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For he supposed God’s threatening might be conditional and reversible, as many others were.
That goodly mountain, or, that blessed mountain, which the Jews not improbably understand of that mountain on which the temple was to be built. For as Moses desired and determined to prepare an habitation for God, Exo_15:2, and knew very well that God would choose a certain place for his habitation, and to put his name there, Deu_12:5; so he also knew that it was the manner both of the true worshippers of God and of idolaters to worship their God in high places, and particularly that Abraham did worship God in the mount of Moriah, Gen_22:2, and therefore did either reasonably conjecture that God would choose some certain mountain for the place of his habitation, or possibly understood by revelation that in that very mount of Moriah, where Abraham performed that eminent and glorious act of worship, there also the children of Abraham should have their place of constant and settled worship. This he seems to call that mountain, emphatically and eminently, that which was much in Moses’s thoughts, though not in his eye, and the blessed (as the Hebrew tob oft signifies) or the goodly mountain. Or, the mountain may be here put for the mountainous countries, as that word is oft used, as Gen_36:9 Num_13:29 23:7 Deu_1:7 Jos_10:6 11:16,21, &c. And it is known that a great part of the glory and beauty and profit of this country lay in its hills or mountains. See Deu_11:11 33:15. And
that goodly mountain may by an enallage of the number be put for those goodly mountains in Canaan, which were many. Thus also he proceeds gradually in this desire and description, and prays that he may see in general the good land that is beyond Jordan, and then particularly the goodly mountains of it, and especially that famous mount of Lebanon, which was so celebrated for its tall and large cedars, and other trees and excellent plants. See Psa_29:5 104:16 Isa_2:13 14:8.