8:1 You must keep carefully all these commandments 1 I am giving 2 you today so that you may live, increase in number, 3 and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised to your ancestors. 4 8:2 Remember the whole way by which he 5 has brought you these forty years through the desert 6 so that he might, by humbling you, test you to see if you have it within you to keep his commandments or not.
1 tn The singular term (מִצְוָה, mitsvah) includes the whole corpus of covenant stipulations, certainly the book of Deuteronomy at least (cf. Deut 5:28; 6:1, 25; 7:11; 11:8, 22; 15:5; 17:20; 19:9; 27:1; 30:11; 31:5). The plural (מִצְוֹת, mitsot) refers to individual stipulations (as in vv. 2, 6).
2 tn Heb “commanding” (so NASB). For stylistic reasons, to avoid redundancy, “giving” has been used in the translation (likewise in v. 11).
3 tn Heb “multiply” (so KJV, NASB, NLT); NIV, NRSV “increase.”
4 tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 16, 18).
5 tn Heb “the
6 tn Or “wilderness” (so KJV, NRSV, NLT); likewise in v. 15.