Where was this mountain in the land of Moriah whereon the altar of Abraham was built?  It would seem from a passage in the Second Book of Chronicles (iii. 1) that it was the future temple-mount at Jerusalem.  The words of Genesis also point in the same direction.  Abraham, we read, “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.”  It is hard to believe that “the mount of the Lord” can mean anything else than that har-el or “mountain of God” whereon Ezekiel places the temple, or that the proverb can refer to a less holy spot than that where the Lord appeared enthroned upon the cherubim above the mercy-seat.  It is doubtful, however, whether the reading of the Hebrew text in either passage is correct.  According to the Septuagint the proverb quoted in Genesis should run:  “In the mountain is the Lord seen,” and the same authority changes the “Moriah” of the Book of Chronicles into Amor-eia, “of the Amorites.”

It is true that the distance of Jerusalem from Beer-sheba would agree well with the three days’ journey of Abraham.  But it is difficult to reconcile the description of the scene of Abraham’s sacrifice with the future temple-mount.  Where Isaac was bound to the altar was a solitary spot, the patriarch and his son were alone there, and it was overgrown with brushwood so thickly that a ram had been caught in it by his horns.  The temple-mount, on the contrary, was either within the walls of a city or just outside them, and the city was already a capital famous for its worship of “the most High God.”  Had the Moriah of Jerusalem really been the site of Abraham’s altar it is strange that no allusion is made to the fact by the writers of the Old Testament, or that tradition should have been silent on the matter.  We must be content with the knowledge that it was to one of the mountains “in the land of Moriah” that Abraham was led, and that “Moriah” was a “land,” not a single mountain-peak. (We should not forget that the Septuagint reads “the highlands,” that is, Moreh instead of Moriah, while the Syriac version boldly changes the word into the name of the “Amorites.”  For arguments on the other side, see p. 79.)

Abraham returned to Beer-sheba, and from thence went to Hebron, where Sarah died.  Hebron—­or Kirjath-Arba as it was then called—­was occupied by a Hittite tribe, in contradistinction to the country round about it, which was in the possession of the Amorites.  As at Jerusalem, or at Kadesh on the Orontes, the Hittites had intruded into Amoritish territory and established themselves in the fortress-town.  But while the Hittite city was known as Kirjath-Arba, “the city of Arba,” the Amoritish district was named Mamre:  the union of Kirjath-Arba and Mamre created the Hebron of a later day.