Bible to relate to the springing of drinkable water from the rock ..."
Nissim Amzallag and Mikhal Avriel, “The Canonic Responsa Reading of Psalm 114 and Its Theological Significance,” OTE 24.2 (2011): 303–323.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Deuteronomy 8:15 and Psalm 114:8

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