כִּי֠ לֹ֣א
עַל־הַלֶּ֤חֶם לְבַדּוֹ֙ יִחְיֶ֣ה הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֛י עַל־כָּל־מוֹצָ֥א פִֽי־יְהוָ֖ה
יִחְיֶ֥ה הָאָדָֽם׃
'Man shall not live by bread alone but on every word that proceeds
from the mouth of the Lord.' Or in my
translation; 'it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will
live, because on all emissions from the mouth of Yahweh will the human live'
This line, later
quoted by Jesus (Mt 4:4/Lk 4:4), is often used to infer two things;
1.
That we cannot simply rely on earthly, physical food; we must also
rely on spiritual food.
2.
That that we should listen to and be fed by the verbal word of
God, through the scriptures.
Neither of
these is entirely wrong, but both have slight problems.
1 We cannot simply rely on earthly, physical food; we must also
rely on spiritual food.
If you read
Deuteronomy 8:3 on its own you might indeed conclude that God is saying symbolically
through the manna; 'you can't simply live on your own earthly resources, you need
to rely also on me; supplement your earthly bread with heavenly manna and all will
be well.' Except we hear from Numbers 11:7-8 that they baked the manna into
bread, which in Exodus 16:4, Nehemiah 9:15, Psalm 78:24-25 and John 6:31 it is
referred to as the 'bread of heaven'. Neither Deuteronomy nor Matthew's Gospel
say; 'Man shall not live by earthly bread alone, but also by the heavenly bread.'
We might ask
if manna is the bread that we cannot survive on, or does it represent that all
nourishing word of God? In Numbers 11 we hear a request from the Israelites for
some meat with their manna as they are fed up with the same diet. But that
request is met with a resounding 'no', as if to say 'you shall live by
this bread alone.' This seems to be a contradiction of Deuteronomy 8:3 where
the manna is the unknown food, but we'll come back to that.
2 We should listen to and be fed by the verbal word of God, through
the scriptures.
There is a
translation issue here; whilst the Greek in the New Testament inserts the word rhema
(ῥῆμα), 'word',[1]
the Hebrew from Deuteronomy gives us the phrase col motsa (כָּל־מוֹצָ֥א) which
loosely means all the 'emissions' or the 'going forths'. Motsa is a noun
that captures the action of going forth as much as the thing or the word that
is being sent. Hence some translations use phrases like 'everything that
proceeds from the mouth of the Lord'. Like logos, rhema also carries
within it a sense of not just meaning word, but also meaning the idea, the
matter, the thing or the concept. So even if we insert 'word' there it needs to
be thought of as a far wider and more conceptual meaning than simply words,
whether written or spoken.
This is not
simply a placing of spiritual food above physical food, biblical texts above
other texts or the word of God above earthly common sense, it is about
acknowledging an interconnectedness about all that comes from God even after it
has been processed by human thought and action.
We should
note that both heavenly providence and earthly process are involved in the
production of manna. It is provided by God but needs to be prepared by human
hands in order for it to be ready for human consumption. Our mistake in our
interpretation of 'man shall not live by bread alone' is one of subtle
emphasis. It is not about separating out the earthly from the heavenly, nor is
it about adding God's word to human endeavour, but rather about God's actions
baked into the bread, God's living involvement and interaction with the world
becoming the first ingredient of what we seek to create. God becoming the first
thought not the afterthought. Man shall not live by bread in its 'loneliness'
but in its interconnectedness with God; by everything that comes from God and
by realising that everything created comes from the very breath of God - 'In
the beginning was the word and the word was God.'
The food is
the same food; the bread is the same bread. We don't replace earthly bread with
heavenly bread. We transform our experience of the bread by acknowledging the
presence of God in the creating of this bread; by realising the presence of
God's divine nature within the food. Suddenly we find ourselves back in the
realms of communion theology. Considering the statement 'it is not on the bread
in its loneliness that the human will live' in terms of communion theology
helps us to understand what it is all about and simultaneously enriches our
understanding of Communion.
We might say;
'man shall not live by bread a lone, but also by the wine'. Man shall not live
just by the physical body of Christ, thinking perhaps of the Church as the body
of Christ but also by the spirit of God poured out for all people represented
in the wine.
I have
spoken in another blog about the symbolism of the breaking of the bread and the
pouring out of the spirit in the cup; that there is a model of how to be church
in the pattern of Holy Communion, in the constant re-breaking of the structure
of the church in order to allow God's spirit to flow. We can also think of this
in more abstracted terms of structure and flow.
Tradition is
perhaps the structure that, important though it is, needs to be constantly
re-broken and redefined and the flow of the spirit of God is that which keeps
everything new. And we only know how to do this if we are constantly listening
to God, constantly looking for God's actions in the world and God's hand upon
our lives. The structure and flow or the breaking and pouring out both echo
that bringing down and lifting up from the first part of Deuteronomy 8:3; the
hunger that is created by that bringing down and our subsequent openness to
being filled with the holy spirit that is poured out for all.
"And he
brings you down and it makes you hungry and it makes you eat the unknown food
that you do not know and your fathers did not know, in order to cause your
knowing, that it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will
live, because, on all emissions from the mouth of Yahweh will the human live."
Deuteronomy 8:3 Part I: God brings us down in order to lift us up
[1] Some
traditions suggest a difference between 'rhema' as the spoken and 'logos'
as the written word of God, but studies of the Greek language don't seem to
support this.
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