Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 161 · June 10
Eaten Up
“For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.”
He is up to his neck in water and hoarse from calling for help. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God. He has fasted and been mocked for it, worn sackcloth and become a proverb, and the drinkers of the town have made a song out of him. His own family have stopped claiming him. I am become a stranger unto my brethren.
In that spot he writes the line. For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me. His caring is what costs him. Insults aimed at God keep arriving at his address, and the zeal has eaten him the way work eats a person. Four verses earlier he says something no tidy reading of this psalm can afford to lose: O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid from thee. He is an implicated man, worn through by a house that was never his property.
Both halves of the line were picked up later. The disciples watched Jesus clear the temple courts and remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. Paul quotes the other half about him: The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me. So the cost of caring about something that is not yours is counted, and counted by the one who went the whole way through this psalm ahead of you. The drinking songs will stop reaching your ears. And your foolishness, which he already knows about, is not a reason to stay away from him; it never was, and he has had it in front of him from the beginning.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 161 is Salvation and Strength (Psalm 37:39).