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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Moriah
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; . (See JEHOVAH JIREH; GERIZIM.) What Jehovah has made one see (this hophal mowreh occurs four times in the Pentateuch, nowhere in later books) "the vision of Jehovah". In the same neighborhood He vouchsafed a vision to Abram (Genesis 14; ) after Melchizedek had met him in the valley near Salem and Abram paid tithe of the spoils of Chedorlaomer. Afterward on Moriah he offered Isaac (; ). Abraham saw Moriah at some little distance () on the third day; the distance, two days' journey from Beersheba, would just bring him to Zion, but not so far as Moreh and Gerizim () where some fix Moriah.
"The mount of the Lord" () means almost always Mount Zion. The proverb "in the Mount of Jehovah it (or He) shall be seen" probably originated in Jerusalem under Melchizedek. Jehovah's vision to David in the same spot, before the preparation for building the temple there, revived the name Moriah (; -25.) The threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite was the spot on which David reared an altar by Gad's direction from Jehovah. The Angel of Jehovah had stood by Araunah's threshing floor; there David saw Him, and Araunah (Ornan) also, subsequently on turning back, saw Him and hid himself. Then Ornan saw David, and made over to him the threshing floor (-16; -26).
Jehovah testified His acceptance of David's sacrifice there by sending down fire to consume it (; ; ; ). So thenceforth David sacrificed there, and no longer on the altar at Gibeon where the tabernacle was, separate from the ark, which was at Zion; for he could not go to Gibeon on account of the sword of the Angel, i.e. the pestilence. God's answer to his sacrifice at this altar of the threshing floor, and God's removal of the plague, determined David's choice of it as the site of the temple (; ; ; , etc.). It lay, like all threshing floors, outside the city, upon Mount Moriah, N.E. of Zion. Evidently the threshing floor on Moriah was near the real Mount Zion, the city of David (on the eastern not the western half of Jerusalem).