WORD STUDY – BEAUTIFUL AND SPLENDID – הדר

Psalms 90:16-17: “Let thy work appear unto they 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.”

This Psalm was written by Moses, he knew a few things about the glory of God. He had asked God to reveal His glory to Him and God did, well kind of. The Bible says God revealed his chasad to Moses, His lovingkindness and not His glory or kovod. Here Moses is saying that God will reveal his hadar to his children. Some translations render this as glory but hadar is really 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 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. This, like the other words, are in a cohortative form and thus it should be render in the form of a blessing. “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 which comes from a Semitic root that has a variety of applications. I feel the best 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 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 beauty will be revealed to their children so all that they do will bring pleasure to God. Probably for most of us we would like to be a servant as we would much rather experience the works of God in our lives. I mean all we get by being a child of God is his beauty, like big deal. In a few weeks I will hold a conference in Southern Indiana where I will show what a big deal the beauty and splendor of God is.

Besides that, many of us are so caught up in life’s many problems and cares we are sure not bringing much pleasure to God with our present attitude toward our situation. We tend to just sit around feeling sorry for ourselves and worrying about the future.
So we start crying out to God that we are his servant and it is about time He starts to do some of this good work in us like healing us, giving us a good job or blessing us financially. For me it is asking God to increase my platform and give me more speaking opportunities. I mean give me some speaking gigs and I will really bring Him pleasure.

Yet, I wonder if God is not bringing us into the state of a servant before that of a child. The word for servant is ‘avad which literally means slave, or bondage. Do we really allow ourselves to be in total bondage to God, to be a slave to God? Moses understood this word ‘avad, he knew about slavery. He understood the slavery of God’s people in Egypt. Your life, you existence, you next meal was all in the hands of the slave master. As a slave you are totally dependent upon the master for everything. For the most part it appears the Egyptian masters were not too brutal to their slaves, but still, they did the work for their master’s wishes and this bondage did crimped their spiritual life style. So when the children of the Hebrew slaves left Egypt, they were free to experience the beauty and splendor of God. They were to move from being a servant to a child. We do call them the children of Israel after all. They had a new slave master, only now they will know Him as a father not a master, one who fed them and took loving care of them. Only this new Master/Father 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 majesty. 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: “He is not a slave master, but a Father and He is oh so beautiful, splendid and wonderful, you gotta see it, you just gotta see it.” But the people were not interested in their new Father’s beauty; they were only concerned about their next meal. “Yeah, yeah, beautiful, but is he going to feed us, clothe us, give us water?”

We have been redeemed from our old slave master of sin. We have a new Master who is a Father and He is beautiful and splendid and wants to show us his hadar or His beauty, but we are too focused on our personal needs, desires and wants that we never take time to see His hadar or beauty. We would rather some else go into that cloud and tell us what He is saying. Once we get our needs met, maybe then we will appreciate that cloud better.

In a few weeks I will be conducting a conference in Indiana. My goal and whole purpose for these three days is not to come out of the cloud and tell the people: “It’s beautiful, ya gotta see it, ya just gotta see it.” No, I plan to take those who attend into that cloud with me so they can see His hadar, His beauty and splendor.

If you happen to be in the Southern Illinois and Indiana or Northern Tennessee, or Eastern Missouri area you are welcome to stop by in October and join me as we venture into that cloud to experience the pleasure of God as we discover His beauty from the Biblical Languages.