Siyach and Hagah
In all classical translations of the Hebrew into English the word meditation in every case is either Siyach or Hagah or their roots in the original. The Hebrew meanings of these “lost words” are spiritual treasures. They describe prayerful activities that transition the heart from a focus on the sensory input of the soul to the spiritual life and images created by the word of God and His Spirit. These words tell us what is happening as we present the words of God to Jesus as “The High Priest of Our Confession.” Both of these words involve reciting, reading and vocalizing the words of God so that as we hear the sounds of God’s words our hearts become full of their content. Although the activity is similar the effect is distinctive.
Remember definitions are how we generally identify words. Definitions are external outer-man concepts. We start outside and with prayer and meditation in order to experience what a word really means.
Root words are the focus of our search. We are looking for images not concepts. Biblical meditation is not self-directed. Although the objective is visual experience the means of creating those images are God’s words, His creation and His mighty deeds of behalf of his people. We are not the subject in genuine spiritual meditation.
Siyach . . . “In the Beginning”
Hebrew roots are linguistic masterpieces. Almost all are verbs! Hebrew nouns identify the one performing the action, not the person a concept. God’s great name reveal to Moses is a verbal noun “I AM,” I am being what I am being. Hebrew parent roots are two and three consonant images. The roots have no vowels. All offspring (additional words) that flow from the root maintain their relationship to the root; i.e. reveal the details of the root. All words from the same root are brothers and sisters. Life comes from the root.
The first use of Siyach the dabar-reality-word meditation could not give us a more graphic insight into the essence of meditation and the responsibility we have to cultivate its growth in “the garden of our hearts.” The clear message is that God will not produce His life in our hearts without our participation. In order to increase our capacity to “Live from the Heart” we must return to the beginning of creation to discover the wisdom inherent in Ancient Hebrew and Nature to rediscover all we can about what the Heart is, where it is and how it works. In short what the dabar-reality of the word Heart means.
In Genesis Chapter One we are given an overview of creation. In Chapter Two we are taken back to “the beginnings” so the Lord God can teach us essential principles about image-making, spiritual growth and how we are to fulfill our purpose for existing. Everything visible that works can teach us about how we work. From macrocosm to microcosm, exterior and interior, everything works under the same principles. We can study anything that works and learn about our hearts. Nature is the ultimate visible teacher. Throughout scared scripture desolation and vegetation growth cycles are equated to the condition and the potential growth of God’s life in the human heart. Wonder of wonders, we can get these instructions about our hearts much better if we use our image-maker as a present-tense reality in order to see how it applies to our lives. Please do not view this as history, that’s what the soul does, the imagination transcends time, the heart experience is “here-and-now.”
Gen. 2:4 reveals profound insights. “Before any Siyach (shrub, bush) was coming up out of the earth or any grass grew, since … there was no man to cultivate growth,” God sustained the seeds hidden under the soil with a mist. The Lord God then turns to Yatzar/image/form man out of the dust of the red ground, (Yatzar is the root word for imagination).
After Adam was created “God planted a garden/enclosure in Eden.” This “Heart” in Eden is an outside picture of “The Heart” God had created in Adam whom He formed from the visibly barren dust of Eden. After Adam, God made to sprout out of the ground every tree that was pleasant to the eye and good for food.”
It is essential that we understand that until God had a person created in His image (with an image-maker), someone who would cultivate the growth . . . He did not cause the seeds to sprout and visible-Siyach-life from the seeds to appear. This outside picture of “The Beginning” gives us an amazing revelation that no matter how wonderful the seeds of life that God has planted in our hearts, He will not release the energy for growth until we are ready to meditate on what is waiting be nurtured. We have to meditate on God’s word if we want Him to grow in us that which is pleasing to the eyes of our hearts, and food that is good for our spiritual health.
Can you see this picture? The entire earth is a desert . . . is midbar (away from the reality God intends). Until “the desert” has a man created in the image of God, thinking God’s thoughts, flowing with God, there is no growth; only a world of potential in the seeds sown below the surface which are being preserved by moisture from mist. No growth until there is a meditator, a cultivator. Our hearts are a desert, with the seeds of life planted beneath the surface. Jesus called this the kingdom within and called “The Parable of the Sower” the most important of all parables.
As we meditate on the “seeds of life” God causes the growth. No meditation, no growth. The only way for Christ Himself to be formed in our hearts is by causing the word of Christ to dwell richly within us by prayer, confession and meditation.
Spirit vs. Soul, Heart vs. Head, Revelation vs. Knowledge, Experience vs. Data, Reality vs. Words, ultimately Life vs. Death.
It’s all about The Person , “The Word” experienced not words learned but not known about Him. “I am the beginning and I am the end.” The beginning and the end is a person.
By embracing the principle that “all things spiritual work like first things spiritual,” the “one-ness” of creation, which is God’s signature in everything and by observing an ignored over-arching scriptural theme of right vs. left we get an amazing vision for our hearts from Genesis 2: 9-10. Don’t just think this, see it!
The Hebrew root tavek means to sever or bisect, it is translated here “center of the enclosure/garden” The enclosure is severed/bisected/divided into two halves with a river flowing through its heart. Our attention is drawn from all the desirable trees enclosed on both sides of the river to the supreme importance of Two Siyachim (shrubs/bushes) in the “center of the center” of the bisected garden, and their unique names. The shrub growing on the Right bank is called “The Tree of Life” and the shrub growing on the Left bank is called “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” The location of these two trees and their importance in ours lives is incalculable. They are the DNA molecules of different species, rival kingdoms, competing philosophies, conflicting visions and distinct levels of potential. How revealing is the wonderful account of “the river of life” flowing from the throne of God through the center of the New Jerusalem with “The Tree of Life” growing on both sides of the river along its entire length, after the curse of independent knowledge has been removed, (Rev. 22: 1-3). “No rival tree, No right and left conflict; where Spirit, Heart, Revelation, Reality Experience and Life rein Eternal. The Siyach growing in the Garden of Eden is The-Foundational- Revelation of the “Siyach-Life” that grows from the energy of God through the mouth and the mediation of His children who have been created “for good works which God prepared before hand that we should walk in them,” Eph. 2:10.
“Siyach” is next used for tree or bush when a boy near death, “crying in the wilderness” from “under the Siyach” is heard by God. Ishmael means God hears . . . He hears when flesh cries out in the desert. Ishmael’s mother for the second time is saved by being shown Beer Lachai Roi “the well of the Living One who sees me.” Gen. 21:15af /16:13.
Forty-years later, in breathtaking poetic beauty Beer Lachai Roi is where we are first introduced to the word meditation to describe the focused prayer and worship of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah’s son of the Spirit, (Gen. 24:62, 63). We must not miss that Ishmael’s life was saved by drinking the water of this well once; Isaac “the one anointed” was a meditator who chose to live there!
Ishmael’s Siyach experience and Isaac meditation in the same place is a profound transition to the use of the Siyach root 37 times as a meditative cry to God for encounters with the Living One who sees us, so we can really live.” Gen. 16:13
Jesus has taught us in Lk. 8 that the “word is the seed” planted in our hearts. When we tend what God has planted in our hearts, by “the words of our verbal confession and the images created by His word, God “cause the growth” and times of refreshing come to us from the Presence of The Lord, The High Priest of our Confession seated on the right of the throne of The Majesty on High.
Here are a few of the uses of Siyach
That Siyach has a vocal component is clear from Ps. 64.2
“O God, hear my voice when I meditate.” (Siyach)
Siyach’s primary focus is found in Ps. 145:5
“On the words of your wonders, I will meditate.” (Siyach)
Siyach meditation with singing, chanting and musical instruments Ps 105:1
“Sing to Him, chant to Him, Meditate (Siyach) of all His wonders”
The stillness and darkness of the night are great times to see what can’t be seen with the eyes of the soul. Ps. 119:148
“My EYES look forward to the night watches to meditate (Siyach) in your word.” (This verse clearly means to see God’s word in action)
Everything depends what we are seeing. Ps. 119:15
“In your mysteries (pekudim) I will meditate (Siyach) and look intently (nabat) on your paths.” (Most English texts translate pekudim as precepts).
Siyach meditation plants and cultivates God word in our heart. It focuses our thoughts on one specific aspect of God’s revelation at a time. Our next word Hagah appears together with Siyach in two revealing verses. We will come back to learn their relationship after “digging” for the treasures in the essence of Hagah as it stands alone.
Hagah
The first image for the meaning of Hagah comes from its use to describe the action of removing or purifying.
Proverbs 25: 4-5. Hagah the dross from the Silver . . . Hagah the wicked from before the King.
The biblical means of removing dross from Silver and Gold was by the repeated melting of the ore through the refining fire until the Silver or Gold was pure. As we repeat the words of God over and over to our High Priest, our soulish self-centered attachments are being removed, and our experience becomes purer and purer. The refining fires are all the images both outside and inside that produce unbelief in our hearts. Jesus advises us to “buy from me, Gold refined by fire;” images of the fires He endured as “The Author of Faith” so that He could become the Gold-glorified “Finisher of Faith.” Katanoeo-meditation of Jesus enduring “the melting fires of the cross” is God’s means of melting our hearts and removing the dross of “sensory overload” that is the source of unbelief in our hearts. The Gold is the personal revelation (i.e. faith) developed by fellowship with the resurrected High Priest. “We buy without money,” Isa. 55: 1b-2. Only repentance, time, confessions and worship are currency in the realm of the Spirit.
This is the way the apostle Paul grew strong in faith in the midst of enormous trials; how do we know? “These momentary light afflictions are producing in us and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at things which are seen but (we look) at things that are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporary, the things which are not seen are eternal,” 2 Cor 4:17-18. There is only one way to look at things that are not seen . . . with our image-maker, our imagination. What did Paul look at? “Set your thoughts on things above where Jesus, our High Priest, is seated at the right of God,” Col. 3:1.
The flightiness of our heart is brought under control by the next action-word that comes from the same root as Hagah. The Hebrew word meaning rudder or helm is Hegeh. Confessing the Scripture directs, steers and navigates our thoughts on the restless sea of our hearts. Meditation is genuine “spiritual warfare.” Interrupting thoughts are a given, they will take place. The enemy does not want us meditating on God’s word, as we have just seen, meditation removes his strongholds. The Holy Spirit will make us aware that we are drifting; all we have to do is thank the Holy Spirit for making us aware . . . then refocus on the next words we are praying. Notice
I am not the source of the drift; I am not the source of awareness that I am drifting; in spiritual warfare our hearts are the territory being fought over, we are vessels not sources. When we refocus on the words, the Holy Spirit steers us into the action of the words; experiencing the reality the words described.
How can a baby navigate? How can one wandering in a wilderness of definitions, find spiritual reality? How can “activated dust” that has fed for a lifetime on “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” find its way to The Tree of Life?” In sad fact “the dust” falsely believes the good it knows IS “The Tree of Life?” Jesus said emphatically “There is none good, but God.” We would do well to accept it as empirical fact. It is not our responsibility to guide or steer our confessions. God words do the work as we present our sacrifices of praise and petition to our “Great High-Priest.”
The base of Hagah is closely related to other words like Chug/circle, Hayah/ to be, and Hiney/here. As a group the message is that Hagah activities are the repeated verbalizing of scripture that stills the heart from an outward focus based on sensory data from the soul, and the vast amounts of soulish wants, desires and thoughts that have been programmed into our hearts. Hagah tells us that as we meditate the Lord removes from our hearts the dross (images devoid of Jesus) from the silver and gold (images including Jesus as Apostle and High Priest) as our Father conforms us into the image of His Son.
Last but not least we are given two contrasting pictures which reveal that
the continual repeating of the same words over and over produces peace and contentment. “I will Hagah (coo) like a Dove,” Isa 38:14. “Like a Lion Hagahs (growls or sounds) over its prey, Isa 31:4. What elegant imagery; when we present God’s words to Jesus as the High Priest of our confession, we become “gentle doves” expressing over and over the peace we are beginning to experience; in Holy paradox, we also become like Lions growling continually (not roaring) as we over-come our foes. Peace and Triumph become harmonic states in those discover how to Hagah.
A Few uses of Hagah root . . .
Psa. 19:15 . . . Let the words of my mouth and the Higayon (meditations) of my heart be acceptable in thy sight.
Joshua 1:9, Psa 1:2 . . . Hagah (meditate) in thy words day and night . . . David adds will be like a tree (return to the garden) planted by the streams of water that will bear its fruit in season, and whose leaf will not wither.
Psa. 65:5, 7 . . . In your name I will lift up my hands . . . and Hagah
(meditate) YOU in the watches of the night.”
Psa. 92:3, 4 . . . “To speak of your love in the morning, and your faith by night; with a ten stringer, with a lute, with Higayon (meditations) on the harp.” (Musicians should get to know this verse well.)as we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next. In scientific terms the Holy reprogram our neurons/cells/and holographic images with the truth of who we already are by being One Spirit with Christ.
lets look at two different verses where both words appear in the same sentence.
Psa. 77:13 . . . “I meditate (Hagah) on All Your works and in Your plans I meditate (siyach).
Psa. 143:5 . . . “I meditate (Hagah) in All Your works, and in the deeds of Your hands I meditate (Siyach).
Notice that in both verses Hagah activities proceeds Siyach. Because of the huge amount of unrenewed information and images in our hearts and the constant dirtying of our feet as we walk in the world, we begin by seeing Jesus on His knees as a servant washing the dust off our feet in order for us to fellowship with Him as our Master and Lord. Hagah is removes; SiyachPlants and Cultivates what is growing “from God who causes the increase.”
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