Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MORIAH

(Heb. mōrîyâ)

1. The “land of Moriah,” the place where God commanded Abraham to take his son Isaac and sacrifice him (Gen. 22:2). The narrative describes this as a three-day journey from Beer-sheba (Gen. 22:4). However, “the third day” may simply be a conventional way of indicating a short distance and hence is of little help in establishing Moriah’s location. In Jewish tradition the story of the sacrifice of Isaac at Moriah is referred to as the Aqedah, the “binding” of Isaac.

2. Mt. Moriah, the site in Jerusalem where Solomon built the temple (2 Chr. 3:1). The same verse identifies the site also as the place “where the Lord had appeared to his father David,” who had been asked to build an altar there, on the threshing floor of Araunah/Ornan the Jebusite (cf. 2 Chr. 3:1; 2 Sam. 24:18). Today, Mt. Moriah, the temple plateau, is the site of two Muslim shrines, the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. A section of the western side of the retaining wall of the temple mount is the Wailing Wall, a Jewish site of prayer.

These two places are clearly not identical. A possible explanation is that Moriah originally referred to the temple mount, and that the term replaced the original name for the site in Gen. 22, , thus linking Abraham with the Jerusalem temple.

John L. Gillman

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MORIAH

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)