Deuteronomy 8:1-20

Warning against pride and forgetfulness of God ch. 8

"Two important lessons from the past are now referred to. First, the experience of God’s care in the wilderness period, when the people of Israel were unable to help themselves, taught them the lesson of humility through the Lord’s providential discipline. The memory of that experience should keep them from pride in their own achievements amid the security and prosperity of the new land (Deuteronomy 8:1-20)." [Note: Thompson, p. 134.]

The Israelites were not only in danger of compromising with the Canaanites (ch. 7). They were also in danger of becoming too self-reliant when they entered the land (ch. 8). Note the double themes of remembering and forgetting, and the wilderness and the Promised Land in this chapter. They lead to the warning in Deuteronomy 8:19-20.