Deuteronomy 8:3-6 And he humbled you, and suffered you to hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your fathers know… This passage is composed of two propositions, a negative and an affirmative. The verb is the same in both, and therefore can only have one and the same meaning in both propositions. The first taken literally is an obvious truism. The second, taken literally, is unintelligible. That man cannot live by bread alone is patent to all. At least two more substances are needful for existence, namely, air and water. Nor can air, water, and bread alone suffice for human life. Man must undergo some exertion in order to derive nourishment from the air, water, and bread, and he needs likewise to sleep and to have shelter or else he will die. As man rises in the scale of being, many more things become necessary to life which a primitive savage never thought of. The second proposition, "Man doth live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth o the Lord," taken literally, is manifestly unintelligible. We can understand that bread eaten and assimilated is one of the many things required to support human life, but in no sense can we understand the process of eating and assimilating to be applied to any words human or Divine. The second proposition is therefore so manifestly figurative that the literal interpretation must be abandoned. And if the second proposition be figurative, so likewise must be the first; for the verb which gives meaning to the second is the same in both. The key to the meaning of the passage lies in the sense given to the verb "live" and to the phrase "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." The author used this term "live" in a very exalted sense. It was much more than mere existence. We all know what kind of torpid, stupid life we mean to describe by the term "to vegetate"; a life of motionless, passionless inactivity — mere existence without exertion, without animation. A higher life than this belongs in common to all animals; but a mere animal life was not, I think, what the author intended when he said "man cannot live by bread alone." Just as we use the term "vegetate" to express inactivity, so we use the term "animalism" to express a brutish kind of life of which selfish indulgence is the alpha and omega. The life of man is something higher than the life of the beast, and cannot be sustained by the mere supply of animal wants. Taking the word "bread" to embrace typically every possible object needful for animal sustenance, vigour, and enjoyment, man wants for his life much more than bread. Man cannot live by bread alone. If he lives by bread alone, he has either never been a man at all or has ceased to be a man, he is only an animal. And , I venture to say, is one lesson that has to be re-learnt in our own times. Whether things were worse or better in times that are gone, one thing is most obvious now. Many men and women are steeped in the notion that it is only by bread that man can live and by nothing else — that is to say that their whole lives depend upon the constant and adequate supply of those things which go to furnish animal health, animal strength, animal spirits, and general animal enjoyment; that this earthly bread is all they ever want, or all that they need ever seek; that when these things are provided, the rest of everything can go to the wall, and the kingdom of God along with it. Too often parents by precept or example instill this animalism into the minds of their children, impressing it upon them by word and deed that their first and last duty in life is to get all they can; or else they tacitly acquiesce in their children's downward tendency and take no pains to eradicate their selfishness or to cultivate within them higher pursuits. It takes little from the sadness of this outlook to know that in a very large measure the state of society in which we live is very much to blame for much of this concentration on earthly good. On the one hand competition and the struggle for existence has made it very hard for some people to live at all, and on the other hand luxurious habits have not only grown in number but have gradually taken their place in the category of the necessaries of life. The wisdom of the Stoic which commended the restraint of desire as a means of conferring happiness is now all but forgotten; and parents and children together seem to act as if the attainment of desired objects was the whole secret of happiness, and the multiplication of gratified wishes led only to satisfaction. It is a wonder they do not see that the more we have the more we want; it is feeding the disease of longing to gratify wish after wish; and I must add it is cruelty to the young to let them grow up with the idea that the true happiness of mail's life consists in getting all we want and having our own way. If the course of Divine Providence with Israel be any guide to parents in the training of their children — and I think it is entitled to that place by those words, "Thou shalt remember in thine heart that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee" — we may well lay to heart that to deny our children some longed for pleasure, to submit them to mild privations and to disappoint them in the execution of their will is to be following a Divine example which seeks the truer, higher, and more enduring happiness of His children by the temporary infliction of some needful chastisement. But no parent can do this with judgment or moderation, or can conduct the process of disappointing his children's wishes properly unless he has learnt for himself the lesson, "Man cannot live by bread alone," unless he knows by experience that his life in its truest sense "does not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth," but that his troubles and cares have been part of his most valuable treasure, and that his life has been enriched more often by what he has lost than by what he has gained. And this brings us to consider what is meant by the assertion of the text that "man doth live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord." This phrase becomes intelligible to us the moment we understand what is meant by the term "live." The truest and highest life of man is not mere existence, nor the fullest enjoyment of his physical nature, but the highest exercise of his noblest functions as a moral and spiritual being, as a member of the great brotherhood of mankind, as a child of God. From such an elevation, the wants and cares of this lower life lose much of their overwhelming importance. Gains and losses are less felt as changes in the atmospheric pressure upon the soul. Daily bread is no longer regarded as the sum total of aspiration, as the sustenance of a heaven-born spirit. In the devout language of Job, "I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food." Now to live such a life we must not be content with bread, or with the most ample supply of all our physical wants, but we can only live it by the word of God, i.e. by following the higher law of our being, by seeking for and finding all possible truth, by acting in harmony with the known laws of Nature and with the known laws of human nature which are moral and spiritual as well as physical. If we but endeavour to have God in all our thoughts, to set God always before us, then our life will be a human life, and not the life of the vegetable or the life of the beast that perisheth. Why, even for the perfection of our lower life — the purely physical — we must attain to the knowledge of God's good laws, and follow them faithfully, or else the bread of life will fail to nourish us; all its thousand embellishments will destroy and not promote our happiness. How much more, then, must we seek, in active obedience to His good laws, that perfection of moral and spiritual health in which alone the highest life of man consists! It still holds good that "he that seeketh his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life the same shall find it." Paradoxical as it may sound, the law of self-denial for the well-being and comfort of others is the only condition in which our own well-being and comfort are attainable, or when attained can be made enduring. (C. Voysey, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live. |
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