Daily Manna · Day 136 · May 16
Goodness and Mercy
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.”
En-gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Limestone cliffs, caves, a spring, and a man in his twenties hiding in them from a king who has brought three thousand chosen men to find him. That is part of the geography behind a shepherd's psalm, and it explains the verb in the last verse.
Follow is too polite. The Hebrew is radaph, and it is a hunting word. It is what Pharaoh's chariots did to Israel at the sea. It is what Saul did to David for years. It is the word for an armed party going after a fugitive, and everywhere else in the psalms there is something bad on the far end of it. Here the writer turns it around and puts goodness and mercy in the pursuer's position. He is not saying that kindness ambles along politely behind him. He is saying he has been hunted all his life and something else has been doing the hunting the whole time.
Mercy is chesed, covenant loyalty, the faithfulness that holds when the other party has given every reason for it to be withdrawn. This man had given plenty.
So the truth here is stranger than a pleasant sentiment about counting blessings. You have been pursued by the goodness of God, and it does not lose the trail through the years you would rather not describe out loud. The chase does not end when you finally outrun your trouble. It ends at a house you will not be asked to leave.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 136 is God Remembered (Exodus 2:24).