Friday, January 7, 2022

Daniel E. Fleming on "The Mountain of God" only being Found If/When its Location is Divinely Revealed

  

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 apan (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)