The Mountain God?

I will raise my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come?  Psalm 121:1 NASB

From where – Does David really think God’s help will come from the mountains?  Is he just another version of the pagan idea of territorial gods, or the Canaanite religion of the mountain god, El?  Surely not!  David isn’t asking if God will come down from the mountains.  He is suggesting an idea, not a place.  We understand that because we now live in a world where God is almost universally acknowledged as a celestial, non-spatial, sovereign being.  He doesn’t resideanywhere.  Even “heaven” isn’t really a location where God lives.  But, of course, that wasn’t a common concept in the 10^th Century B.C.E.

Why does this matter since we clearly understand that David isn’t looking for God to arrive from the hills?  It matters because there are two other important places where the same Hebrew word  (ʾayin) is used.  One of those is in Joshua 2:4.

וַתִּקַּח הָאִשָּׁה אֶת-שְׁנֵי הָאֲנָשִׁים וַתִּצְפְּנוֹ וַתֹּאמֶר כֵּן בָּאוּ אֵלַי הָאֲנָשִׁים וְלֹא יָדַעְתִּי מֵאַיִן הֵמָּה

“But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them, and she said, “Yes, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from.”

In this case, Rahab is not replying that she doesn’t know the spies’ former location (their geographical point of departure).  For that she would use the Hebrew ʾêpōh, not ʾayin.  Rather, she is implying that she has no idea about them at all.  She doesn’t know their identity.  This is particularly odd because of another construction in this verse.  The verse doesn’t say that she hid them.  It says that she hid him (a singular וַתִּצְפְּנוֹ).  What does this mean; that she hid only one of the two?  That seems unlikely.  Does it mean that one needed to be hidden but the other didn’t?  Or does it mean that one hid himself and she hid the other?  Or (and this is particularly interesting) does it mean, as some rabbis suggest, that one was an angel and didn’t need to be hidden because the others couldn’t see him?  If this is the case, then she surely does not know anything about these men.  Something strange is happening here.  Rahab only suggests that she is unable to say anything about their identity, not their place of origin.  Our English translation, using the same word “where” for both Hebrew terms, disguises this difference.

The proper use of ʾêpōh as a concept of location is found in verses like Genesis 37:16.

“He said, ‘I am looking for my brothers; please tell me where they are pasturing the flock’” (Genesis 37:16).

Here the question is clearly geographical.  Joseph is looking for the location of his brothers.  But in Genesis 3:9 the question also is not geographical.  It’s rhetorical.

Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

We might mistakenly think that God is asking the location of Adam, but He isn’t.  He’s asking why Adam is not beside Him.  The Hebrew text uses ʾay, not ʾêpōh.  And here in the account of Rahab, where we would expect ʾêpōh we have ʾayin.  There is more to this story than we read in English.

Topical Index:  ʾayin, ʾêpōh, where, Joshua 2:4, Genesis 37:16, Genesis 3:9, Psalm 121:1