Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 222 · August 10
Stirreth Up Her Nest
“As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings:”
On one day, in the plains of Moab, Moses was told to write a song, teach it to the nation, and then climb a mountain and die on it. Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel. The order about the mountain stands in the same chapter as the song's last line. Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo, he is told, and then, die in the mount whither thou goest up.
The song was commissioned as evidence for the prosecution, and God says so before a word of it is written: put it in their mouths, that this song may be a witness for me against the children of Israel. The reason follows at once: they shall have eaten and filled themselves, and waxen fat; then will they turn unto other gods. A poem written in advance of a betrayal, taught to the people who will commit it.
The eagle sits inside that. Stirreth up her nest is the phrase doing the work. An eyrie sits high on a ledge, out of the weather and out of reach, and the parent here is the one making it uninhabitable. The young come out because staying stops being an option.
Look at where the song puts the nest. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. The wilderness is the nest. Forty years with no city, no crop and bread arriving one day at a time was the ledge, and Israel had heard the picture from the other end at Sinai: how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself.
But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked. What finally broke that nation came after the ledge and after the drop: the good land, the full stomach, the settled address. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. The stirring and the wings belong to the same bird. The stretch you would describe as the floor going out from under you is the stretch this song files under being carried.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 222 is Strong Confidence (Proverbs 14:26).