You shall remember all the way … in the wilderness: the forty years they have spent traveling through the wilderness is not something they will soon forget. The command remember is for them to recall and ponder the meaning of their forty years’ experience. In some languages the negative “Don’t forget” will be more natural style. For wilderness see 1.1.

That he might humble you: the structure of the Hebrew expresses the purpose of God through a conjunction and a sequence of three verbs, “in order to humble … testing … to know” (New Revised Standard Version). This can also be expressed as “because he wanted to humble you…” or “because he wanted to make you submissive to him.” Humble is not in the sense of “humiliate” but means to make the people submissive and teachable, to get rid of their proud sense of self-sufficiency by making them endure all sorts of hardships.

Testing you: they endured trying experiences because God wanted to learn their motives and their loyalty to him. “Test” here does not mean “tempt.” New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh joins the two verbs “humble” and “test” into one phrase, “test you by hardships” (similarly Good News Translation). An alternative model may be “causing you to endure hardships to test you.”

To know what was in your heart: the purpose of the hardships was to reveal their disposition and will (Good News Translation “what you intended”), especially to find out whether or not they would obey God’s commandments (see 4.2). Contemporary English Version “He wanted to find out…” may be a useful model for some translators.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .