Places of the Bible

Mount Moriah

Three days’ walk to a hill whose name was only given at the end of the journey.

The instruction is deliberately vague about the destination: get thee into the land of Moriah, upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. So the three days are spent walking towards a place not yet identified, carrying wood that has already been cut. The account gives almost nothing of what Abraham thought, and everything of what he did, in a sequence of plain verbs: rose up early, saddled, clave the wood, took two young men and Isaac, and went.

Where it appearsGenesis 22

Genesis

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The movements, in the order the text gives them.

The Account of Mount Moriah

01
Genesis 22:1-3
He rose up early in the morning
The command names the son three ways before the destination: thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest. The response is a list of actions with no speech in it.
The King James says God did tempt Abraham, and the English has drifted since 1611. The Hebrew verb is nissah, to test or to prove, the word used of assaying metal, and it carries no sense of enticement to evil. What follows is an examination, not a seduction.
The command is built as a slow narrowing: thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac. Abraham has another son. Ishmael was born to him and is alive, so the phrase is not counting children. It is naming the son through whom every promise in the preceding chapters was to run, and it makes the demand precise before it is made.
What the Book of Genesis then records is silence. Abraham does not argue. The man who bargained with God over Sodom, pressing the number down from fifty to ten, says nothing at all here. Instead there is a list of ordinary actions in the order they were done: rose up early, saddled, took, clave the wood, rose up, went. The wood is split before the journey starts, which means the fire was thought about at home.
Verse by verse
1. 22:1
  Tempt here is the Hebrew nissah, to test or prove, as metal is assayed. The Epistle of James later insists that God tempts no man, using a different Greek word for enticement.
2. 22:2
  Thine only son is covenantal rather than biological. Ishmael is alive, and the phrase marks Isaac as the son the promises depend on.
3. 22:3
  Abraham cleaves the wood before setting out, three days from the place. Nothing about the preparation is hurried or unconsidered.
Worth knowing
Moriah is named twice in the whole of Scripture, here and in 2 Chronicles 3:1. Genesis says only that it is a land with mountains in it, and does not say which mountain was used. The identification with the hill in Jerusalem comes from Chronicles, written centuries later, and everything else that is commonly assumed about the location rests on that one verse.
Genesis 22:1-3
King James Version · 3 verses
22:1And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
22:2And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
22:3And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.
02
Genesis 22:4-6
On the third day
He sees the place afar off and leaves the young men with the ass, saying we will come again to you. The wood is laid on Isaac.
Three days is the detail that makes this passage difficult in a way a single shocking morning would not be. Whatever Abraham resolved on the first day he had to hold for two more, through camp and cooking and sleep, with Isaac beside him the whole way.
Then a sentence that readers have argued over for as long as there have been readers. Abraham tells the young men to wait, and says I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. The verb is plural. He says both of them will return. The Epistle to the Hebrews takes this as faith in resurrection, accounting that God was able to raise him up. Others read it as a father saying what he must say to get two servants to stay behind. The Book of Genesis reports the words and declines to say which.
The wood that Abraham split at home is now laid on Isaac, and Abraham carries the fire and the knife, keeping both dangerous things in his own hands. Twice in these verses, and again in verse 8, the account says they went both of them together.
Verse by verse
1. 22:4
  Three days makes the obedience a sustained condition rather than a single impulse, and the account gives no word of what passed between them on the way.
2. 22:5
  Come again to you is plural in the Hebrew. Hebrews 11:19 reads it as confidence in resurrection; the passage itself does not explain it.
3. 22:6
  The son carries the wood and the father carries the fire and the knife. Early Christian readers from Melito of Sardis onward drew the parallel with another son carrying wood uphill.
Worth knowing
The phrase they went both of them together appears twice, in verse 6 and verse 8, framing the only conversation between father and son. Jewish commentators from the medieval period onward noticed the repetition and read the second occurrence as the weightier one, since it follows Isaac's question rather than preceding it. Nothing has changed in the words and everything has changed in what they now cost.
Genesis 22:4-6
King James Version · 3 verses
22:4Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
22:5And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
22:6And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
03
Genesis 22:7-8
Where is the lamb
The only conversation between father and son in the chapter is a question and an answer, and they went both of them together is repeated on either side of it.
These are the only words Isaac speaks in the chapter, and they are a question about a missing animal. He has counted the fire and the wood and found the list short. The Book of Genesis does not say what he suspected, and readers who supply his thoughts here are supplying them.
Abraham answers with hinneni, here am I, the same word he gave God in verse 1 and will give the angel in verse 11. He says it to God, to his son, and to heaven, and it is the only thing he says in the chapter more than once.
The answer itself is exactly ambiguous in Hebrew. God will provide himself a lamb reads elohim yireh lo ha-seh, and the lo can mean for himself or himself as. The King James keeps the ambiguity rather than resolving it. What arrives in verse 13 is a ram and not a lamb, so the answer is not a prediction that came true in its own terms. It is left standing as something said on a road, and the account moves on without remarking on it.
Verse by verse
1. 22:7
  My father and my son frame the exchange on both sides, so the relation is stated twice in a conversation about a sacrifice.
2. 22:8
  The Hebrew yireh lo can mean provide for himself or provide himself as. Translations have to choose and the original does not.
Worth knowing
Isaac speaks four times in the whole of Genesis, and this is the first. After this chapter the account gives him no recorded word to his father again, and the two are never shown together after they come down. When Abraham dies, Isaac and Ishmael bury him together, which is the next time the Book of Genesis puts Isaac in a scene with his father at all.
Genesis 22:7-8
King James Version · 2 verses
22:7And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
22:8And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
04
Genesis 22:9-14
A ram caught in a thicket by his horns
The voice calls his name twice and the hand stops. What is provided is behind him and was there before he looked.
Jewish tradition names this chapter for a single verb in verse 9. The Akedah, the binding, takes its title not from the knife or the mountain but from the moment Isaac is tied, which is the last thing done before the hand is raised and the only thing in the sequence that is undone by the angel.
The call from heaven doubles the name, Abraham, Abraham, as the voice at the bush would later double Moses and as the voice in the night would double Samuel. In each case the doubling stops something or starts something. Here it stops a hand already stretched out.
Now I know that thou fearest God has troubled readers who hold that God knew already. The Hebrew says what it says, and the older Jewish and Christian commentators mostly answered that the knowing is demonstrative rather than informational: what was internal has been made a matter of record. The text does not argue the point.
The ram is caught by its horns, which is the detail that makes the substitution possible; an animal running loose would not have stayed. Abraham names the place Jehovah-jireh, the LORD will see or provide, from the same root he used to answer Isaac on the road. The saying preserved after it turns the verb passive. In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.
Verse by verse
1. 22:9
  The binding gives the chapter its Jewish name, the Akedah, and it is the only action in the sequence the angel reverses.
2. 22:11
  The doubled name occurs at Sinai to Moses and at Shiloh to Samuel. In each case it interrupts.
3. 22:12
  Now I know is stated without qualification. Commentators have read it as knowledge demonstrated rather than acquired, but the verse does not say so.
4. 22:13
  A ram, not the lamb Abraham named. The substitution answers the need without matching the words.
5. 22:14
  Jehovah-jireh and the saying that follows use the same root, from seeing to providing to being seen.
Worth knowing
The received Hebrew text of verse 13 reads a ram behind him, achar, while a number of manuscripts and the Samaritan Pentateuch read echad, one ram, the two words differing by a single letter. Ancient versions split between them, and printed Hebrew Bibles still carry the variant in the margin. It is one of the oldest recorded disagreements about a single consonant in Scripture.
Genesis 22:9-14
King James Version · 6 verses
22:9And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
22:10And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
22:11And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
22:12And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
22:13And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
22:14And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.
05
2 Chronicles 3:1
In mount Moriah
Solomon builds the temple on the same named mountain, which puts every later sacrifice on that hill in line with this one.
This is the second and last time Moriah is named in Scripture, and it is doing something Genesis never did. The Book of 2 Chronicles places Solomon's temple in mount Moriah and in the same breath identifies the site with the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite, the piece of ground David bought at full price when the plague stopped.
Three separate occasions are being laid on one another: a binding, a plague halted, and a temple. Chronicles makes the identification in a single verse and offers no argument for it. The Book of Genesis says only the land of Moriah and one of the mountains, and never returns to the name.
What the verse establishes is the reason this place has a sheet at all. Without it, Moriah is a district mentioned once in a family narrative. With it, the hill where a substitute was provided becomes the hill where substitutes were provided daily for centuries, and the sentence preserved in Genesis 22:14 about what shall be seen in the mount of the LORD acquires an address.
Verse by verse
1. 3:1
  Ornan is the Chronicles spelling of the man 2 Samuel calls Araunah. The purchase of his threshingfloor is told in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21.
Worth knowing
Chronicles is the only book to place the temple on Moriah. Kings, which tells the same history at greater length, names the site as the threshingfloor bought from Araunah but never calls it Moriah. Samuel gives the purchase and not the name either. The connection that shapes how almost everyone reads Genesis 22 rests on this verse and no other.
2 Chronicles 3:1
King James Version · 1 verse
3:1Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the LORD appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.

Why it matters

The dialogue on the last stretch is four lines long and does all the work. My father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering. God will provide himself a lamb. Then the altar, the wood, the binding, the knife, and the voice out of heaven calling his name twice. The ram is caught in a thicket behind him, and he calls the name of that place Jehovahjireh, the LORD will see to it, and the text adds that it is said to this day, in the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.

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The music

Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.

Genesis 20:1-22:24
The LORD Will Provide
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Genesis 22:1-19
God Will Provide
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Mount Moriah

The Account of Mount Moriah

He rose up early in the morning

Verse by verse

Genesis 22:1-3

On the third day

Verse by verse

Genesis 22:4-6

Where is the lamb

Verse by verse

Genesis 22:7-8

A ram caught in a thicket by his horns

Verse by verse

Genesis 22:9-14

In mount Moriah

Verse by verse

2 Chronicles 3:1

Why it matters

The music

The LORD Will Provide

God Will Provide

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