Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Deuteronomy 8:1–4
God wants us to learn to live by His word. God tells Israel in this passage to “remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness” (ESV). He wants them to remember the journey and the lessons He taught them along the way. On this journey He tested them with hunger (vv 2–3) and taught them that they would only live by what proceeded from Him (v 3). He taught them to live by His word when He let them hear His voice at the mountain (4:32–40), when He opened the earth to swallow the rebels led by Korah (11:1–9), and when He consumed Aaron’s sons with fire (Leviticus 10:1–2). Near the end of this journey, God wanted them to remember the lessons He had taught them along the way, principally the lesson that they would only live by what came from Him––a principle that would continue even after the manna ceased to appear each morning (see Joshua 5:12).
Where English translations say that Israel was to live “by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” the word “word” is actually provided by the translators, but it is not present in the original Hebrew text. They are not only God’s words that sustain us, for the fact is that everything that we need for life and godliness proceed from the Father of lights!
Life has always been given and sustained by the mouth of God. The expression “mouth of God” occurs with more frequency than you might think in the Bible, partly because it is rendered in so many different ways in translation. We understand that the mouth of God gives us life (Genesis 2:7; 2 Timothy 3:16; John 6:63). The mouth of God should also direct our every movement in this world, just as Israel journeyed and stopped to set up camp in the wilderness “at the command [Hebrew “mouth”] of God” (Numbers 9:22–23). When the king of Moab summoned Balaam to curse Israel as they camped in the plains of Moab, the seer told him that he could not “go beyond the word [Hebrew “mouth”] of the Lord” (Numbers 22:18; cf. 1 Kings 22:14). As God’s spokespeople today, we likewise cannot go beyond the word that has proceeded from God (2 John 9). Israel also learned on their journey that even one’s death is governed by the “mouth of God” (Numbers 33:38; Deuteronomy 34:5). We know furthermore that we will be judged at the end of our journey by the words that proceeded from God’s mouth (John 12:48; Revelation 20:12).
When we hear the voice of God on the Judgment Day and our sentence issues from the mouth that has sustained us all our lives long, will it be a sentence of eternal life? Only if we will listen to Him now as we make this journey as His people.