les (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 for