Day Three
Movement I — The Word Itself
Springs
Before you read the verse, read the header above it. The superscription of Psalm 34 says David wrote it after he changed his behaviour before Abimelech, who drove him away.
That is a polite summary. First Samuel 21 tells you what actually happened: David, running for his life, ended up in the hands of the Philistine king of Gath, and saved himself by faking insanity — scratching at the gate, letting his spit run down into his beard, until the king said, in effect, I have enough madmen already, get him out of here.
Then he wrote this.
O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. Psalm 34:8, KJV
The man telling you to taste had spent the previous day drooling on purpose to stay alive. He is not writing from a study.
Today’s morsel
“O taste and see.”
Say it slowly. Note the order. It is not see and taste.
Wells
You asked, or you will ask, how a person is supposed to move from understanding a doctrine to loving it. Hebrew answers that question with one word, and the answer is that you had the order backwards.
The verb in Psalm 34:8 is טָעַם, ṭāʿam. It means to taste. It also means, figuratively, to perceive. Its noun form, ṭaʿam, runs the whole distance in one entry: taste, flavour, discernment, judgment, understanding.
Watch it work in two places. In Exodus 16:31 it is the flavour of manna, like wafers made with honey. In First Samuel 25:33 Abigail is praised for her ṭaʿam — her good judgment, her advice. Same word. Hebrew filed flavour and discernment in one drawer.
And Job says it outright:
Doth not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat? Job 12:11, KJV
The mouth is an organ of judgment. So when David says taste and see, the sequence is not poetic decoration. Understanding is downstream of experience, and it does not flow the other way. You cannot think your way to knowing that the LORD is good. You have to get some in your mouth.
How does a person chew a sentence? Scripture has a word for that too, and it is not what most of us picture.
The verb is הָגָה, hāgâ, the word for meditate in Psalm 1:2 and Joshua 1:8. The King James also renders it mutter, mourn, roar, and speak. It is the word in Isaiah 31:4 for a lion growling over its prey — a low sound made in the throat over something you are consuming.
And Joshua 1:8 sets the order plainly: the book shall not depart out of your mouth, and then you shall meditate in it day and night. Mouth first. Biblical meditation is audible. It is not a silent interior technique available only to the clear-headed. It is a tired man muttering a line over and over.
Which is good news if you are reading this from a bed. You do not need clarity. You need a mouth.
Aquifer
The KJV range of H1897. Meditate, mutter, mourn, roar, speak, study, imagine, utter. Strong’s glosses the root as to murmur, in pleasure or anger. The emotional neutrality is the point: hāgâ covers both the lion over the kill and the mourner over the loss, because both are low sounds made over something that has hold of you.
Follow the taste line further. Psalm 119:103, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth” — same root. Then Jeremiah 15:16, Ezekiel 3:1–3, and Revelation 10:9–10, where the scroll is eaten. In Ezekiel it is sweet as honey. In Revelation it is sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly. Both are true and they are sequential, which is worth knowing before you start.
On the superscription. Psalm 34’s heading names Abimelech while 1 Samuel 21 names Achish. The standard explanation is that Abimelech functioned as a dynastic title among Philistine rulers, as Pharaoh did in Egypt; others take it as a scribal variant. The narrative details align regardless, and nothing in the psalm turns on it.