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