"Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone"

JOHN T. WILLIS Abilene Christian College

The statement "Man does not live by bread alone" (Deut. 8:3) has been variously treated by commentators on the Book of Deuteronomy. Some give no explanation at all,* as if this statement were so clear that it needed no comment, or as though space allowed by the publisher for the book as a whole did not justify a lengthy discussion of this one line.

Others think it means that there is much more to human life than satisfying one's physical desires; indeed, it is much more important to feed the spirit or inner man with the word of God than to feed the body with bread. This interpretation is based on a number of arguments and/or assumptions.

(1) At first reading, it seems to find support from the antithetical statement which follows: "man does not live by bread alone, but . . . man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." Since "mouth" (Heb. phi, from peh) suggests "speaking," it is frequently assumed or affirmed that "everything that proceeds out of" (Heb. kol mosta') means "every word that proceeds out of." Driver, e.g., translates: "Man doth not live on bread alone, but on every utterance of Jehovah's mouth" and cites Deuteronomy 23:24 (Eng.23),2 where the expression mosta' sephathekka, literally, "that which proceeds out of thy lips" (Driver, "the

*D. R. Scott, "Deuteronomy," The Abingdon Bible Commentary, edited by F. C. Eiselen, E. Lewis and D. G. Downey (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1929), 327; E. Dhorme, La Bible, L'Ancien Testament, I (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1956), 535; Ν. Κ. Gottwald, " T h e Book of Deuteronomy," The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, edited by C. M. Laymon (London: William Collins Sons, 1972), 108.

2 S . R. Driver, Deuteronomy. The International Critical Com­mentary (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1903), 107, 108.

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utterance of thy lips"),3 refers to a vow made by one of the people of Israel.

(2) The LXX (alV epi pariti hrëmati tö ekporeuomenó, "but on every word that proceeds out of"), the Vulgate (sed in omni verbo, quod egreditur, "but on every word that pro­ceeds out of"), and the Aramaic Targum Care 'al koV appaquth memar, "but on everything proceeding out of the word of") add "word" (which does not occur in the Heb.), indicating that this is one way the passage was interpreted at a very early period.

(3) In Matthew's account of the temptation of Jesus, our Lord quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 in this way: all9 epi panti hrèmati ekporeuomenó, "but on every word proceeding out of" (Matt. 4:4), which (except for the article to before ekporeuomenó) is an exact quotation from the LXX.4 Kee comments: "Jesus' response, quoted from Deut. 8:3, affirms that the word of God is more vital to man's existence than the food he eats. Jesus' task is to declare God's message, not to fill stomachs."5 Many scholars accept this understanding of Jesus' words, and then superimpose the same meaning on Deuteronomy 8:3.

3Ibid., 268. 4 However, the LXX manuscripts do not agree at this point. Vati-

canus (B—fourth century) has the article, but Alexandrinus (A—fifth century), Ambrosianus (F—fifth century), and Lucian do not. Most modern editions of the Greek text of Luke's account of Jesus' tempta­tion omit the crucial line in Luke 4:4, but a number of manuscripts have it and include hrèmati, "word"; cf. the critical apparatus in The Greek New Testament, edited by K. Aland, M. Black, B. M. Metzger, and A. Wikgren, in loc.

5 H. C. Kee, "The Gospel According to Matthew, "The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, edited by C. M. Laymon (London: William Collins Sons, 1972), 614. So J .N . Davies, "Mat­thew," The Abingdon Bible Commentary, edited by F. C. Eiselen, E. Lewis, and D. G. Downey (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1929), 959-960; G. H. Davies, "Deuteronomy," Peake's Commentary on the Bible, edited by M. Black and H. H. Rowley (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1967 reprint), 274; and J. L. McKenzie, S.J. "The Gospel According to Matthew," The Jerome Biblical Commen­tary, edited by R. E. Brown, J. A. Fitzmyer, and R. E. Murphy (Engle-wood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), II, 69.

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(4) Such an interpretation fits the theological emphasis of the Book of Deuteronomy on the importance of the word of God in Israel's life (see, e. g., 6:1, 2, 17, 24, 25; 7:11-13; 8:6, 11). In keeping with this, the verb "live" (Heb. chayah) must refer to "spiritual life." Indeed, von Rad cites Deuter­onomy 30:15 and 32:47 (where the cognate noun chayyim, "life," appears) as proof that this root has such a meaning in Deuteronomy, and interprets 8:3 to mean that "the direct purpose of the feeding (i. e., of God's feeding Israel with manna) was to teach Israel that man does not live on earthly bread alone, but that he also depends on the word addressed to him by God" 6 (italics mine).

However, a careful study of the context in which the statement "man does not live by bread alone" occurs, and of the ciuciai words in this statement show that the meaning is different. In verse 2 the people are summoned to remember the way the Lord led them forty years in the wilderness. Then in verse 3 we find:

And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.

The point is that when the Israelites came into the wilderness they no longer had bread to eat, and thus they assumed that their days were numbered and that they would soon die; but in the absence of bread, Yahweh gave them manna in order to show them that their continued existence did not depend on a gift of God to which they had grown accustomed (i. e., bread), but on God himself, who had given manna when there was no bread and could supply any human need as it arose.

The primary weakness of the interpretation suggested above is that it does not explain how God's gift of manna

6 Gerhard von Rad, Deuteronomy. The Old Testament Library, translated by Dorothea Barton (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966), 72.

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demonstrates that man lives by the word which God speaks to him. Let us examine each argument given in support of this view. (1) Admittedly, there is a contrast in Deuteronomy 8:3, but this contrast is not between "bread for the body" and the word of God—"bread for the spirit." Rather, it is between "bread alone" and "everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord."7 Bread is only one thing that pro­ceeds out of the mouth of God; manna is another. But until God gave the Israelites manna in the wilderness, they did not know that such a thing as manna existed; and so they called it "manna," (which according to Ex. 16:15 is connected with the Hebrew phrase man hu\ meaning "What is it?") "for they did not know what it was." God's gift of manna demon­strates that man does not live or continue to exist on one of God's gifts alone, i. e., bread, but on God himself; if he could give them manna when they had no bread, he could give them anything and everything they needed to survive.

Admittedly, the most frequent use of peh, "mouth," in the Old Testament is as the organ of speech, either of man or of God.8 However, this is by no means its exclusive meaning. Possibly by analogy with the mouth of man, peh is used to describe an "opening" into which or out of which people or things come and go. Thus the Old Testament speaks of the "mouth" of a well (Gen. 29:2, 3, 8,10); a sack (Gen. 42:27; 42:12, 21; 44:1, 2, 8) a cave (Josh. 10:18, 22, 27); a city (Prov. 8:3); Sheol (Isa. 5:14; Ps. 69:16 [Eng. 15]); an ephah (Zech. 5:8); etc. But even more to the point there are things which can "come out of" the "mouth" of God other than words. In the triumph song in 2 Samuel 22:9 (=Ps. 18:9 [8]) , we read:

"The antithesis is . . . between only and everything: man lives not upon bread only, but upon everything (bread included) that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." George Adam Smith, The Book of Deuter­onomy. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, revised edition (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1950), 118.

See the analysis in F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1968 reprint), 804, 805.

Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone: John Τ Willis

Smoke went up from his (i.e., God's) nostrils, and devouring fire from his mouth.

Elihu challenges Job:

Hearken to the thunder of his (i.e., God's) voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth. (Job 37:2).

But perhaps the most relevant passage to the present dis­cussion is Lamentations 3:38:

Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come?

Here "good" and "evil" mean "good fortune" and "bad for­tune," and the author's primary purpose is to affirm that God was responsible for the overthrow of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jews to Babylon; God's intention was to punish his people for sin in order to bring them to repentance.

These passages show that in Old Testament thought, peh, "mouth," can be used in connection with things other than "words" when referring to God. They also show that there are things which can "come out of the mouth of God" be­sides "words," such as "fire," "thunder," and "good and evil." Thus in keeping with the context of Deuteronomy 8:3, it is clear that what the writer means is that "bread," "manna," and (theoretically) "everything" else that man might need to keep him alive, are gifts that "come from the mouth of God." 9 In such texts "mouth of God" is simply an anthropomorphism for God himself.

9 H . Brunner, "Was aus dem Munde Gottes geht," Vetus Testa-mentum, 8 (1958), 428, 429, cites two Egyptian texts in which "mouth of (the) god (Ptah)" is used in a similar way. One is an amulet from the Nineteenth Dynasty, which says: "Thou who dost supply the heaven (?) with food, thou who createst what is required by the living spirit in Memphis, thou in whose mouth is the creative utterance (or, food-creating utterance), whose hands are full of food"; and the other is from the Harris Papyrus, which affirms concerning Ptah: "He who dost keep all people alive with his food, under whose power are age, destiny, and wealth; one lives by that which comes out of his mouth. "

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(2) The fact that the LXX, Vulgate, and Targum add "word" does not necessarily show that this is the correct interpretation of the original text, (a) Ancient translations can misunderstand an original text as surely as modern trans­lations can. (b) The Syriac, which frequently is influenced by the LXX, reads bekhal medhem demapheq, "(but) by every­thing that proceeds out of," indicating that there was no equivalent to "word" in the Hebrew text, (c) The words for "word" in Greek, Latin, and Aramaic are ambiguous, just as equivalent words in many ancient and modern languages. They can just as easily mean "thing," "matter," or "affair" as they can "word." And thus their appearance in the transla­tions of Deuteronomy 8:3 does not necessarily prove that these ancient versions understood this text to refer to the word of God revealed to man.

(3) Even if it is true that Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 to affirm that the fulness of human life consists of much more than merely satisfying physical hunger (it is much more important for man to receive spiritual food [the word of God] into his spirit), this does not mean that this was the idea intended in Deuteronomy 8:3 in its own context. New Testament writers and speakers frequently inject into Old Testament texts new thoughts or nuances which were not present in the original passage. It is particularly germane to the present study that this kind of treatment of the Old Testament is strikingly typical of the Gospel oí Matthew. To cite just one example, in Hosea 11:1, God is quoted as stating the historical fact:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

Whereas the reference is to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the time of Moses, Matthew applies this to Joseph and Mary bringing Jesus out of Egypt when he was a babe after those who sought his life in Judea had died (Matt.

Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone: John T. Willis 147

2:13.1ο).1 ° And yet, it is by no means clear that Jesus meant any­

thing different from the interpretation of Deuteronomy 8:3 being suggested in this study, when he quoted this text in Matthew 4:4. As a matter of fact, several leading scholars understand Jesus' words in just this way. Allen writes:

In Deuteronomy the writer describes how the Israelites in their wanderings learned that natural products do not always suffice to support life. They were thus led to live in dependence on the creative word of God. Christ restates this principle as valid for Himself. He will rely upon God's will for the necessities of life. The tempter implied that Sonship involved power to perform miracles. Christ neither affirms nor denies this, but replies that God, if it be His will, can provide food for His needs. (Italics mine).1 1

Johnson comments simply: "God, being omnipotent, can sustain life without bread, for he once gave manna" (italics mine). 1 2

(4) That God has provided (and thus can be trusted to continue to provide) all Israel's needs is a fundamental part

1 0 The problem of how the New Testament uses the Old is, of course, much too complicated to treat in any meaningful way in this brief essay. The interested reader is referred to the following works, which at least introduce some of the issues involved: K. Stendahl, The School of St. Matthew (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1954); R. H. Gundry, The Use of the Old Testament in St. Matthew's Gospel. Supplements to Novum Testamentum, 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967); D. Moody Smith, Jr., "The Use of the Old Testament in the New," The Use of the Old Testament in the New and Other Essays. Studies in Honor of William Franklin Stinespring, edited by James M. Efird (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), 3-65; and my own popularized work, My Ser­vants, the Prophets, II (Abilene, Texas: Biblical Research Press, 1971), 19-53.

W. C. Allen, Matthew. The International Critical Commentary (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), 31.

1 2 Sherman E. Johnson, "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," The Interpreter's Bible, VII (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), 271.

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of the theology of the Book of Deuteronomy (see, e. g., 1:19, 20, 29-31; 2:31-37; 3:18-22; 6:20-23; 7:6-10; 8:2, 7-20).13 The root chayah, "live," occurs 39 times in Deuteronomy, 15 times in the qal (4:1, 33, 42; 5:24, 26, 33 [21, 23, 30] ; 8:1, 3 [twice]; 16:20; 19:4, 5; 30:16, 19; 33:6), three times in the piel (6:24; 20:16; 32:39), and twenty-one times as an adjective (chay, "alive, living"), which frequently has a substantival meaning in the plural (chayyim, "life") (4:4, 9, 10; 5:3, 26 [23] ; 6:2; 7:22; 12:1, 16:3; 17:19; 28:66 [twice]; 30:6,15,19 [twice], 20; 31:13,27; 32:40, 47).14 Even a cursory reading of these passages indi­cates that in almost every case the reference is to "the con­tinuation (or, prolongation) of temporal life."15 Even 30:15 and 32:47 do not convey the idea of "spiritual life" as dis­tinctly as von Rad would lead us to believe. As a matter of fact, the context of both of these passages points to the idea of physical life or existence.16

The context of Deuteronomy 8:3 is the surest guide to the meaning intended by the statement "Man does not live by bread alone." Prior to the wilderness experience, the Israelites assumed that their existence depended on breaa, which they received and used thankfully as a gift from God. But when they found themselves unable to buy or produce or obtain bread, God gave them manna—food they had not

1 3 See the discussions of the "theology" of the Book of Deuter­onomy by G. E. Wright, "The Book of Deuteronomy," The Inter­preter's Bible, II (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1953), 326-329; and G. von Rad, "Deuteronomy," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, I (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), 837, 838.

1 4 Cf. the important study of G. Gerleman, "hjh leben," Theolo­gisches Handwörterbuch zum Alten Testament, hrsg. von E. Jenni und C. Westermann, I (München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), cols. 549-557, and especially the chart on col. 550.

1 5"Die Fristung des leiblichen Lebens, "ibid., col. 551.

1 Commenting on 30:15, H. Cunliffe-Jones, Deuteronomy. Torch Bible Commentaries (London: SCM Press, 1956 reprint), 167, says: "Here as in Jer. 21:8 life and death may be literal survival and destruc­tion, as good and evil mean prosperity and its opposite."

Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone: John Τ Willis 149

known previously. Deuteronomy 8:3 affirms that God's purpose in doing this was to cause his people to realize that their existence did not depend on one of God's gifts alone (be it bread or manna), but on everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God, i.e., on everything and anything that God chooses to give.17 Once they saw this, they could believe in his unwavering concern for them and his unlimited ability to supply their needs. Such an affirmation speaks eloquently to a people concerned with shortages and crises. Not that the appeal is to irresponsible naivete in the presence of genuine crises, but that it is to trust in a God who can still create new things in the midst of real crises.

1 7Brunner, "Was aus dem Munde Gottes geht," 428, says that the wording and context of Deut. 8:3 show that the meaning is that "the creative activity of God continues in the present, and thus not only is man instructed by the works of God already known to him, such as bread, but he can also believe that God, with a word of his mouth, can create other things to keep man alive (such as manna), which were hitherto unknown to him." Similarly H. Wheeler Robinson, Deuter­onomy, The New Century Bible (New York: Henry Frowde,n.d.), 98, 99.

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