Hagar wasn't a Hebrew; she was an Egyptian. She came from a nation where more than a thousand different deities were worshipped... but her personal encounter, there in the wilderness, with a God who saw her dilemma and heard her cry led her to one incontrovertible conclusion: this God who sees and hears me, who knows my deepest need and longing, is truly alive.
So she gave a name to the spring of water where this encounter had happened: she called it Beer-lahai-roi - the well of the Living One who sees me. El Hai or Elohim Hai is a common name for God throughout the scriptures, but it is this foreign slave girl in Genesis 16 who first speaks it out.
El Hai, sometimes written Chai to reflect the guttural sound of the Hebrew and connect it to the common Hebrew toast, "L'Chaim - to life!" Surely it's obvious that God is living?
But it wasn't obvious back in that day when the people of Canaan (and of Egypt, where Hagar came from) worshipped countless "gods" made of wood and stone. Hagar's encounter at that well opened her eyes to the existence of a God who was truly alive and not just a creation of man. It was unknown of in those days, and today too, for there to be a God who was alive and intelligent, able to relate to and communicate with human beings.
So perhaps that's why Elohim Hai, the Living God, is mentioned quite often in the Bible. The name made the one true God stand out as unique, and reminded Israel that their God was completely different from the false gods of other nations.
Centuries later, when the Israelites were about to cross the River Jordan and enter their promised land, Joshua told them, "Today you will know that El Hai, the Living God is among you (Joshua 3: 10) and will drive out the peoples and the idols who defile the land He'll be giving you.
Surprisingly, even Job, amidst his suffering and his flawed picture of God, declared at one point, "I know that my redeemer lives and in the end will stand on the earth."(Job 19: 25 - Gā'al Hai)
Perhaps one of the best known examples is Psalm 42, a song where the psalmist compares his longing for God to the panting of a thirsty deer in search of water. "My soul," he writes (the word is nephesh, like we find in God's name Shub Nephesh), "is thirsty for God, the Living God." Elohim El Hai.
Knowing that God is alive makes a big difference to how we approach life and the challenges that it might bring our way. When King Hezekiah was facing threats from an invading Assyrian army, he turned to the God who hears - Yahweh Shama; see yesterday's post - and asked to be delivered from the hand of the Assyrian king, Sennacherib, who dared to mock Elohim Hai, the Living God. That's in Isaiah 37: 17.
When the prophet Jeremiah boldly challenged the idolatry of the Israelites, he reminded them that the Lord, Yahweh, is the only true God, Elohim emeth, the living God, Elohim Hai, and the everlasting King, Olam Melek. (Jeremiah 10: 10) Having such clear knowledge of who God is gave him the courage to confront all kinds of wrongs. Faced with the futility of idols, Jeremiah's rebuke to the people contains several names of the only true and living God.
This is the same God that we can know and serve today. When Peter understood that Jesus was the promised Messiah, he declared: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." (Matthew 16: 16, where the Hebrew El Hai becomes Theos Zao or Zon in New Testament Greek.)
The apostle Paul reminds the Thessalonians that they turned away from worthless idols to serve the true and living God (1 Thess 1: 9) and several times in his letters to Timothy, he reminds the young pastor that our hope and trust are in the Living God (for example, in 1 Timothy 4: 10).
Jesus alluded to this several times when He was on earth. "I am the way, the truth and the life," He said. (John 14: 6) "I have come to give you life in all its fullness." (John 10: 10) And just in case anyone thought His crucifixion and burial had put an end to that life, He makes a very clear declaration in the vision that John has of Him in Revelation 1: 18 - "I am the Living One. I was dead, but now look: I am alive for ever and ever."
We may not worship idols of wood or stone like they did in Egypt or Canaan or Greece... but how easy it can be to give our time and attention to things that are not life-giving. Instead, let's choose daily to keep our focus on El Hai, Theos Zao; on Jesus who said, I am the life, and who promised to give us life in abundance.
