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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 8:7 and 2 Kings 18:32

Hebrew Bible

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Summary

2 Kings 18 features the Assyrian representative promising land to those who surrender, using language that echoes Deuteronomy’s description of the promised land. This portrays the speech as a parody of Israel's covenantal language.

Passages

Deuteronomy 8:7

Hebrew Bible
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.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

2 Kings 18:32

Hebrew Bible
30 Don’t let Hezekiah talk you into trusting in the Lord when he says, “The Lord will certainly rescue us; this city will not be handed over to the king of Assyria.” 31 Don’t listen to Hezekiah!’ For this is what the king of Assyria says, ‘Send me a token of your submission and surrender to me. Then each of you may eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you to a land just like your own—a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey. Then you will live and not die. Don’t listen to Hezekiah, for he is misleading you when he says, “The Lord will rescue us.” 33 Have any of the gods of the nations actually rescued his land from the power of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Indeed, did any gods rescue Samaria from my power?
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 2 Kings

References

"... “Each man will eat of his own vine” is a tempting contrast with the threat of verse 27, and promises the Judeans security and peace. Wartime propaganda of this kind is very common in the history of warfare, and hardly to be taken at its face value. “And drink from his own well” is a counterpart to the first comment. The book of Proverbs uses this notion as a metaphor of marital faithfulness (Proverbs 5:15-20), and this might be a double entendre here. Often after a siege the fate of women was to be raped, then taken as hostages to the victor’s country (see Amos 7:17). The promise then is that the soldiers will be able to remain with their wives and families. The appeal is clever, if typical propaganda. Discussions in commentaries on the precise location of such good things are out of place and miss the tenor of the speech. The possibility of these promises ever being fulfilled even if the inhabitants of Jerusalem were to surrender is extremely remote ... This delay of Sennacherib at Lachish is regarded as temporary. In spite of the promises, forcible transmigrations of peoples are never pleasant, certainly not as depicted here. In the writer’s mind the comments of Rabshakeh are a parody of Deuteronomy 8:7-9. The threefold repetition in the description of the land is also found of the wilderness in Jeremiah 2:6, and might reflect a popular form of speech ..."
T. R. Hobbs, Word Biblical Commentary: 2 Kings (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015), 259.

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 8:7 and 2 Kings 18:32

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