MORIAH. The name occurs twice in O. T. (Gen. xxii. 2 ; 2 Chron. iii. r). In the first place it is given to the land,' to the Vlace' of the sacri fice of Isaac ; in the second, to the mountain' on which the temple of Solomon was built. Jewish tradition and ordinary Christian interpretation have identified these two sites. The force of the He brew tradition is impaired by the mythic addition, that here also Abel offered his first sacrifice, and Noah his thank-offering (see Munsterus, Fagius, and Grotius, in loco).
Before considering the geographical and other difficulties in the way of this identification, it is desirable to investigate the derivation of the word irb. Various etymologies supplied by Jews all proceed on the supposition of the identity of the Moriah of Genesis with that on which the temple was built. The oldest, that of Onkelos and Gerun densis, was that it was derived from -nn, myrrh, as in Canticles iv. 6, I will go to the mountain of myrrh.' Fuller, in Misc. Sacra, ii. 15, maintains that the ninn of Canticles was an abbreviation of and referred to the holy mount where the .
great king had just erected his temple. Rabbi Solomon supposes it derived from rirrn, instruc tion, because thence the word of the Lord went forth into all Israel. Kalisch (Comment. on Genesis, xxii. 2) approaches this interpretation by saying that it springs in probability from ` Je hovah is my instructor,' from the root of the great derivative 77:111. Jonathan derives it from ruin, fear or reverence, and imagines that the word was used anticipatory of the worship and fear of God there solemnized (Lightfoot, Opera, Descriptio Templi, vol. i. 553). Fuller (Misc. Sacra, ii. 15) maintains that the word represents an abbreviation of rirritron, conspicietur yehovah, because there eventually the Son of God would appear in human flesh. Knobel insists that it is a compound of a pual form of to see, and PP ; and Hengstenberg (Dissertations on Gen. of Pentateuch, ii. x59-163, Clark's trans.), Kurtz (Old Covenant, i. 272), Gesenius (Thesaurus, p. 819), Furst (Lex.), all agree as to the presence in the word of the elements of the name of Jehovah. Vatke, Vater, Van Bohlen, the early opponents of the genuineness of the Pentateuch, even based a portion of their antagonism on this proof of a later date. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch and 7oslzua, etc., pt. ii. ch. ix. x.) labours to demolish the ety
mology, but without much success. The exist ence of a proper name Aforiah would be a proof of the existence of the name and worship of Jehovah before some of the modem documentists would find it at all satisfactory. Hengstenberg states that the word r:lniPri is a compound of the Hophal participle of 1h1, to see ; and means that which is shown, or, the appearance of Yekovah. Colenso objects to the sense of the in terpretation, and maintains that there is no expla nation of the disappearance of the characteristic radical N. Gesenius accounts for the form r:Inb, by combination of the Hophal participle of rain, and the jod-compaginis common in derivatives from verbs of the form of "n9. Thus NilD, com bined with PP, would suffer the following change, Pi+-+N-;*=rnb. There is another proper name • :7 • derivable from the same root, which has lost its characteristic radical s—viz., nr, from beautiful to look upon (Ruth). But whatever may be the precise nature of the contraction, the obvious interpretation of the writer is given in ver.
ham to the place where Jehovah saw his agony and provided a victim in place of his son. Here it was that the proverb was originated, In the mountain Jehovah shall be seen.' sWorial was the name permanently attaching itself to the place, just as .4 been the abbreviation of Eve's exclama tion Ii IITTp ; and it was used by the narrator years afterwards, to describe a district, a land, a mountain which had always gone by that name ever since the proverb had been first uttered, amid the very circumstances he was then proceeding to describe. It would be presumptuous to assert to what extent the knowledge and worship of Jehovah was diffused, on the ground of the mere presence of the name Jehovah in this proper name ; still there is nothing to shake the conclusion. It is curi ous that the LXX. translate the by eis rip 74P 61,//nX9lv ; and they also render by some similar expression the various references to the oak or plains of MoREH, near Sichcm (Gen. xii. 6), where Hebrew text has min the LXX. reads rip Spay rrlv 6.0)Xip (see also Dent. xi. 30). The translation of Aquila in Gen. xxii. 2, is EiS 'Hy Karacbavij ; and Symmachus has els Tip 79s OrTacrias, closely resembling the in terrain visionis of the Vulgate.