HEBREW WORD STUDY – BEAUTY – HADAR – הדר  Hei  Daleth Resh

Psalms 90:16-17: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants and they glory unto they children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”

It is believed that this Psalm was written by Moses. If so, he knew a few things about the glory of God.  He had asked God to reveal His glory to Him and God did. Only thing is God revealed his chasad to Moses that is, His loving kindness. Here Moses is saying that God will reveal his hadar to his children. Hadar is beauty, majesty, and splendor. 

Now, this gets a little confusing as God is going to reveal his works to his servants.  The word works is pa’al which is an activity, deeds, what you have done.  To the servants, he shows them what He has done and will do for them, but unto the children, he shows his beauty.  

In the next verse, Moses talks about the beauty of the Lord being upon us. Here the word beauty is noam which is a word for pleasure. May God do good works for his servants and may his splendor and majesty be upon their children and may the pleasure of God be upon us all.

The rest of verse 17 is a little difficult. “And establish thou the work of our hands upon us: yea the work of hands establish thou it.” The word establish is kun in its root form and has a variety of applications.  I feel the application here is success or prosperous.  Thus Moses is saying: “And make the work of our hands prosperous or successful.  

Taking a very close look at the syntax of verse 17 it would appear this success or prosperity is related to the noam beauty or pleasure of God being upon us.  In other words: “May all our works be successful in bringing pleasure to God.” Both servants and children bring pleasure to God, but there is a difference between the two.

So God will do good deeds for his servants and his hadar beauty will be revealed to their children and all that they do will bring noam beauty/pleasure to God.  I think at this point I would like to be a servant. It sounds like God is saying: “Do you want a miracle from me or do you just want to bask in my beauty?”  Should I be his servant or child?

The word for servant is adad which literally means a slave, or in bondage. Do we want to be in total bondage to God, to be a slave to God.  Moses understood this word abad he knew about slavery. He understood the slavery of God’s people in Egypt.  Your life, your existence, your next meal was all in the hands of the slave master.  You were totally dependent upon the master for everything. When the children of the Hebrew slaves left Egypt, they were free to experience the beauty and splendor of God.  They had a new slave master, one who fed them and took loving care of them. Only this new slave master was beautiful and majestic. But they were so wrapped up in getting their basic needs from this new master just like from the old Egyptian masters, that they did not bother to see His hadar. They refused to move from ‘abad – slavery to be his child.  In fact, they told Moses, “You go in the cloud and find out what our new master wants from us and report back to us.”  I image when Moses returned from the cloud he told the people: “Our Master is so beautiful, splendid and wonderful, you gotta see it, you just gotta see it.” But the people were not interested in their new Master’s beauty, they remained ‘abad(s) with a slave mentality and not a family member mentality. They were only concerned about the miracle, their next meal. 

I will tell my problem.  I have really been struggling financially lately (tax season you know) using much of my resources from my job driving a disability bus to keep this ministry afloat. I am trusting God to meet these needs and I guess like the children of Israel I have become more focused on being am ‘abad a servant expecting God to meet my financial needs in return for my sacrificial service rather than being His child who does not need to worry about a tax bill, he is the child of the king who shares in the wealth of his father.  

For me, I need to get off on one of my silent retreats where I can just enjoy God’s beauty, be with Him 24/7 as his child and allow him to show off His wonderful works of creation where I can again seek His hadar (His beauty) rather than his pa’al or His works.  

You know the children of Israel moved from slavery ‘abad in Egypt right into slavery ‘abad to God.  It wasn’t until they became His child, stopped worrying about their daily bread and began to focus on His hadar, beauty that the manna ended, they entered the Promised Land and their journey ended.