Go to Related Reading
About this book

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 8:9 and Letter of Aristeas 119

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

Share:

Summary

In Deuteronomy 8, Moses promises Israel a land whose stones are iron and whose hills yield copper. The Letter of Aristeas ends its praise of Judea with copper and iron mines in the nearby mountains, a detail that likely comes from Moses' description.

Passages

Deuteronomy 8:9

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

Letter of Aristeas 119

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions · Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates
We were told that from the neighboring mountains of Arabia copper and iron were formerly obtained. This was stopped, however, at the time of the Persian rule, since the authorities of the time spread a false report far and wide that the working of the mines was useless and expensive, in order to prevent their country from being destroyed by the mining in these districts and possibly taken away from them owing to the Persian rule, since with the help of this false report they found an excuse for entering the district. I have now, my dear brother Philocrates, given you all the essential information on this subject
200–150 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Letter of Aristeas

References

“... Aristeas even mentions “the oracle” (logion, Hebrew hoshen) that the High Priest “wears upon his breast” (97). That never took place in the Second Temple period and relates to Exod. 28:23, 26. In fact, Ps.-Aristeas continues to paraphrase Exodus story (the tabernacle and the priests’ vestments). He even mentions 600,000 men who had received allotments in Judea (116). That evidently refers to the number that went up from Egypt (Exod. 12:37). In two points the fragment exceeds the borders of the Book of Exodus. It mentions mines of copper and iron (Deut. 8:9) and contains an allusion to Isaiah’s prophesy (Isa. 2:2). ...”
Arkady Kovelman, Between Alexandria and Jerusalem: The Dynamic of Jewish and Hellenic Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 119.
“... The reason for these two paragraphs on the mines of Arabia is not particularly clear. As the conclusion to Ps.-Aristeas’s description of Judea, we should probably connect the mines with Judea as well, even though they are “nearby” in Arabia. The resources of iron and copper might be a reference to Deut 8:9, part of the description of the plenty of the land, “a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper.” The location in Arabia, however, might also hark back to Greek descriptions of that country, which according to Agatharcides (apud Diodorus Siculus 3.12), had many large mines that produced enormous quantities of gold. ...”
Benjamin G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas: ‘Aristeas to Philocrates’ or ‘On the Translation of the Law of the Jews’ (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 234.

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

Your feedback

Deuteronomy 8:9 and Letter of Aristeas 119

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library