HEBREW WORD STUDY – GO TO THE MOUNTAINS  ‘AL HAHAR  –  עלו  ההר   

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?  Of course in this country and century, we have enough to eat and drink and we have warm clothes.  Yet, we relate to this passage because it is basically saying we work very hard and we seem to have so little, we just live paycheck to paycheck.  It is that feeling of never having enough, the end of the month glance at our bank accounts and wondering where it all went.  Could the problem be because we are not building God’s house?   Can we relate this to the church (God’s house) and our tithes (building God’s house)?  I think that is how most of us read this passage. 

Let’s consider the context for a moment. Israel had returned to their homeland, only to find it occupied by squatters, 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 walks 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, sort of like today in Israel.  In 1948 Israel was declared a nation and allowed to reclaim their homeland, only it was already occupied.  Not that the Jews kicked out the occupiers, they were willing to share the land with them, it is just the occupiers like in Haggai did not want them there, to begin with, and would not share.  So 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, home and 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 that they never had enough to really enjoy them.  The more they stood up to their enemies at the neglect of building the temple the more their enemies took from them until no matter how much they had they ended up with very little.

Why did God want a temple in the first place?  Is God that egotistical that he is demanding that we neglect our families and our responsibilities just to build Him an earthly building? I think the answer is in verse 8: “Go up to the mountain and bring wood.”  

 “Go to the mountain” could carry a number of messages other than just actually going to a mountain.  The word mountain in Hebrew is harar.  One went to the mountains to draw close to God.   Samson Hirsch the great Jewish linguist traces the word harar mountain 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 found that the word wood in Hebrew ‘aets is also used in extra-Biblical literature for life and pleasure.  

You see, the message of Haggai is not to drop everything to give God an earthly building, but to not become so focused on yourself, your own little world and cares of the day that you stop thinking of God and others. Go to the mountain, ie.,  change the continuity of your life from serving yourself to serving your community and in that you will find wood ‘aets, life and pleasure. 

God didn’t need the temple, His people did,  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 because they are watching out for each other, they have each other’s backs.  The church exists today not to feed God’s ego but to create unity and fellowship of believers so there is a family out there to watch each other’s backs.