Deuteronomy 8

₁Moses said: ‘You must listen to all these laws that I am giving you today. If you do, you will live and your nation will become strong. You will go and take the land for yourselves. The Lord has promised to give this land to your forefathers. ₂And you must remember everything that the Lord your God has done for you and what happened when you were in the desert for 40 years. He wanted to make you humble because He wanted to know if you would do what his laws say. ₃He made you humble and hungry and then He gave you manna to eat. You and your forefathers did not know manna before. The Lord wanted you to understand that people can not live from bread only. They need more than food to live. They live from every word that the Lord says.

₄In those 40 years your clothes did not become too old to wear and your feet did not swell or become too painful to walk. ₅You know that the Lord wants to teach you to live in the right way, the same as when a father teaches his child to do the right thing. ₆You must do what the laws of the Lord say. You must live as He wants and you must serve Him. ₇Because the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land where there is a lot of water, rivers and fountains and dams of water that comes from the mountains and valleys. ₈There is wheat and barley, and there are vines and fig trees and pomegranates, and olive trees and honey. ₉In this land you will have a lot of food. There will be enough of everything. In this land there is iron in the rocks and copper that you can take out of the mountains.

₁₀And when you have eaten enough, you must praise the Lord your God and thank Him for the good land that He has given you. ₁₁You must be careful. Do not forget the Lord your God. You must do what his laws, that I am giving you today, say. ₁₂When you eat and you have had enough and you build beautiful houses and live in them, ₁₃and you have a lot of cows and sheep and goats, and your silver and gold become more and more, and everything you have becomes more, ₁₄then you must not become proud and forget the Lord your God. He saved you from the land of Egypt, the land where you were slaves. ₁₅He led you through the big and dangerous desert, where there were poisonous snakes and scorpions and no water. In the desert the Lord made water flow out of a rock. ₁₆He gave you manna to eat, something that your forefathers did not know. He wanted to make you humble to test you so that you could trust in Him and everything would go well for you in the end.

₁₇When you eat and you have had enough, you must never say that you have done it all by yourselves or that you have worked hard to get all these things. ₁₈No, you must remember that it is the Lord your God who gave you the strength to get all these things. He did this to show that He will never forget the covenant that He made with your forefathers. ₁₉If you ever forget the Lord your God and you serve other gods and bow down to them, then I warn you today: You will die. God will destroy you, this is sure. ₂₀If you do not listen to the Lord your God, you will die like the nations who lived in this land before. He killed them to give you their land.’