Deuteronomy 8:3 Part II: The Lonely Bread

כִּי֠ לֹ֣א עַל־הַלֶּ֤חֶם לְבַדּוֹ֙ יִחְיֶ֣ה הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֛י עַל־כָּל־מוֹצָ֥א פִֽי־יְהוָ֖ה יִחְיֶ֥ה הָאָדָֽם׃

The second part of Deuteronomy 8:3 says

'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

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[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.

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part I: God Brings us down In order to lift us up

וַֽיְעַנְּךָ֮ וַיַּרְעִבֶךָ֒ וַיַּֽאֲכִֽלְךָ֤ אֶת הַמָּן֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹא־יָדַ֔עְתָּ וְלֹ֥א יָדְע֖וּן אֲבֹתֶ֑יךָ לְמַ֣עַן הוֹדִֽעֲךָ֗

Recently I decided to retranslate Deuteronomy 8:3 from Hebrew to English, partly out of curiosity and partly because I thought it might help me with some of my studies into the theology of Holy Communion.

Most Translations will do their best to be faithful to the original, but will have a strong emphasis on making sense in the language into which it is being translated. By contrast I attempt to retain as much of the raw Hebrew style as I can, but where there are peculiarities of grammar or words that just won't translate in a linear way, I like to play with them in a poetic way; to tease out some bridge of meaning between the original language and my own. This is my translation set next to a couple of more standard translations;

  I used a little poetic licence in the opening phrase 'and he brings you down.' Most translations begin with and he humbled you, which is right, but is perhaps too gentle; too polite. The verb anah (ענה) can be translated as 'to oppress' or 'to humiliate'; 'brings you down' seemed to do the trick in the context.

NRSV	NIV	My translation
He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.	He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.	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.

Hebrew grammar can be very ambiguous and most translators presume that this the start of Deuteronomy 8:3 is a sequence of three things that God does, he humbled you and he caused you to be hungry and then he fed you with manna, but if we think of the second and third 'he's as 'it's it transforms the nature of this sequence. The name of the food, manna (ענה) is a kind of play on words, as it means something like 'what is it?' This makes sense, because it was indeed unknown food and the sentence goes on to say 'which you did not know and your Fathers did not know'. Instead of being a list of things that God does directly, we can think of this as a sequence of events set off by God first humbling you; then that humbling causing you to hunger and the hunger causing you to eat the unknown or unfamiliar food.

The pattern of humbling, hunger and openness to the new, seems to be a method that God uses to shift the faithful from times of stagnation and fatigue towards times of renewal and transformation.

A related, but slightly different pattern is noticeable in many biblical passages; the pattern of faith, testing, and reward. It can be seen in Abram and Sarai's waiting for a son, Joseph being sold into slavery and imprisonment, the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, the exodus, the exile, even the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus.

Two examples that relate to Deuteronomy 8:3 can be seen in the stories of Noah in Genesis 6-9 and Jesus being baptized before being tested in the wilderness in Mark 1, where there is an act of faith followed by 40 days of testing. The reward for Noah is survival but with Jesus the reward is more complex as it is ultimately us who seem to receive the reward and not him.

In both stories the faith comes before the trial; before the dark time. As Christians, we often think that when we have faith we will automatically suffer less. Our faith might give us strength to withstand suffering, but it certainly doesn't prevent us from experiencing it. In fact in many biblical stories as in modern life, it is that very faith that places us in the very heart of the suffering. Sometimes the faith that is ultimately drawing us towards the light, first takes us directly into the dark places of life.

People often ask 'If God is good, why does God allow bad things to happen?' I would not want to suggest that all suffering comes under the banner of this pattern of faith, testing and reward, but certainly when we read these stories we can see that suffering is not just an accidental by-product of free will, or something that the Devil has brought into the world against God's intentions. We see in these stories that suffering, the dark places and the wilderness moments in life are an intrinsic part of the human experience; a fundamental part of the universe God created.

The beginning of Deuteronomy 8 echoes the number 40 heard in the stories of Noah and Jesus in the wilderness as it speaks of the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness. It speaks also of this as a time of testing;

Deuteronomy 8:2 (NIV)  ² Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

However, in verse 3 we are seeing that pattern of faith, trial and reward as if from the inside; from God's viewpoint, the mechanics of the theology that underpins this process. God brings us down in order to create that hunger within us, so that we will be ready to eat unknown food, so that we will be prepared to take on the unfamiliar.

Faith	→	The faith of the individual, though flawed and possibly stagnating, gives an opening for God to bring that person down	↘	Humbling
Trial	↙	The bringing down leads to a time of trial	←
	→	The time of trial creates hunger within the individual	↘	Hunger
Reward	↙	The hunger leads to an openness to receiving from God, the reward	←
	→	This place of reward is a new and unknown situation for which the recipient was not previously prepared.	↘	Unknown Food

 If we look at the Church in Britain today, isn't that exactly where we are? Isn't God bringing us down in order to create that hunger within us? Decline in the Church is often seen as either a failure on the human side of the equation, or as God abandoning that part of the Church in some way.  Whilst the human part in the failure to grow the Church should not be ignored, it seems likely that God was not surprised by the decline that is occurring in the Church and sought to use this as part of the bigger plan.

A triumphant and powerful Church, whilst successful, easily becomes complaisant, reliant on human strength and organisation; it becomes hierarchical in a top-down way and, instead of being a servant to the people, it can quickly become a master and a judge. The need for the Church to be brought down in order to regain that hunger for the humble grace of the cross is apparent when we stand back and look at the bigger picture from the vantage point of Deuteronomy 8:3.

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part II: The Lonely Bread

If I could get anyone to write Doctor Who...

OK, so let's just start by saying that this has almost nothing to do with theology, rambling or otherwise, except that the best theology and the best sci-fi occupy almost exactly the same space. They make us ask 'why?' and 'what if?' And great writing is great writing regardless whether it's for a sermon or an advert for foot cream. On my Facebook page I asked this question -

"So if you could choose 13 writers, living or dead, to write scripts for a Doctor Who series, but none of them could be people who have written Who scripts before, who would you choose and what do you imagine they might write?"

Many interesting answers were given, but having asked the question I thought I ought to offer mine in full;

1.      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - The mystery of the broken robot. The murder of a young woman in 18th century London appears to have been committed by a 19th century mechanical man. Yet there is no apparent evidence of time travel involved. How did the robot get there, how was such a thing created and what possible motive could be behind the killing? The Doctor investigates this series of impossible events.

2.      H.G. Wells - The Creatures that Owned the Universe - The Doctor meets a race who claim to have come from a time before this universe began, they have come to claim back all the particles of matter that were taken from their universe to create ours. Apart from the moral quandary of the situation, the Doctor is faced with the very real possibility that he is powerless to defend his universe against the power of a race that can move across the boundaries between universes and control the powers of creation.

3.      Joss Whedon - Time Girl and the Race of Judges. The Doctor arrives on a planet where humans are kept like pets by godlike creatures who claim to be saving them from their own tendency for self destruction, but one girl who has the power to change moments in time is disrupting the seemingly perfect balance of power. Will she make things better or worse and will the Doctor have to save her from herself or vice versa?

4.      Jules Verne - Into the Eye of the Eagle  - The Doctor Takes his companion on a sightseeing trip of the Eagle Nebula only to find that a race of giant space dwelling creatures is building vast and terrible things with the stardust there; things of equal parts beauty and horror.

5.      Philip K. Dick - Perhaps we may be born soon. After the TARDIS crashes on a seemingly uninhabited world, the Doctor and his companion regain consciousness, only to find themselves transformed into the unborn offspring of an alien creature. The two of them along with three other temporary residents in this mysterious womb, await their immanent rebirth, but is anything here what it seems to be?

6.      Ronald D. Moore - Civilian - it is 96th Century earth and war has thrown much of the planet back to the dark ages. The Doctor can use Gallifreyan technology to bring the war to an end but at what cost? And who has disrupted the human time line? A mysterious figure claims to know the Doctor and begs him not to end the war for the sake of the human race.

7.      Voltaire - The Perfectors - The Doctor, in search of long lost Gallifrey, stumbles upon a space station supporting the lives of 64 living members of the race of Time Lords. They have long gone undetected as they have renounced time travel and regeneration, choosing instead to travel silently among the stars, observing as they go and seeking to make no impact on any situation they observe. The Doctor, to the great distress of his travelling companion, is of the mind to settle down with these peaceful folk and make a life there, to make peace with the demons of his past and to take no more measures to interfere with the ways of the universe, but there is more than meets the eye in this tale of simplicity and natural living, for not all that seems natural was meant to be.

8.      William Shakespeare - A Time Lord is as a Time Lord does - The TARDIS arrives in the court of a Saxon King. The King's daughter is betrothed to the son of a neighbouring king, but witnessing the mysterious arrival of the heavenly TARDIS, she thinks him to be a creature sent to her by God and in a moment's glance, she falls in love. There are monsters in the woods that only the Doctor has either the will or the wiles to slay, but in slaying them he may only deepen the love of the princess and thus also slay the kingdom's hope for peace. Comedie may in time descend to love's sweet tragedie as our hero must seek to seem as that which he is not, if he is to remain true to that which he must be.

9.      C.S. Lewis - The Cup of Rassilon - An iron age group of humans in Britain share the legend of an ancient cup of Rassilon that offers regeneration to those who drink from it. The tribe divides between those who wait faithfully for a revelation about the cup and those who wish to go out and seek the cup. The Doctor becomes obsessed with working out how the tribe have any knowledge of Rassilon in the first place, but a mysterious old woman tells the Doctor he is looking in the wrong place for the truth. 'Sometimes it is the boat that carries the river' she says 'but foolishness and greed are the same wherever they come ashore.'

10.   Hayao Miyazaki - The Tree of Stolen Histories - The TARDIS lands on a planet where sentient plants burrow into the circuitry and begin to open up portals to the Doctor's past destinations. Wonderful and terrible things occur when time and place begin to mingle, but out of this the most unexpected friendship occurs.

11.   Isao Takahata - Orphans of the Time War - The TARDIS is transported by the Tree of Stolen Histories to a once idyllic planet, now populated by children of species that now never existed as a result of the Time War. Time scavengers regularly raid the planet to claim residents for food or slavery. Can the one who helped create this tragedy bring any hope to this hopeless place? Or is it the Orphans who bring redemption to him?

12.   JRR Tolkein - The Dark Chronicle of the Daleks - It has often been asked, what might make such a race of soulless creatures as the Daleks, what motivates such evil and destruction? Long ago before the fall of Kaled City, before radiation flooded the planet of Skaro; when the Thals and the Dals lived upon the surface and the name of Davros had not yet been uttered, a dark seed of hate was planted. A hate that goes deeper than the desire to survive, a hate more hideous than revenge or jealousy; this seed was the hatred for life itself.  The seed was planted by a time traveller and the reason for its planting was a secret to all races and all generations; the name of the time traveller was never spoken and his secret was known only by the one who gave him the seed. Wars would be fought and planets would fall, races would disappear into the annals of history before the truth would be known as to why the seed was planted...

13.   Aaron Sorkin - What kind of Time Lord have I been? The Doctor is arrested by the shadow Proclamation and has to stand trial for crimes against innocent species caught up in the Time War. But here's the thing, and there's no two ways about it; the Doctor can't call on past versions of himself, or companions who would have his back, even if all hell broke loose on this Time Lord from Gallifrey, because everyone already knows that's what they'll do. Instead he calls for his oldest enemy; Missy/the Master to plead his defence. What ensues is not a war of worlds, but of words; not of guns, but ideas. And in the end, perhaps the best voice to speak for Doctor's innocence is the one who would, in any other circumstance, feed him to the wolves.

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For anyone confused by the premise - please don't think that any of these stories actually exist or that any of the people mentioned above have had anything to do with these synopses. BTW - I asked Bill Shakespeare, but he said he's currently locked into the next two series of NCIS New Orleans and couldn't possibly consider a script for the BBC at this point.