More than my daily bread

The Book compares itself to food more than once, and this volume has had the honey and the milk and the bread. This is the one that ranks it.

I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread.

Now look at where the sentence sits. Job has lost ten children, his property, his health, and the confidence of his friends. The chapter it comes from is one of his bleakest — he opens it saying his complaint is bitter, and a few verses later says that if he goes forward God is not there, and backward he cannot perceive Him.

In the middle of that, he says the words of God’s mouth mean more to him than the food he needs to stay alive.

Which is a claim about priority made under conditions where most claims collapse.

It is easy to say the Word matters more than bread when the bread is on the table. Job says it having lost nearly everything, and while complaining bitterly to God in the same breath — which is what makes it credible rather than pious.

The same ranking is made twice more in Scripture, once by God and once by Christ.

God humbled them, let them hunger, and fed them with manna they did not know — and the stated purpose was to teach them that man does not live on bread alone. The lesson was delivered by the hunger.

Three witnesses, and not one of them says it comfortably. Israel learns it hungry. Job says it ruined. Christ says it starving, to someone offering bread.

So the self-portrait here is not the Word is nourishing, which is the honey and the milk. It is the Word outranks food, and the people who say so in Scripture are always people who have been in a position to find out.

There is a practical edge to it that most readers would rather not sharpen. Nobody skips meals accidentally for long. A missed breakfast is noticed by mid-morning and corrected. Whether the same is true of the other appetite is a question a man can answer honestly in about ten seconds.

There is also a caution against sentimentalizing it. Job says this in a chapter where he also says his complaint is bitter and that God’s hand is heavy on him despite his groaning. The ranking and the anguish are in the same speech, which is the only reason to trust either.

Job’s verb is worth keeping. Treasured — the same idea as hiding something valuable where it cannot be lost, from Week Six. He stored it, and then he needed it, and it was there.

There is a translation question in Job 23:12. The Hebrew of the second clause is difficult and has been read as more than my necessary food, or more than my own purpose or my portion. The majority of modern versions take it as food, and the sense of ranking is not in dispute on any reading.

The chapter contains one of the most quoted lines in the book two verses earlier: He knows the way I take; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold. The refining image from Week Five turns up in the mouth of the man being refined.

Deuteronomy 8:3 is the verse Christ quotes in the first temptation, studied in Week Three. The full verse explains the manna as a teaching device, which is why the wilderness and the bread threads keep meeting.

Note that Job says the words of His mouth, not the book. Whatever Job had access to, the phrase is about God’s speech; and the book that records his saying it became part of the Scripture other people would treasure.

The Hebrew of the first half is emphatic: from the commandment of His lips I have not departed. The two halves together describe both keeping and prizing — obedience and appetite, which the Bible almost never separates.

Look it upH6845 צָפַן tsaphan, to treasure, store up · H2706 חֹק choq, portion, statute, appointed thing · H565 אִמְרָה imrah, saying, promise · G740 ἄρτος artos, bread

Then read John 4:32–34, where the disciples urge Him to eat and He says He has food they know nothing about — My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.

Where this touchesJob 23:1–12 · Deuteronomy 8:1–3 · Matthew 4:4 (Week Three, Day One) · John 4:32–34 · Psalm 119:11 (Week Six, Day Seven). Fire and hammer, honey, lamp, sword, seed, milk, mirror, goads and nails, gold, washing, the fire in the bones, dew, the stumbling stone, the plumb line and the trumpet were the earlier self-portraits.