Mount Horeb #31

Mount Horeb is the “mountain of God” in the wilderness where Moses encountered the burning bush and where Israel later received the law. The name Horeb is used mainly in Deuteronomy, while Exodus and Numbers more often speak of Mount Sinai. Most readers understand the two names as referring to the same mountain, though some scholars have suggested that Horeb may be the wider region or ridge and Sinai the particular peak. The Bible itself does not state a location beyond the wilderness south of Canaan.

Biblical Significance

Moses comes to Horeb while tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, and there the angel of the Lord appears to him in a flame from a bush that burns without being consumed. God speaks from the bush, tells Moses to remove his sandals because the ground is holy, and commissions him to bring Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 3:1-6). Later in the wilderness the Lord tells Moses to strike the rock at Horeb so that the people may have water to drink (Exodus 17:5-6).

Deuteronomy uses Horeb as the place of covenant. Moses reminds the people of the day they stood before the Lord at Horeb, when the mountain burned with fire, the voice spoke out of the darkness, and they saw no form, only heard a voice. The Lord declared his covenant, the Ten Commandments, and wrote them on two tablets of stone (Deuteronomy 4:10-13; 5:2-5). Deuteronomy 1:2 adds that it is eleven days’ journey from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea by the way of Mount Seir.

The prophet Elijah also travels there. Fleeing Jezebel, he walks forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God, lodges in a cave, and receives the Lord’s word. The Lord is not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in a low whisper (1 Kings 19:8-13). The last words of the Old Testament tell Israel to remember the law of Moses, which God commanded at Horeb for all Israel (Malachi 4:4).

Today

The location of Horeb is uncertain, and its identification depends on the debate over Mount Sinai. A long Christian tradition, dating to at least the early centuries of the church, locates it at Jebel Musa, in the southern Sinai Peninsula, where Saint Catherine’s Monastery, founded in the sixth century under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, still stands at the foot of the mountain. Jebel Musa rises to about 7,500 feet.

Other proposals have been made, including sites elsewhere in the Sinai, in the Negev, and in northwestern Arabia, where Paul’s mention of Sinai as being in Arabia (Galatians 4:25) has prompted suggestions such as Jebel al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia. These alternatives have not won general scholarly acceptance, and no location has been confirmed by excavation. The Mount Sinai entry discusses the question at greater length.