Meditation and Declaration: Two Ways to Carry a Verse

Meditation has a reputation problem in some churches, largely because the word now arrives carrying freight it did not originally have. Yet it is thoroughly biblical, and what it describes is close to the opposite of what most people assume.

Biblical Meditation Fills the Mind

Many meditative traditions aim at emptying: clearing thought, releasing attachment, arriving at stillness. Scripture moves in the other direction entirely. Its meditation is a filling, a turning over of something until it works its way into you.

The verb is hagah, and its semantic range is worth knowing. It describes the low growl of a lion over its prey in Isaiah 31, the mourning coo of a dove in Isaiah 38, and the muttering of a person turning something over. It carries sound.

Which means biblical meditation was audible from the beginning. The picture is not of a person sitting perfectly still with an emptied mind. It is closer to somebody walking about half-saying a sentence they cannot stop thinking about.

The image in Psalm 1 continues into agriculture: a tree planted by rivers of water, bringing forth fruit in season. Meditation is what happens at root level, out of sight, and the fruit is a consequence rather than a technique.

The Instruction Given to Joshua

Three things sit in one sentence, and they were never meant to be separated.

Not depart out of thy mouth: speech. Meditate therein day and night: reflection. That thou mayest observe to do: obedience. Joshua is not being handed three disciplines to schedule. He is being given one practice with three aspects, and the third is the purpose of the first two.

This is the only place in Scripture where anyone is promised good success, and the promise attaches to that combined practice rather than to any one part of it.

The Difference in Practice

• Meditation is slow, private and exploratory. You ask questions of the verse. You notice a word you have skipped for twenty years.
• Declaration is decisive and spoken. You have understood the verse; now you agree with it aloud, in the first person.
• Meditation asks what this means. Declaration says this is true of me.
• Meditation generally comes first. Declaration is what you do with what you found.

Neither works well alone. Meditation without declaration tends to stay theoretical, producing good thoughts that never reach the day. Declaration without meditation grows thin, because you end up repeating words whose meaning you have not examined, and thin declaration eventually feels hollow even when the words are true.

How to Meditate on a Verse

Take one verse and give it ten unhurried minutes. Read it three times slowly, then work through it with questions.

• What does this tell me about God — His character, His priorities, what He is like?
• What does it assume about me?
• Which single word carries the most weight, and what happens if I remove it?
• What would actually change today if I believed this?
• Is there anything here I would rather were not true?

That last question is frequently the most productive. The verses we skim quickly are often the ones with something to say to us, and the skimming is not accidental.

It also helps to read the verse in a second translation. Differences between renderings usually mark the places where the underlying text is doing something interesting, and comparing two versions surfaces those without any knowledge of the original languages.

The Man Who Meditated Himself Into Trouble

Psalm 73 is a record of meditation going in the wrong direction, and it is instructive precisely because Asaph is honest about it.

He begins by admitting his feet had almost slipped, and gives the reason: I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. Then he catalogues it — they are not in trouble as other men, their eyes stand out with fatness, they have more than heart could wish — and works himself into the conclusion that his own faithfulness has been pointless.

Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. That is where sustained reflection on the wrong material took him.

Then one line changes everything: until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.

The facts did not change. His vantage point did. Which is a warning worth keeping: attention is not neutral, and turning something over for long enough will produce a conclusion whether or not it is a true one. The question is always what you are turning over, and where you are standing while you do it.

What Meditation Is Not

Because the word carries other associations, it is worth stating plainly what biblical meditation does not involve.

It is not the emptying of the mind. Scripture never commends a vacant attention; it commends an occupied one, and it always specifies the occupant. Meditate in the law. Meditate on thy precepts. Meditate on all thy works.

It is not the repetition of a syllable to induce a state. Jesus explicitly warned against the belief that we shall be heard for our much speaking.

It is not a hunt for a private message concealed inside the text. Meditation asks what the passage says, more slowly and more attentively than a first reading allows. It does not license a meaning the words cannot carry.

And it is not primarily a technique for feeling calm. Calm is a frequent by-product; several psalms describe meditation conducted in acute distress, and Psalm 77 records a man meditating while so troubled he could not speak.

Meditating When You Are Not Calm

Asaph cannot sleep and cannot talk. What he does instead is deliberate: he considers, he calls to remembrance, he communes, he searches. Four verbs, all of them active, all performed by a man in poor condition.

And the content of his meditation is specific. He goes back over what God has done before — I will remember the works of the LORD — rather than casting about for a new feeling. The psalm then spends its final third recounting the exodus.

That is a usable pattern for a bad night. You are not required to arrive settled. Take one thing God has already done, in Scripture or in your own history, and go over it slowly until something loosens.

The Blessed Man and the Ruminating Animal

Older writers were fond of comparing meditation to a cow chewing the cud, and the comparison is less quaint than it sounds. The animal takes in food, brings it back, works it further, and extracts what a single pass would have missed.

Applied to Scripture, this describes something most modern reading habits actively prevent. A chapter a day taken at speed is not the same activity as one verse carried around for a week. Both have their place; only one of them is meditation.

There is a reason the Psalms so often pair delight with meditation. You do not ruminate on something you are trying to get through. The chewing follows from the enjoying.

Meditation asks what this means. Declaration says this is true of me. You want both, in that order.

Declare Bible

A Second Hebrew Word: Siyach

Alongside hagah, the Psalms use siyach, and it fills out the picture. Its range covers musing, rehearsing, complaining and talking with oneself.

The same verb is translated complain elsewhere, which tells you something important. Biblical meditation is not required to be serene. It can be the turning over of something troubling, an argument conducted with yourself in God's hearing.

This matters because a great many believers conclude they cannot meditate on the grounds that their minds are noisy and their feelings are mixed. Siyach makes room for exactly that. You do not have to arrive calm.

The Longest Chapter in the Bible Is About This

Psalm 119 runs to 176 verses, and almost every one of them refers to God's word under one of eight terms: law, testimonies, precepts, statutes, commandments, judgements, word, ordinances.

Its structure is deliberate. The psalm is an acrostic in twenty-two sections of eight verses, each section beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It was built to be memorised and recited, which is itself an argument about how Scripture is meant to be handled.

What the psalm describes across all those verses is a single sustained practice: a man turning the same material over from every angle, at every hour, in every condition, for a lifetime. At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto thee. Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I might meditate in thy word.

Nobody produces 176 verses about something they consult occasionally.

Mary Pondered These Things

Luke twice records Mary's response to events she could not yet interpret, and his vocabulary is precise.

The verb behind pondered is symballo, literally to throw together. It is where we get the word symbol. She is placing things side by side to see what they make: the angel, the shepherds, the manger, the prophecy she was given months earlier.

That is a working definition of meditation for anyone who finds the word intimidating. You are setting things next to one another and waiting to see the pattern. It requires no technique and no particular temperament, only the willingness not to rush past.

How the Church Has Practised This

The historic method most commonly taught moves through four stages, and it maps almost exactly onto the argument of this article.

• Reading — take in the text slowly, more than once, without analysing.
• Meditation — turn it over, question it, notice what stands out and why.
• Prayer — respond to God about what you have found, which is where declaration belongs.
• Contemplation — stop working and simply remain there for a moment without producing anything.

The Puritans developed the same instinct in a more rigorous direction. Thomas Watson called meditation the chewing of the cud and warned that a sermon heard without it is a meal swallowed whole. Richard Baxter devoted a substantial portion of The Saints Everlasting Rest to arguing that most Christians know a great deal and meditate on almost none of it.

Their diagnosis has aged well. The modern believer has more access to Scripture than any generation in history and, on the whole, less of it worked into them.

A Worked Example

Take the shortest possible text and give it ten minutes.

What does it say about God? That He takes personal responsibility for a creature that cannot navigate, defend itself or find water. Shepherding is unglamorous, constant work.

What does it assume about me? That I am a sheep. Which is not flattering. Sheep are not noted for judgement, and the metaphor is chosen precisely because it is humbling.

Which word carries the weight? Probably my. There were many shepherds in Israel and many sheep. David narrows it to a relationship of one to one.

What would change today if I believed it? I would stop treating provision as my department. I shall not want is a conclusion drawn from the first clause, not a separate promise.

Is there anything here I would rather were not true? Possibly the sheep. Most of us would prefer a metaphor that credited us with more competence.

That is ten minutes on six words, and there is more in it. Then you declare it, and the verse has moved from the page into your mouth having actually been understood.

What to Do With the Wandering Mind

Everyone who has attempted this has found their attention gone within ninety seconds. This is not a spiritual failure and it is not evidence that you are unsuited to the practice.

Two things help. The first is having the verse in front of you, so that returning is a matter of looking down rather than remembering. The second is speaking it aloud, which occupies enough of the mind to make wandering harder.

When you notice the drift, simply return. The returning is the discipline; the noticing is evidence it is working. A person who never notices their mind wandering is not concentrating better, only paying less attention.

Five Ways to Slow a Verse Down

Meditation fails for most people not because the idea is difficult but because nobody ever showed them what to actually do for ten minutes. Here are five methods that work on any passage.

Emphasise Each Word in Turn

Take a short verse and read it aloud repeatedly, stressing a different word each time. The LORD is my shepherd. The LORD is my shepherd. The LORD is my shepherd.

It sounds mechanical and it is remarkably effective. Each pass surfaces a different claim, and one of them will usually catch.

Ask What It Assumes

Every verse carries assumptions it does not state. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden assumes you are carrying something, that it is heavy, and that you have been carrying it a while. Naming the assumption often does more than analysing the sentence.

Put It in the Negative

What would it mean if the opposite were true? If God were not a refuge. If nothing could be added to me. Stating the negative makes a familiar promise strange again, which is usually what a familiar promise needs.

Find Where Else It Appears

Follow a key word through a concordance or a cross-reference chain. Shepherd runs from Psalm 23 to Ezekiel 34 to John 10 to Hebrews 13, and reading them together turns a comforting image into a doctrine.

Pray It Back

Turn the verse into address. Lord, You are my shepherd, and I have been behaving all week as though I had to find my own pasture. This is the hinge between meditation and declaration, and it is where most of the actual change happens.

Where the Two Practices Meet

There is a place where meditation and declaration stop being two activities, and it is worth describing because it is where the whole thing is heading.

After a verse has been turned over long enough, saying it stops feeling like recitation and starts feeling like agreement. The words come with weight because you know what they cost, where they sit and what they assume. That is the difference between a believer quoting Romans 8:1 and a believer who has spent a fortnight in Romans 7 saying it.

Nehemiah offers a small picture of this. The people gather, Ezra reads the law from morning until midday, and the Levites gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading. The response is first weeping and then, on instruction, feasting — because the joy of the LORD is your strength.

Reading, understanding, response. The people did not stop at comprehension, and they did not respond without it.

Which is finally why neither practice works alone. Understanding without response produces informed people who are not changed. Response without understanding produces enthusiasm that cannot survive a hard question. Held together, they produce what Scripture keeps describing: a person the Word has actually got into.

How Long, and When

Two practical questions people rarely ask out loud.

How long: ten minutes is plenty and five is enough. The constraint is attention, not virtue. A believer who meditates for six minutes daily will outpace one who attempts forty minutes twice a month, for the same reason a short daily walk beats an occasional hike.

When: whenever your mind is at its clearest, which is not the same hour for everyone. The morning tradition is strong and it is not a rule. Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide, and Psalm 63 describes meditation in the night watches. Choose the hour you will actually keep.

One more thing. Meditation is not confined to a sitting. The great advantage of a short verse is that it travels; a passage worked over at seven in the morning can be turned again while walking, queuing or washing up. Deuteronomy 6 assumed exactly that, and it is why the four settings it names are all ordinary.

A Complete Loop

Sit with a verse until you understand it. Speak it until you believe it. Then do what it says, which is the point of both.

Meditation without obedience is an indulgence, and Joshua 1:8 is explicit that the purpose of the whole exercise is that thou mayest observe to do. James makes the same point rather more sharply about the man who looks in a mirror and forgets what he saw.

David puts the two together in a single request, and the ordering is the one this article has argued for throughout. The words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart. Speech and reflection, offered as one thing, to a God who is both strength and redeemer.