Why look ye enviously, ye high-peaked mountains,

At the mountain which God hath desired for his abode?

Yea, Jehovah will dwell in it for ever.

The grander mountains of Bashan, not Hermon only, but the rugged basaltic mountains which rise in precipitous peaks, suggesting ideas of majesty, antiquity, impregnability, are represented as looking enviously upon the insignificant mountain of Zion which God has chosen for His earthly dwelling-place. Sinai had been his temporary abode (Exodus 24:16); on Zion He will dwell for ever. Cp. 1 Kings 8:12-13. The choice of Zion is a parable of the method of God's dealings with men. Cp. 1 Corinthians 1:26-29.

The A.V. why leap yecomes from the Targ., and assumes that the root rtsd, occurring here only, is synonymous with rqd, used in a similar apostrophe, Psalms 114:4; Psalms 114:6. But it is certainly to be explained from the meaning of the same root in Arabic.

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