Ulangan 8:9

8:9 a land where you may eat food ¹  in plenty and find no lack of anything, a land whose stones are iron ²  and from whose hills you can mine copper.

Ulangan 9:6

9:6 Understand, therefore, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is about to give you this good land as a possession, for you are a stubborn ³  people!

Ulangan 11:10

11:10 For the land where you are headed ⁴  is not like the land of Egypt from which you came, a land where you planted seed and which you irrigated by hand ⁵  like a vegetable garden.

Ulangan 11:31

11:31 For you are about to cross the Jordan to possess the land the Lord your God is giving you, and you will possess and inhabit it.

Ulangan 32:13

32:13 He enabled him ⁶  to travel over the high terrain of the land,

and he ate of the produce of the fields.

He provided honey for him from the cliffs, ⁷ 

and olive oil ⁸  from the hardest of ⁹  rocks, ¹⁰ 

[8:9]  ¹ tn The Hebrew term may refer to “food” in a more general sense (cf. NASB, NCV, NLT) or “bread” in particular (cf. NAB, NIV, NRSV).

[8:9]  ² sn A land whose stones are iron. Since iron deposits are few and far between in Palestine, the reference here is probably to iron ore found in mines as opposed to the meteorite iron more commonly known in that area.

[9:6]  ³ tn Heb “stiff-necked” (so KJV, NAB, NIV).

[9:6]  sn The Hebrew word translated stubborn means “stiff-necked.” The image is that of a draft animal that is unsubmissive to the rein or yoke and refuses to bend its neck to draw the load. This is an apt description of OT Israel (Exod 32:9; 33:3, 5; 34:9; Deut 9:13).

[11:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “you are going there to possess it”; NASB “into which you are about to cross to possess it”; NRSV “that you are crossing over to occupy.”

[11:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “with your foot” (so NASB, NLT). There is a two-fold significance to this phrase. First, Egypt had no rain so water supply depended on human efforts at irrigation. Second, the Nile was the source of irrigation waters but those waters sometimes had to be pumped into fields and gardens by foot-power, perhaps the kind of machinery (Arabic shaduf) still used by Egyptian farmers (see C. Aldred, The Egyptians, 181). Nevertheless, the translation uses “by hand,” since that expression is the more common English idiom for an activity performed by manual labor.

[32:13]  ⁶ tn The form of the suffix on this verbal form indicates that the verb is a preterite, not an imperfect. As such it simply states the action factually. Note as well the preterites with vav (ו) consecutive that follow in the verse.

[32:13]  ⁷ tn Heb “he made him suck honey from the rock.”

[32:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “oil,” but this probably refers to olive oil; see note on the word “rock” at the end of this verse.

[32:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “flinty.”

[32:13]  ¹⁰ sn Olive oil from rock probably suggests olive trees growing on rocky ledges and yet doing so productively. See E. H. Merrill, Deuteronomy (NAC), 415; cf. TEV “their olive trees flourished in stony ground.”