Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 46 · February 15
A Hearing Heart
“Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?”
Whichever way you go this week, somebody who trusts you carries the result, and you do not know enough to choose. More research will not fix it. The facts are in and they point both ways.
Solomon has just inherited a country. Ask what I shall give thee, God says, and the answer starts with an admission: I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. Then the request. What the King James prints as an understanding heart is, in the Hebrew, a hearing heart. He is asking for the organ that takes in what is actually there before it rules on it.
And he names what he wants it for, which is the part usually dropped: to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad. God says so back to him: hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies.
The chapter tests the gift within a page: two women, one living child, no witnesses, and a ruling nobody could appeal. And the book is honest about the far end of the same life, where the man who prayed this had his heart turned after other gods. The gift was a gift and never a fence.
The offer stays open in almost the same shape. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not. Upbraideth not means he will not raise how you handled the last one. The offer is an offer. Ask for the hearing heart before you ask to be told what to do, and ask it for the person the decision lands on, by name.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 46 is Shall Not Want (Psalm 23:1).