Hebrew Word Study – Mountain – Harar  – הרר  Hei Resh Resh

Haggai 1:6-8:  “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages [to put it] into a bag with holes. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD.

Does Haggai 1:6 strike a chord with you?  Do you find you sow much into the work of God but you seem to bring in little?  I suppose most of us eat and drink and are filled and we usually have enough warm clothes, although many of us feel like our paycheck is full of holes.  I am sure you get the gest of the message here in Haggai, you have plenty yet, you still have that empty feeling.  Rockefeller when he was the richest man in the country was asked just how much more money did he really need.  He replied: “Just a little more.”  It seems like no matter how much we get we are never satisfied. 

Israel had returned to their homeland, only to find it occupied by squatters and refugees from other displaced people as a result of the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests.  They had settled in Palestine and started to make a new home for themselves when in walked the former owners, the Israelites, ready to reclaim their land and if the squatters didn’t like it, the Jews had the power of the Persian Empire to back them up.  So, these foreigners carried on a war of attrition, a sort of Yankee go Home.   While the Jews were off building their temple these foreigners would destroy their crops. While they were rebuilding the walls they would invade their homes and steal from them. More and more the work on the temple would be delayed while the Jews were off protecting their land and homes until they were not working on the temple at all.  They were too preoccupied with just surviving and making it through each day to be bothered with secondary matters like rebuilding the house of God. It only makes sense, your first responsibility is to your family and home, matters of God come secondary, like building His temple.  Yet to God that was primary. 

As a result, God allowed them to sow much ground but the invaders destroyed much of their crops so they had little to eat. They had enough livestock and resources to make their clothing but that was also stolen.  They earned wages but all their wages went to just protect themselves and survive. They never had enough to really enjoy themselves.  The more they stood up to their enemies at the neglect of building the temple the more their enemies took from them. 

Why did God want a temple in the first place?  Is God that egotistical that he is demanding that we neglect our family and our responsibilities just to build Him an earthly building? Is God telling us that when your church starts a building program you are supposed to give to that before taking care of your own home and family?  That the reason you are in financial difficulty is that you did not give enough tithes to build your church building or more commonly give enough money to pay for the maintenance of that building?  I mean verse 6 is enough to scare anybody into tithing.  Yet, does not God demand that we tithe out of love and not fear? 

I think the answer is in verse 8: “Go up to the mountain and bring wood.”  Good grief, not only does God expect His people to abandon their homes in lieu of building His temple but they have to climb up the mountains to get their wood as if the trees in the valley were not good enough. 

I had a guy on my disability bus the other day who said he just did not bother to read the Old Testament because he could not understand it.  So many things did not make sense to him. I agree, so many things do not make sense to me and the reason is that I live in a complex society.  We live in a precision, mathematical, and technical such that we can only process one thing at a time. For instance, just driving a car requires our complete attention to the operation of that complex piece of machinery.  In ancient times riding a camel did not require attention to speed limits, other camels that might collide with you, staying on a narrow road, etc.  People in ancient times were just as smart as we are today only they did not have to process so much information, but they still had sharp minds and they could process a lot of information.  Thus, in the Semitic mind, it was not unusual to read two or three messages in the use of just one word. 

For instance, when God says “Go to the mountain” that could carry a number of messages other than just actually going to a mountain.  The word mountain in Hebrew is harar.  You put that into a feminine form hararah and you have the word for a pregnant woman.  Not because she is as big as a mountain, but it was felt that when on the top of a mountain you are closer to God, and a pregnant woman was believed to be very close to God to bear a living child.  One went to the mountains to draw close to God.   Samson Hirsch the great Jewish linguist traces the word harar to be a break in the continuity of the earth.  Hence the word mountain has the idea of breaking the continuity.   You go to the mountains to break away from your normal routine in life.  I attended a prayer meeting one morning with a group of men.  One man related how he starts his day off really on fire with God but as the problems and cares of his job take over he forgets about God and things just go crazy.  It is during this time that you must harar, break the continuity of your life and get back with God.

The people were told to go to the mountain to retrieve wood.  The word wood in Hebrew is ‘aets which means firmness as wood creates firmness in buildings. It also bears fruit that gives pleasure and life. ‘Aets also is used in extra-Biblical literature for life and pleasure.  

I asked a friend why God demanded the people build the temple before they even cared for their own needs and she suggest that it was to build a community first, and work together in unity.  When the people went home to protect their own interests at the cost of not supporting the work to build the temple, they became isolated, just as our nation is becoming more and more isolated.  Yet there is strength in numbers and going to the mountain to retrieve wood would require the work of the entire community and it is there that they not only find ‘aets (wood) but also the other renderings of ‘aets (concentration on God and happiness). 

You see, the message of Haggai is not to drop everything to give God an earthly building, but to not become so focused on yourselves and your own little world that you stop thinking of God and others.  I cannot write these studies alone, I need the input of other believers.  It takes a village to raise a study to paraphrase Hillary.  It is true, that we need to be a village of believers, we need to take our focus away from ourselves, let God handle those little things and keep our minds stayed on Him.  Then with the other believers, we will have strength.  The temple was not to feed God’s ego, it was to unify His people and thereby create strength so that when they sow much, they will have much, they will eat and drink enough and will have enough warm clothes and their wages will not fall through holes in bags.  The church exists today not to feed God’s ego but to create a unity and fellowship of believers.

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