Deuteronomy 8:4

Thus he taught them that the good things he designed for them were figures of better things, and that the happiness of man consists not in being clothed in purple or fine linen, and in faring sumptuously every day, but in being taken into covenant and communion with God, and in learning his righteous judgements.

But the strong and pointed terms which Moses here uses (see also De 29:5) indicate a special or miraculous interposition of their loving Guardian in preserving them amid the wear and tear of their nomadic life in the desert. Thirdly, Moses expatiated on the goodness of the promised land.

OUR aptness to forget God's mercies, is, alas, too conspicuous. It has been said that the annals of a prosperous and peaceful country are singularly uninteresting. Does this arise from the fact that we do not make memoranda of our mercies, or at least if we do, they are far more readily blotted out than the record of our sorrows? We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble. We forget the streams of mercy, never ceasing, which flow so continually parallel with our pathway. If we thus, ungratefully forget, it should cause us serious reflections when we see that God does not forget. Here in this Book He brings to His people's memories all the mercies they have received, because they were always present before His own mind. The child may forget the kindness of its mother, but the mother does not forget what she bore, and what she has sacrificed for her child. The friend may forget what he has received, but it is not likely that the benefactor will forget what he has bestowed. If God's memory, therefore, records all that He has given me, let me be ashamed to let my memory suffer these things to slip. What God counts worthy of His Divine recollection let me record on the pages of my memory, and often let me peruse the record. We are also far too slow to draw the inference of obligation from benefits received. We receive the blessing, but we do not always feel that a proportionate debt is due in return to God, the bounteous Giver of every good gift. Yet Divine Grace has its obligations as well as laws—obligations which honorable minds reckon to be among the first to be discharged. If I do not do what I ought because I fear the Law, at any rate let me prove that I am not so base as to be ungrateful to undeserved mercy and love.

OUR aptness to forget God's mercies, is, alas, too conspicuous. It has been said that the annals of a prosperous and peaceful country are singularly uninteresting. Does this arise from the fact that we do not make memoranda of our mercies, or at least if we do, they are far more readily blotted out than the record of our sorrows? We trace our joys in the sand, but we write our afflictions on marble. We forget the streams of mercy, never ceasing, which flow so continually parallel with our pathway.

They had clothes, it would seem, in abundance (compare Exo 12:34-35) at the beginning of the 40 years; and during those years they had many sheep and oxen, and so must have had much material for clothing always at command. No doubt also they carried on a traffic in these, as in other commodities, with the Moabites and the nomadic tribes of the desert. Such ordinary supplies must not be shut out of consideration, even if they were on occasions supplemented by extraordinary providences of God, as was undoubtedly the case with their food.