Both the old poetry and the prose
Midian-Moses narrative share the notion that Yahweh circulated and had some
kind of residence in the southern wilderness in the region south of Israel and
Palestine. Even if Exod 3:1-4:18 is a secondary text that adds Yahweh’s name
play to an older Moses story, the marriage to a Midianite appears intended to
bring Moses into the desert, where he and Israel will encounter Yahweh on the
god’s own terrain at the “mountain of God,” in an unknown location.
The mountain of God may be
envisioned as a divine residence like Mount ṣapan
(Zaphon) or Mount Olympus, but unlike those sacred heights, it is not visible
for the worshiping people and is impossibly remote and mysterious, effectively
inaccessible. In Exodus 3, Moses finds the mountain only by accident, and
Reuel/Jethro seems to have no idea of its existence. In Exodus 18, Jethro only
finds Moses at the mountain because he is already there with all the people—and
the mountain itself is not a focus of the ensuing feast. The only other
biblical figure to visit the site is Elijah, who travels for forty days on the
strength of a single meal provided by the angel of Yahweh (1 Kgs 19:5-8),
without landmarks, so that he can only go there by divine appointment. It appears
that the mountain of God can only be found if revealed and intended. Seir,
Edom, Mount Paran, and Teman are all regional associations for the movement of
Yahweh from this mysterious residence, not providing a location for the actual
site of the god’s point of departure. (Daniel E. Fleming, Yahweh Before
Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2021], 160-61)
