Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 80 · March 21
Meditate
“This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”
Who first heard these words, and what was in front of him when he heard them?
The man was Joshua. He stood on the east bank of the Jordan, with a nation behind him and a war ahead of him. Moses had died, and Israel had mourned him for thirty days. So when God says, "then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success," it is a promise about that war. The chapter makes that clear more than once. It talks about land, borders and an inheritance, and it promises, "There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life." Lift that line off a general going into battle and hang it over a salary or a house sale, and you turn a battle order into a way to get rich. The same book also shows the promise working the other way. In chapter seven a man named Achan takes forbidden goods from Jericho, and after the defeat at Ai the Lord says Israel "could not stand before their enemies."
That leaves the word in the middle of the verse: meditate. The promise of conquest belonged to Joshua, but this word reaches all the way to us.
In Hebrew the word is hagah, and it is a word that uses the mouth. The same verb is translated "speak" in the Psalms: "The mouth of the righteous speaketh wisdom," and "my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long." That is why the first half of today's verse says this book "shall not depart out of thy mouth."
So the picture is of a man saying a text over to himself, quietly, all day long. It is the way you keep repeating a phone number under your breath when you have nothing to write it on and cannot afford to forget it.
That practice outlasts the promise that came with it. Psalm 1 uses the same verb for anyone at all: "in his law doth he meditate day and night." Deuteronomy told every king of Israel to write out his own copy of the law and to "read therein all the days of his life." Neither of those comes with the land of Canaan attached. What they offer is God's word worn into a person by saying it again and again, until it is what he says under his breath when nobody has asked him anything. And Hebrews takes one more line from this same chapter and gives it to every believer: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 80 is I Am With You (Haggai 2:4).