Bereshit 22:14 – Where in the world was the akedah?

Bereshit 22:14 records that Avraham called the place where the akedah occurred, "G-d sees," and the end of the verse records, "As the saying is today: On G-d's mountain, G-d will be seen.” The phrase "as the saying today" is problematic. When is "today?" It does not seem to be in Avraham's time since the verse is referring to what people say after the time of Avraham. Who was calling the place of the akedah, "G-d's mountain, where G-d will be seen?" Ibn Ezra (on 22:14) refers to his comments on Devarim 1:2, where he groups this verse among a series of difficult verses.

With regard to the word “today,” Radak (on 22:14) notes that the akedah is traditionally thought to have been the place where the Bet ha-Mikdash would be built, and he suggests that in the Bet ha-Mikdash the people would remember the events that happened there on this day, i.e. the akedah. With this explanation the word today does not relate to when the saying was said but is a prediction of what the people would say in the future.

Seforno (on 22:14) seems to explain that the phrase in 22:14 "as they say today" means that on the day of the giving (writing) of the Torah, the people will refer to the mountain where the akedah happened as the place where in the future G-d will be seen. He writes that this was actualized in the time of King David.

Hoffmann (1969, p. 351) writes that the word today also refers to the time of Moshe, but the phrase was not understood as referring to the future. The idea here is that the people in Moshe's time knew the story of the akedah and they referred to the mountain where it transpired, as the place where G-d would be seen. Yet, how could the Jewish people at the time of Moshe have known where the mountain was and talked about it, if the akedah was in Jerusalem, and they had never been to the land of Israel? Is the verse referring to non-Jews who knew the story of the akedah?

It seems to me that the verse is only difficult if we assume that the akedah was in Jerusalem on the spot where the Bet ha-Mikdash or the altar in the Bet haMikdash would be built. This is the traditional understanding (see Rambam, Laws of Bet haMechirah 2:1,2), but it is not recorded in the Torah. 22:2 records that G-d told Avraham to go to the land of Moriah, but in the Torah this place is not identified. Chronicles II, 3:1, writes that Shelomo built the Bet ha-Mikdash on Mount Moriah, but with this understanding 22:14 is problematic.

The simple explanation of 22:14 is that the akedah was on Mount Sinai. 22:14 refers to the mountain where the akedah took place as the mountain of G-d and Shemot 3:1, 18:5, 24:13 and Bemidbar 10:33 refer to Mount Sinai as the mountain of G-d. (This idea is stated by Rashi, mora le-ovdie kokhavim, and Tosafot, har sh-yatsah, on Talmud Bavli, Ta'anit 16a.) Furthermore, the phrase in 22:14, “G-d will be seen” occurred on Mount Sinai not just by the Decalogue, but also in the ceremony of establishing the covenant, where the people at the base of the mountain saw some image of G-d’s powers on the mountain top, Shemot 24:10,11, see our discussion of the verses, “The great vision by the ceremony to establish the covenant at Sinai.”

An additional (minor) proof is that it has been noted that there are numerous literary connections between the ceremony establishing the covenant at Mount Sinai after the Decalogue and the akedah (Friedman 2003, p. 252, and Grossman 1996). Some examples are: The word merachok in Shemot 24:1 and in Bereshit 22:4, the word shevu in Shemot 24:13 and Bereshit 22:5, and the ne'arim in Shemot 24:5 and in Bereshit 22:3,5,19. One could add some connections with the Decalogue itself: on the third day, Bereshit 22:4 and Shemot 19:16, and both events showed or were to lead to the fear of G-d, Bereshit 22:12 and Shemot 20:17.

Accordingly, when Moshe was writing the Torah (in Shemot 24:7?) in 22:14 he was noting that in his time the Jewish people would say about the place where the akedah occurred (Mount Sinai), that it was the mountain of G-d and that it was the place where G-d would be seen, as Moshe knew from Shemot 24:1,2 about the vision to be in Shemot 24:9-11.

With this idea, the akedah, the incident of the burning bush (see Shemot 3:1,12) and the Decalogue all took place in the same place, Mount Sinai.

Could the akedah have occurred at Mount Sinai? At the time of the akedah, Avraham was living in Be'er Sheva. Prior to the akedah, 21:34 records that Avraham lived in the land of Philistines and 22:19 records that after the akedah, Avraham returned to Be'er Sheva. Be'er Sheva is located in the northern section of the Negev. Avraham walked two full days from his home to get to the mountain where the akedah transpired, and on the third day (in the morning?) he saw the mountain where the akedah was to take place from afar, 22:4. In two days, Avraham, traveling by donkey, could have gone approximately 20 miles a day, plus a few more miles on the third day which means that Mount Sinai was/is around 40-50 miles from Be'er Sheva. This would allow Mount Sinai to be in the central, western Negev or the eastern part of the Sinai Desert, but not in the southern section of the Sinai Desert. 

Bibliography:

Friedman, Richard Elliott, 2003, Commentary on the Torah with a new English translation and the Hebrew text, New York: HarperSanFrancisco.

Grossman, Yonatan, 1996, "He saw the place from afar,' – The binding of Isaac as background for the covenant of the basins and other stories," Megadim, Vol. 25, pp. 79-90.