What's In A Name?

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Mount Mizar is mentioned only once in the Bible in Psalm 42:6.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember You from the land of Jordan, the heights of Hermon - from Mount Mizar. (Psalms 42:6 NIV)

The name means ‘a little mountain’ or, some have suggested, ‘a large hill’. Precisely where Mount Mizar is to be found in Israel is not really known. Some associate it with the beautiful mountain range dominated by Mount Hermon in the north of Israel.

Others however think different and say that Mount Mizar is a name used in a poetic context (which is very typical of many of David’s psalms); as David was writing his lament he thinks of the highest point in Israel and then turns his mind to the smaller yet most holy mountain, Mount Zion in Jerusalem - in other words, Mount Mizar is a poetic name for Mount Zion. Mount Zion is mentioned around 160 times in the Bible and it is where King David built a citadel to God. The debate to exactly where the biblical Mount Mizar is located goes on. I have to say I like this idea that Mount Mizar is a poetic name for Mount Zion. Whatever the truth is concerning the location of the biblical Mount Mizar one thing we know for sure is that it is important enough to be included in the Bible and one of the greatest writers in the Bible, King David, was the one who mentions it.

Spurgeon on Psalm 42:6

Charles Haddon Spurgeon was known in his day as the ‘Prince of Preachers’; anyone who has read any of his work will realise why. Here is what he writes on the passage of scripture from which we take our name, Mount Mizar.

Therefore will I remember thee. It is well to fly to our God. Here is terra firma. Blessed down casting which drives us to so sure a rock of refuge as thee, O Lord!

From [Mount] Mizar. He recalls his seasons of choice communion by the river and among the hills, and especially that dearest hour upon the little hill, where love spake her sweetest language and revealed her nearest fellowship. It is great wisdom to store up in memory our choice occasions of converse with heaven; we may want them another day, when the Lord is slow in bringing back his banished ones, and our soul is aching with fear. "His love in times past" has been a precious cordial to many a fainting one; like soft breath it has fanned the smoking flax into a flame, and bound up the bruised reed. Oh, never to be forgotten valley of Achor, thou art a door of hope! Fair days, now gone, ye have left a light behind you which cheers our present gloom. Or does David mean that even where he was he would bethink him of his God; does he declare that, forgetful of time and place, he would count Jordan as sacred as Siloa, Hermon as holy as Zion, and even Mizar, that insignificant rising ground as glorious as the mountains which are round about Jerusalem!

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To me Spurgeon’s words in this last paragraph speak volumes; concerning Mount Mizar he says how in ‘...that dearest hour upon the little hill...love spake her sweetest language’; and of the place itself he says, ‘...even Mizar, that insignificant rising ground as glorious as the mountains which are round about Jerusalem’: in other words, it says to me that small though our church is in the eyes of men, in God’s eyes we are as glorious as the mountains in Jerusalem upon which He built His dwelling place. The love of God speaks to us here in Mount Mizar Christian Fellowship, for it is truly a house of the Lord.

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