Five-year Bible reading plan for 17 July 2026

King James Version (en)

Deuteronomy, Chapter 8

¹ An exhortation to obedience in regard of God's dealing with them

¹All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers.

²And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

³And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.

⁴Thy raiment waxed not old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell, these forty years.

⁵Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chasteneth his son, so the LORD thy God chasteneth thee.

⁶Therefore thou shalt keep the commandments of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to fear him.

⁷For the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;

⁸A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey;

⁹A land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.

¹⁰When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the LORD thy God for the good land which he hath given thee.

¹¹Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:

¹²Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein;

¹³And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied;

¹⁴Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;

¹⁵Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint;

¹⁶Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end;

¹⁷And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.

¹⁸But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.

¹⁹And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.

²⁰As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God.

NOTES

God gives prosperity to human beings. He blesses wealth and multiplies lands, gardens, houses... You do not have very many houses and gardens? Do not despair: there is not only material wealth but also the wealth of the soul, of one's inner world, the wealth of the spirit! Only in spiritual abundance does a person come to know God...

The Lord speaks very stern words: He requires Israel to be completely separated from other peoples. No mixed marriages, no contacts - Israel is a completely separate people; it does not associate with other peoples. Why? What is the reason for such strict demands?..

At times one hears that the religion of the Old Testament was, compared with Christianity, a religion of the flesh; that well-being was understood by Old Testament people too materialistically, too earthbound; that the main signs of God's blessing were good harvests and good increase of livestock, many children, abundance and prosperity, triumph over the enemy in war. Some verses of the Torah, it would seem, confirm such an attitude. And yet speculations of this kind should be considered more a tribute to the spiritualism traditional in church-adjacent circles than a properly Yahwistic attitude.

As for Yahwism, which is usually what is meant by "Old Testament religion," it was completely alien to every kind of spiritualism, as indeed was Christianity, which was never a "religion of the spirit" or a "religion of suffering," as some called it, but the life of the Kingdom. Yahwism, for its part, knew a spiritual foretaste, a spiritual anticipation of that life. And Yahwism saw nothing blameworthy in earthly well-being, on one condition: that this well-being is not achieved by violating the Torah, the commandment given by God. The point here, of course, is not that before the coming of Christ people were naive enough to think that righteousness in the fallen world is accompanied by prosperity. One need only open Ecclesiastes or the Book of Job to be convinced that spiritually mature people did not suffer from such naivete even in pre-Christian times.

The point was something else: believing Yahwists looked at the God-given land as the Kingdom of God, which lacked only the righteousness of those who lived on that land in order to be revealed in fullness. And it must be acknowledged that there was a truth in this approach, though not the whole truth. In fact, the essence of the Kingdom of God does not lie in the nature of the universe, but in its relation to God. If God is at the center, the world becomes the Kingdom. And God, from the time of the Sinai theophany, had already come to His people and made a covenant bond with them precisely in order to remain among His people forever. And the people truly were called to become a community of the faithful, while the place where they lived was called to become the Kingdom. Of course, this concerns an ideal and a supreme task, one that could not be adequately resolved before the Messiah came into the world. And yet the people always carried an understanding that well-being on the God-given land is possible only if that land is the Kingdom. For God loves His people. And He wants them to be happy.

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