Charles Spurgeon Commentary Deuteronomy 8:3

"And 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 everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of Jehovah doth man live." — Deuteronomy 8:3 (ASV)

And he humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you did not know.

What a wonderful sequence there is in these short sentences!

He humbled you, and allowed you to hunger, and one would think that the next sentence would be, "and allowed you to starve."

No; it is, and fed you with manna. They had a better appetite for the manna, and were more ready to see the hand of God in sending the manna, because of that humbling and hunger which God had previously allowed them to endure. Fed you with manna, which you did not know. The very name by which they called it was, "Manna," or, "What is this?" for they did not know what it was.

And fed you with manna, which you did not know.

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.

God can make us live on bread, if it is sanctified by the Word of God and prayer; he does make our souls to live upon his Word. He could, if it so pleased him, make our bodies live by that Word without any outward sustenance whatever.

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,

These two sentences come very closely together: Suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna. I suppose we are not fit to eat heavenly bread till first of all we begin to hunger for it. God loves to give to men who will eat with an appetite: He suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna.

Which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know;

It was a new kind of food, and even in the day when they ate it, they did not fully know what it was.

They saw that it came by a miracle, and it remained a mystery. And I think we can say that, though we have fed upon the Bread of heaven, some of us, for nearly forty years, yet we hardly know, nor dare to think that we know, what it is made of, nor can we tell all the sweetness that is in it.

We know the love of Christ, but it still passes our knowledge.

It is true of us, as of Israel in the wilderness, 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.

It is a grand thing to be delivered from materialism, to be freed from the notion that the outward means are absolutely essential for the accomplishment of the divine purpose. If God had so willed it, we could have lived on air, if the air had been sanctified by the Word of God and prayer for such a use. The Lord has, however, chosen to feed us upon bread; yet our highest life, our real life, does not live on bread, but it lives on the Word which proceeds out of the mouth of God.

This is one of the passages with which our Lord fought Satan in the desert, and overcame him. Happy is that servant of God who will arm himself with this same truth, and feel, "I am not to be provided for merely by money, or by anything else that is visible. God will provide for me somehow, and I can leave all care about the means if the means fail, and get away to the God of the means, and lean, not on what I see, but on that arm which is invisible. That which you can see may fail you, for it is, like yourself, a shadow; but he whom you cannot see will never fail you.

The strongest sinew in an arm of flesh will crack, but the eternal arm never fails and is never shortened. Lean on that arm, and you shall never be ashamed, nor confounded, world without end. It takes forty years to teach some people that lesson, and some, alas! have not learned it even at the end of eighty years.