The Mountain · The Symbolism of Scripture
The Mountain
Scripture puts its decisions on high ground — and Hebrews 12 sets two mountains side by side itself, clause against clause, so the comparison is the passage rather than a preacher’s idea. Then the picture grows: a mountain that fills the earth, with nations flowing uphill into it.
What It Stands For
the place of meeting, with a boundary round it
The Greek oros (G3735) is glossed as a mountain as lifting itself above the plain, and that is the working idea: ground that is nearer, visible from everywhere, and difficult to reach. Scripture keeps its decisive scenes there, and it keeps attaching a limit to them.
And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”A name that is a sentence, and the chapter has already used the same verb in verse 8.
Mount Sinai was completely enveloped in smoke, because the LORD had descended on it in fire. And the smoke rose like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.Sinai. Note what surrounds the scene in the verses either side: a boundary, and a warning about touching.
the Lord will see; he will always have his eyes upon his people in their straits
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, 1765Wesleyan
Genesis 22:14
No method was more admirably calculated to give the patriarch a distinct idea of the purpose of grace than this scenic representation: and hence our Lord's allusion to it (Joh 8:56).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Genesis 22:13-19
Two mountains later the boundary is the whole point. At Carmel there is no fence, but there is a contest, and Elijah lets the crowd deliver the verdict rather than delivering it himself.
When all the people saw this, they fell facedown and said, “The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!”The people fall and say it twice. The sentence is theirs, not the prophet's.
Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in His holy place?The question the symbol always raises: who is permitted up?
Two Mountains, Drawn by the Text
Hebrews 12:18-24, in the order the passage gives them
| “Ye are not come unto…” | “But ye are come unto…” |
|---|---|
| “The mount that might be touched”Hebrews 12:18 | “Mount Sion”Hebrews 12:22 |
| “That burned with fire”Hebrews 12:18 | “The city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem”Hebrews 12:22 |
| “Blackness, and darkness, and tempest”Hebrews 12:18 | “An innumerable company of angels”Hebrews 12:22 |
| “The sound of a trumpet”Hebrews 12:19 | “The general assembly and church of the firstborn”Hebrews 12:23 |
| “The voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more”Hebrews 12:19 | “God the Judge of all, and … the spirits of just men made perfect”Hebrews 12:23 |
| “If so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned”Hebrews 12:20 | “Jesus the mediator of the new covenant”Hebrews 12:24 |
| “Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake”Hebrews 12:21 | “The blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel”Hebrews 12:24 |
For you have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom, and storm;A mountain that could be touched, which is exactly what nobody was allowed to do.
Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angels'Ye ARE come', perfect tense. The arrival is presented as something already true of the readers.
For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched - I believe the words ψηλαφωμενῳ ορει should be translated to a palpable or material mountain
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Hebrews 12:18
Ye are not come to the mountain that could be touched - That was of an earthy, material nature.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 12:18
Clarke catches the irony in the Greek, and it is worth having: the mountain is called touchable, and the one thing Exodus 19 forbids is touching it. Chrysostom keeps the weather in view rather than allegorising it away:
Wonderful indeed were the things in the Temple, the Holy of Holies; and again awful were those things also that were done at Mount Sinai, "the fire, the darkness, the blackness, the tempest."
John Chrysostom· Homily 32 on Hebrews, 407Greek, fourth century
Hebrews 12:18-21
You did not draw near, but stood afar off; yet you have approached. Do you not see the superiority? Instead of Sinai, we have the spiritual mountain Zion and the spiritual city Jerusalem, that is, heaven itself, and not the wilderness, as they had.
Theophylact of Ohrid· Commentary on Hebrews, 1107Byzantine
Hebrews 12:22
The apostle does not here speak of their coming to the church militant, but of that glorious privilege of New Testament believers, their communion with the church triumphant.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 12:22
What this contrast is, and what it is notstated plainly, because the passage is often misused
Hebrews is contrasting two covenants and the access each gives, that is the argument of the whole letter, and chapter 12 is its last illustration. The left column is not a verdict on the Jewish people; it is a description of a day in Exodus 19 that Israel itself found terrifying, quoted back by a Jewish writer to Jewish readers.
MannaFest states this every time the contrast appears: replacement theology is rejected outright.God’s promises to Israel stand, and nothing in Hebrews 12 revokes them. That is treated at length on Why God Is Not Finished with Israel, and the same guard governs the readings of Isaiah 2 below.
The Mountain That Grows
Isaiah 2, Micah 4, Daniel 2, and a crowd going uphill
In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.'All nations shall flow unto it.' Flowing is what water does, and water does not do it uphill.
In the last days the mountain of the house of the LORD will be established as the chief of the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and the peoples will stream to it.Two prophets, nearly the same sentence. Which came first is disputed; that both have it is not.
The image has quietly changed job. This mountain is not somewhere a man climbs to meet God once; it is something established, raised above the other hills, and travelled toward by whole nations. That is a kingdom, and in Daniel the same picture is decoded out loud.
Then the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were shattered and became like chaff on the threshing floor in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that had struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.The stone becomes a mountain and fills the earth, and verse 44 says the stone is a kingdom God sets up.
The stone - became a great mountain - There is the kingdom אבן eben, of the stone, and the kingdom of the mountain.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Daniel 2:35
"His holy hill" is his holy church. It is that mountain which, according to Daniel's vision, grew from a very small stone till it overtook the kingdoms of the earth and grew to such a size that it "filled the face of the earth."
Augustine of Hippo· Expositions of the Psalms 43, 418Latin, fifth century
Daniel 2:35
Clarke’s distinction is a useful one to carry: there is a kingdom of the stone and a kingdom of the mountain, and the passage shows one becoming the other. Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem and Leander of Seville all read the grown mountain as the church, an old and widely held reading, and named here as a reading.
He calls the church a mountain when he says, "In the last days the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established."
Cyril of Jerusalem· Catechetical Lecture 21, 350Greek, fourth century
Isaiah 2:2
The mountain is Christ, and the house of the God of Jacob is his one church, toward which the concourse of nations and assembly of peoples is moving by this pronouncement.
Leander of Seville· Homily on the Triumph of the Church, 589Latin, sixth century
Isaiah 2:2
Isaiah 2 is addressed to Judah and Jerusalem and names Zion by name. Reading the mountain as Christ or as the church has never required, and on this site never means, that the promise to Israel has been transferred away from her. Both are held; the study of Israel carries the argument.
Where It Points
a high mountain apart, and who is standing on it
There He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light.Moses and Elijah, the man of Sinai and the man of Carmel, appear on a third mountain, and neither of them is the one who shines.
It is the neatest thing the symbol does. The two figures most associated with Israel’s mountains are standing on this one, and Peter’s instinct is to build three shelters — one apiece, as if the three belonged in a row. The voice out of the cloud names one of them, and when the disciples look up, they see no man, save Jesus only (Matthew 17:8). Matthew Henry writes about the difference between the mountains this way:
The state of the gospel church on mount Zion is more spiritual, rational, and easy. It was a dark dispensation. Upon that mount there were blackness and darkness, and that church-state was covered with dark shadows and types: the gospel state is much more clear and bright.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Hebrews 12:18
What Scripture says outright
- Hebrews 12:18-24
The comparison is the passage’s own, two lists, joined by “but ye are come”. Nothing has to be supplied.
- Daniel 2:44
Daniel states what the stone-become-mountain is: a kingdom God sets up which shall never be destroyed.
- Isaiah 2:3
The nations say why they are going up, in quoted speech: He will teach us of His ways.
What readers have heard in it
Readings, named as such.
- Isaiah 2:2
That the mountain is the church, or is Christ. Cyril of Jerusalem and Leander of Seville are quoted holding it; Isaiah names Zion and speaks to Judah and Jerusalem, and the promise to Israel is not transferred by the reading.
- Genesis 22:14
That Moriah is the hill of Calvary. 2 Chronicles 3:1 places the temple on Moriah; the identification with the crucifixion site is a later inference, not a statement of Scripture.
- Matthew 17:2
That the mount of transfiguration is Tabor, or Hermon. The Gospels say only “a high mountain apart”, and both identifications are traditions.
The Voices
with the work named
Adam Clarke is the most useful here twice over: he catches the Greek irony in “the mount that might be touched”, and he separates the kingdom of the stone from the kingdom of the mountain in Daniel 2. Chrysostom refuses to soften Sinai. Theophylact and Wesley both read Hebrews 12:22 as an arrival that has already happened. Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem and Leander of Seville supply the church-as-mountain reading in their own words, so a reader can see how old it is and judge it. Matthew Henry states the difference between the two dispensations in a sentence.
Where to Go Next
Where the mountain is the whole scene
Where the ground is holy
Where the picture goes on
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: