Hebrew Word Study – Meditate – Hagah הגה Hei Gimmel Hei

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What Is Meditation On God’s Word

Psalms 1:2:  “But his delight [is] in the law of the LORD, and in his law doth he meditates day and night.”

Years ago I recall talking with a friend who practices something I call meditative prayer.  There are a lot of tears while she is meditating and praying.  I then thought about a time I met with a group of men from church for a morning prayer time.  We spent most of our time just sharing our experiences with God. Again there was much weeping.  You know the word in Hebrew for I weep is baki.  This word is spelled Beth which has a numerical value of 2, Kap whose value is 20, and Yod with a value of 10.  This equals 32.  The word for heart is lav which is spelled Lamed which has a value of 20 and Beth with a value of 2, this also equals 32.  The ancient sages taught that when two words in Hebrew have the same numerical value you are to look for a relationship between these two words. I believe the relationship is that weeping is an expression of the heart.  There is something so cleansing when you have a time of weeping before the Lord. 

I have noticed that myself when I meditate on the Word of God, I often end up weeping, sometimes weeping because I have entered God’s heart and experienced his sadness over a lost world.  Other times I am just weeping out of pure joy.  I really understand why David meditated on the law day and night because there is something so cleansing and joyful in meditation and when it ends in tears you know you have tapped into your heart and God’s heart as well. 

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The word in Hebrew for meditate is hagah which has many usages.  It is sometimes rendered as to moan, growl, utter, muse devise, plot roar, and imagine.  I can see imagine and muse as meditation but what is this moaning or roaring business?  I remember a prayer meeting that I attended where a woman was really getting into prayer and it sounded as if she were moaning or growling. She was just so intense in her prayer that she actually started moaning. Have you ever gone to a gym to work out? You will hear a lot of grunting and groaning because the exercise room is filled with people who are putting their whole heart and soul into their workout.  They are focusing all their concentration on lifting those weights, every part of their body, and all their thoughts are focused on lifting that weight.  When you get that intense you let out a groan or moan. 

Have you ever gotten so intense in your meditation that you actually started moaning and groaning?  I recall hearing an Art History professor tell how he met an elderly curator at a Paris museum. The curator shared how he met Monet a great impressionist painter when he was just a small child.  It was like 20 degrees below zero and the Rhine River was frozen over.  His father took him for a walk along the Rhine River and he said; “I bet you we will meet Monet today.  Sure enough, they came upon an elderly man sitting on a stool before an easel in the middle of the frozen Rhine River intensely focused on his work. I am not sure whether it was the color or shapes that he was concentrating on in that scene.  I asked an art historian once if he was unsure what was in the mind of Monet only that whatever it was he was putting his whole heart and soul into that painting. Whatever it was that Monet was studying, he was very intense in that study. As they came upon Monet, he stood up and removed his hat.  This curator said that even as a young child he was impressed with the fact that in sub-zero weather when Monet removed his hat steam rose from his head.  He was sweating in twenty below zero weather.  He was so intense in his concentration that he was working up a sweat.

Meditation is more than just musing over something, it is intense concentration, focusing all your attention on the Word of God, concentrating, and thinking as if you were preparing for a final exam. I used to teach a class in college on speed reading. When you speed read through a book you have to focus all your attention, you must have no distractions. One distraction and you will overlook some important word that ties everything together.  I found the biggest reason a student could not pick up speed reading was because of his inability to focus. This is not natural for most people and is something you must train your mind to do.

Meditation involves focus, it involves intense concentration. My friend who practices meditative prayer mentioned that when she meditates it is like eating or ingesting the Word of God.  Rabbi Samson Hirsch the linguist and Hebrew master relates the word hagah meditate to the word for encircling or surround.  That is the same idea as eating. You encircle the Word of God, surround it, and ingest it, and once ingested, like eating food, it becomes a part of your body bringing you nourishment and energy.  

This is what David did with the Word of God, he ingested it, encircled it, and let it become a part of him to nourish him and give him energy.  When something becomes that much a part of you you just cannot wait to sit down with the Word of God and dive into it.  It is like looking forward to a three-course dinner of your favorite foods. 

Here it is, it does not happen naturally, at least to most people, it is something that takes discipline and time, but soon you acquire a taste for the Word of God, and then before long like hunger, you develop a craving and like starvation you cannot concentration on anything until you have eaten, so too with the Word of God, you cannot concentration on anything until you have the chance to feed on the Word of God. 

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