Stirreth Up Her Nest

On a single day in the land of Moab, Moses was given two orders. He was to write down a song and teach it to the people, and then he was to climb a mountain and die there. "Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel." The order about the mountain comes at the end of the song's own chapter, on "that selfsame day": "Get thee up into this mountain Abarim, unto mount Nebo," and "die in the mount whither thou goest up."

God said plainly, before a word of the song was written, that it would stand as evidence against the people: "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." It is a poem written before a betrayal, and taught to the very people who would commit it.

The eagle sits inside that song, and "stirreth up her nest" is the phrase that does the work. An eagle builds her nest high on a rock ledge, out of the weather and out of reach. The Hebrew verb means to rouse or wake, and the word for nest can also mean the nestlings: the mother herself rouses her young, so they cannot stay as they were. Then, as the verse says, she "spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings."

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 was the nest. Forty years with no city and no crops, with bread arriving one day at a time: that was the ledge. Israel had heard the same picture from God at Sinai: "how I bare you on eagles' wings, and brought you unto myself."

Then comes the turn: "But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked." Jeshurun is a poetic name for Israel. What finally broke the nation came after the ledge and after the fall. It was the good land, the full stomach and the settled home. "Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee." The stirring of the nest and the strong wings belong to the same bird. You might describe some season of your life as the floor dropping out from under you. This song calls a season like that being carried, by the same God who stirred the nest and then spread His wings beneath His people.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 222 is Strong Confidence (Proverbs 14:26).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two