(3) Yet to this day The LORD has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. (4) I led you through the wilderness forty years; the clothes on your back did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet; (5) you had no bread to eat and neither wine nor beer to drink—that you might know that I, The LORD, am your God.

The Sages taught: The Torah states: “And He caused manna to rain upon them for food, and He gave them of the grain of heaven. Man did eat the bread of the mighty [abirim]” (Psalms 78:24–25). “Bread of the mighty” is bread that the ministering angels eat; this is the statement of Rabbi Akiva. When these words were said before Rabbi Yishmael, he said to them to go and tell Akiva: Akiva you have erred. Do the ministering angels eat bread? It is already stated about Moses, when he ascended on high: “Bread I did not eat and water I did not drink” (Deuteronomy 9:9). If even a man who ascends on high does not need to eat, certainly the ministering angels do not need to eat. Rather, how do I establish the meaning of the word abirim? It can be explained as bread that was absorbed into all 248 limbs [eivarim], so that there was no waste. The Gemara asks: But if so, how do I establish the verses: “And you shall have a spade among your weapons, and it shall be that when you relieve yourself outside, you shall dig with it, and shall turn back and cover your excrement” (Deuteronomy 23:14) and “You shall have a place also outside the camp where you can relieve yourself ” (Deuteronomy 23:13). From here we learn that there was waste in their bowels, as they had to leave the camp to relieve themselves. The Gemara explains: This waste was not a byproduct of the manna; it was from food items that the gentile merchants sold them.Rabbi Elazar ben Perata disagrees and says: The manna caused even items that the gentile merchants sold them to be completely digested, so that even other food that they ate produced no waste. But then how do I establish the verse: “And you shall have a spade among your weapons”? After they sinned, the manna was not as effective. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: I initially said that they would be like ministering angels who do not produce waste; now I will trouble them to walk three parasangs to leave the camp in order to relieve themselves.

YE HAVE NOT EATEN BREAD, NEITHER HAVE YE DRUNK WINE OR STRONG DRINK. The meaning thereof is “You have not eaten [sufficiently] thereof that you should be able to live by it,” for their principal sustenance was the manna. THAT YE MIGHT KNOW THAT I AM THE ETERNAL YOUR G-D Who keeps you alive miraculously. Now, it could not mean that they did not eat bread at all, as Scripture [says of Moses], I did neither eat bread nor drink water for on some occasions Israel did have bread in the wilderness, as it is written, Thou shalt sell me food for money, that I may eat; and give me water for money, that I may drink; as the children of Esau that dwell in Seir, and the Moabites that dwell in Ar, did unto me. And our Rabbis mentioned that the merchants of the peoples of the world brought them [various foods] in the desert.It is further possible that from the time the manna descended until they came to Seir they did not eat bread at all, for they travelled through the great and dreadful wilderness. But in the fortieth year they approached inhabited land, and it was said to them, Ye are to pass through the border of your brethren the children of Esau;Ye shall purchase food of them. There it is written, these forty years the Eternal thy G-d hath been with thee; thou hast lacked nothing. And from that time on, the Edomites and the Moabites met them with food and drink and prominent Israelites would buy from them for pleasure, not for necessity, nor for satiety, because their principal sustenance was [still] the manna.Nitzavim

(9) I had ascended the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant that The LORD had made with you, and I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, eating no bread and drinking no water. (10) And The LORD gave me the two tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God, with the exact words that The LORD had addressed to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the Assembly. (11) At the end of those forty days and forty nights, The LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the Tablets of the Covenant.

למען תדעו כי אני יהוה אלוהיכם, in order that you will know that I am the Lord your G-d.” - Moses had not spoken these words (i.e. at his own initiative), but from the words: ואלך אתכם at the beginning of verse 4, until the end of this Parshah, we are reading G-d’s word, as our Sages, of blessed memory, expounded in Parashat Ki Tissa regarding the verse: וכל הארץ הזאת אשר אמרתי, “and this whole land of which I have spoken;” we would actually have expected there the word: אמרת, “which You spoke of,” as Moses had been the speaker at the beginning of that verse.” The truth is that as far as there we read the words of the student, from there on we read the words of the Teacher.

לחם לא אכלתם ויין ושכר לא שתיתם, “you ate neither bread nor drank wine or other alcoholic drink;” Nachmanides writes that Moses meant that the people, during the last forty years, had not subsisted on the food relied on by ordinary human beings, but they had subsisted exclusively on the manna, the “bread” that came down from heaven.

למען תדעו כי אני יהוה אלוהיכם, “in order to convince you beyond any doubt that I am the Lord your G’d.” Moses means that Hashem had kept them alive by miraculous means during all these years. The word לחם in this paragraph is not to be understood in the same way as when Moses told the people that during the forty days he spent on Mount Sinai he had neither eaten לחם nor drunk מים. Moses meant that he had not eaten or drunk anything during his stay on the Mountain, had led an “angel-like” existence. The people of Israel, even while in the desert, had tasted bread on occasion, such as when they had bought flour from some surrounding nation, but they had not needed it for their survival. Moses himself is on record as reminding the people that the Edomites had sold them food and drink. (Deut. 2,28-29) Our sages (Yuma 75) have said that the merchants of the whole region were offering to sell food and drink to the Israelites in the desert. It is also possible that the period when the Israelites subsisted exclusively on a diet of manna began 30 days after the Exodus when the manna fell for the first time, and it continued into the fortieth year when the Edomites sold them food and drink, around the time when they made war against Sichon, after which they possessed normal lands, land on which crops were growing and on which cattle were grazing. At that time G’d had said to Moses: (Deut. 2,4) “command the people you are passing through the territory of your brethren the children of Esau you may buy food from them and you may dig for water in their soil, etc.” In that context the Torah had also written that G’d had blessed them during the forty years they traversed a fearsome desert, etc. From that point onwards the people had enjoyed access to normal food and drink, but presumably in very limited quantities. Whatever normal food they consumed, or the wealthy ones among them consumed, was in the nature of indulging themselves, not something they relied on for survival. Their basic food continued to be the manna until they crossed the river Jordan.

“And you drank neither wine nor beer" - for that too requires many preparations; rather, He, may He be blessed, gave you water from the rock of flint. And since the intent of the verses is to inform that they were then free from the burdens of the world, therefore it spoke in the language of negation: "your clothes did not wear out", "you did not eat", "you did not drink". But if the intent had been to recount the kindnesses of the Lord toward them, it would have explicitly mentioned the manna and the water.