Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 215 · August 3
Shall Not Make Haste
“Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.”
He that believeth shall not make haste. The stone gets quoted everywhere and the last clause rarely travels with it. It is the half aimed at the men standing in front of Isaiah, because they were the ones in a hurry.
Look at who they are: ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. A government with a security problem and an arrangement to handle it, quoted back at them in their own words: We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement. Two chapters on, the book names the arrangement, an errand to Egypt, to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh. These were not men who had given up on God. They were men who had run out of time.
The verbs in the promise are slow ones. Laying a foundation is the part nobody watches, and the next verse still has the surveyor at work with line and plummet. Their own policy moved differently: But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses.
The clause survives translation. All ten English Bibles this app carries circle the same ground with it: shall not be in haste, will not act hastily, will never be stricken with panic, will not be disturbed. Where the New Testament picks it up it reads differently again, shall not be ashamed in Romans, shall not be confounded in Peter, and all of them describe a man who has stopped scrambling. Somebody laid a stone in the ground before you got here and tested it before he laid it. What that buys you is not information about how the week ends. It is the ability to stand still, which comes earlier.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 215 is The LORD Shall Fight (Exodus 14:14).