Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 167 · June 16
Talking To Yourself
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”
How many people are in this verse?
The man is a long way from the house of God and remembering what it was to go: I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise. Now his tears have been my meat day and night, and the neighbours keep asking him one question: Where is thy God?
So one voice in him turns on the other. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? He is not asking anybody else. He knows the answer, and he asks it the way you ask a person who has been sitting in the dark since Tuesday.
Nothing comes back. The soul does not answer in this psalm, or in the next one.
The first voice gives up on the question and issues an order. Hope thou in God. That is an imperative, from a man to himself, with no reply in hand and no evidence produced. It is an old habit in the Psalms, speaking to your own soul as though it were somebody in the room. Bless the LORD, O my soul. Return unto thy rest, O my soul.
And it does not take the first time. The very next line reads, O my God, my soul is cast down within me. The same speech has to be made again at the end of the psalm, and again at the end of the psalm after that, nearly word for word.
Three times is what the argument costs. The man who wrote this did not talk himself round once and go to bed content; he made the same case to the same soul until the psalm ran out, and Scripture printed all three attempts rather than only the one that worked.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 167 is Exceeding Abundantly (Ephesians 3:20).