5. Mose 8:7

The Israelites were to continue mindful of this paternal discipline on the part of their God, when the Lord should bring them into the good land of Canaan. This land Moses describes in Deu 8:8, Deu 8:9, in contrast with the dry unfruitful desert, as a well-watered and very fruitful land, which yielded abundance of support to its inhabitants; a land of water-brooks, fountains, and floods (תּהומות, see Gen 1:2), which had their source (took their rise) in valleys and on mountains; a land of wheat and barley, of the vine, fig, and pomegranate, and full of oil and honey (see at Exo 3:8); lastly, a land "in which thou shalt not eat (support thyself) in scarcity, and shalt not be in want of anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose mountains thou hewest brass." The stones are iron, i.e., ferruginous. This statement is confirmed by modern travellers, although the Israelites did not carry on mining, and do not appear to have obtained either iron or brass from their own land. The iron and brass of which David collected such quantities for the building of the temple (Ch1 22:3, Ch1 22:14), he procured from Betach and Berotai (Sa2 8:8), or Tibchat and Kun (Ch1 18:8), towns of Hadadezer, that is to say, from Syria. According to Eze 27:19, however, the Danites brought iron-work to the market of Tyre. Not only do the springs near Tiberias contain iron (v. Schubert, R. iii. p. 239), whilst the soil at Hasbeya and the springs in the neighbourhood are also strongly impregnated with iron (Burckhardt, Syrien, p. 83), but in the southern mountains as well there are probably strata of iron between Jerusalem and Jericho (Russegger, R. iii. p. 250). But Lebanon especially abounds in iron-stone; iron mines and smelting furnaces being found there in many places (Volney, Travels; B…

Moses had charged parents in teaching their children to whet the word of God upon them (Deu 6:7) by frequent repetition of the same things over and over again; and here he himself takes the same method of instructing the Israelites as his children, frequently inculcating the same precepts and cautions, with the same motives or arguments to enforce them, that what they heard so often might abide with them. In this chapter Moses gives them, I. General exhortations to obedience (Deu 8:1, Deu 8:6). II. A review of the great things God had done for them in the wilderness, as a good argument for obedience (Deu 8:2-5, Deu 8:15, Deu 8:16). III. A prospect of the good land into which God would now bring them (Deu 8:7-9). IV. A necessary caution against the temptations of a prosperous condition (Deu 8:10-14, and Deu 8:17, Deu 8:18). V. A fair warning of the fatal consequences of apostasy from God (Deu 8:19, Deu 8:20).