Open Thy Mouth

The temple courts, mid-morning, on the fifth day of the week. The Levites are on the steps with the psalm appointed for that day, and the rabbis' record of the temple service assigns this one to Thursdays. Traders, pilgrims and priests heard the same line every seven days: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

The psalm was written for a festival. Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day. Seven verses of music, and then another voice cuts across the band and the party becomes a hearing. Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee.

The line everyone quotes has neighbours. In front of it: There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god. Behind it: But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. And the sentence itself opens with the first words of the ten commandments, I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, which everywhere else is followed by a command. Here it is followed by an offer of food.

The people addressed had done this before, in a desert, with these mouths. God filled them out there with bread nobody could account for and water out of a rock. The same mouths opened for something else as well: We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick. They were not empty. They were full of something else.

The psalm ends in the tense of what never happened. He should have fed them also with the finest of the wheat: and with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee. That is the promise, stated plainly and left standing where it was: he fills. The grief in the last verses is the exact size of what was on the table.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 151 is Weeping and Shouting (Ezra 3:12).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two