Daily Manna · Day 123 · May 3
Known Days
“The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.”
The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.
Two halves, and the second is what the first is worth.
Psalm 37 is one long comparison held for forty verses. The wicked flourish and are shortly cut down like the grass. The meek inherit the earth. Into that running contrast verse eighteen drops the word knoweth, and in the Hebrew of the psalms knowing is never bare information. It is attention that acts. God is not counting the days of the upright the way an actuary counts them, at a distance, for a table. He is keeping them.
The word upright is also doing work, and the promise is not a general one. It is made to the person walking straight with God, which is precisely what the psalm has spent forty verses describing: trust in the LORD, and do good; delight thyself also in the LORD; commit thy way unto him; rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him. Fret not.
Inheritance is a family word rather than a wages word. The upright are not being paid at close of business for services rendered; they are receiving what belongs to them because of whose they are. And it is given a length. For ever. Your calendar runs out somewhere around six weeks from now and then admits it is guessing. His does not run out, and what stands under your name in it is not held on a lease.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 123 is Understandest Thou (Acts 8:30).