The Mountain
The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount
“Now seeing the crowds, he went up to the mountain and when he sat down, his disciples approached him” (Matthew 5:1).
In my previous post I looked at the larger audience of the sermon—the disciples were the smaller audience and I will take them up next. Today, though, I want to address the setting of the Sermon on the Mount, both its physical setting and its theological one.
He went up to the mountain
With Jesus working out of Capernaum, the thousands coming to him necessitated a place not in the town itself but in the countryside. There were times later on when Jesus would teach from a boat to those on the shore. In Luke he preaches a similar sermon on a “level place” after he had come down from a mountain where he was praying. Here in Matt 5:1, “he went up to the mountain.”
Where was this place? What was even considered a mountain?
A good portion of what is today Israel and Jordan is at least hilly and could be considered mountainous by eastern US standards. Only one mountain fits a moderate sized peak of the Rockies or Sierras and that is Mount Hermon, which towers to 9233 ft (2814m) and dominates the landscape of northern Israel. The rest are small by comparison. Mount Meron in upper Galilee and Avital Cone in the Golan are almost 4000 ft, and others around these two are close, but the mountains of lower Galilee, Mt Carmel and the Samaritan and Judean hill country run around 1000–3000 ft. Some large hills like Mount Tabor (1929 ft), Mount Gilboa (1627 ft), and Mount Carmel (1791 ft) are aptly named in their situation next to the Jezreel, Harod, and Kishon valleys, though the “hill (Heb. gb‘h; Gr. bounos)” of Moreh is comparable (1696 ft).
The Jordan rift from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea makes all of the elevation around it look mountainous (the fifteen or so miles from Jericho to the Mount of Olives ascends from -735 ft to 2660 ft and the towers on the Mount of Olives are visible most of the way). Mount Nemo directly to the east of Jerusalem across the Jordan valley is 2631 ft. but looks much higher since the Dead Sea is at least 1300 ft below sea level. The Temple Mount and Mount Zion in Jerusalem are actually lower than the hills around them (as one can plainly see when gazing down from the Mount of Olives).
For the Sea of Galilee right near Capernaum the closest thing to a mountain would be Arbel with its cliffs to the southwest and the Golan ridge along the entire eastern side with its steep rise .
Arbel Cliffs. 2. Looking east to Golan ridge across the Sea of Galilee from Arbel. 3. Looking west to Tiberius and the ridge above from eastern shore of Sea of Galilee.
The area to the north of Capernaum does go uphill fairly quickly, but a mountain? The traditional site of the Sermon (a church is located there today) is a rise just to the north of Capernaum, a hill from which Jesus could teach with the crowds spread below him.
Hardly a mountain, but a likely spot or some somewhere nearby.
Matthew does refer in other places to mountains: the devil took Jesus to “a very high mountain” (4:8); after the feeding of the 5000, Jesus went to “the mountain alone to pray” (14:23); in 15:29, Jesus “going up to the mountain, sat there” and people brought their sick for healing, prior to the 4000 being fed; Jesus took Peter, James, and John to “a high mountain” (17:1—traditionally Mt Tabor); Jesus was on and around the Mount of Olives during Passion Week; then finally the eleven disciples went to “the mountain” in Galilee Jesus had commanded them (28:16).
The grammar may suggest that the Mount of Beatitudes, the place of the 4000 fed, and the place he commanded the disciples to go were the same (and maybe Jesus’s prayer place, too). This place may not have been a mountain per se, but a hill perhaps referred to as “the mountain” above Capernaum that had a commanding view of the Sea of Galilee and was perfect for Jesus to carry out his teaching and healing ministry.
Today a beautiful church built in 1938 stands on the hill, and just down the hill are archaeological remains of 4th and 7th century churches, so the site has been commemorated for many centuries. Beyond this tradition, we simply do not know where “the mountain” was (and there are many different suggestions), but the tradition does make a lot of sense.
Mount of Beatitudes above Capernaum
But with a perfectly good word for “hill”—bounos—is there another reason Matthew might use “mountain?”
I’m glad you asked.
The mountain as theological marker
Many interpreters have noted the large five part structure of (the very Jewish) Matthew—with five large teaching blocks—that suggests Matthew may be comparing Jesus, the teacher of the new law, with Moses the giver of the old law. There is much to like about this view, and as such Jesus giving the “new law” on “the mountain” fits well with the Jewish focus of Matthew.
But is there something else besides Moses and the law going on here? In Matt 5:17, which we will take up in detail down the way, Jesus says, “don’t think that I came to abolish the law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” There are two components Jesus fulfills here, not just the law but the prophets. By ascending the mountain, Jesus not only invokes Moses, but perhaps Elijah the prophet who ascended Mount Carmel to do battle with the priests of Baal.
What leads me to this conclusion? Another “mountain” story in the middle of Matthew has both Moses and Elijah as participants.
Matthew 17:1–3 reads:
And after six days, Jesus takes Peter and James and John his brother and leads them up to a high mountain with no one else (kat’ idian) and he was changed before them and his face shone like the sun; further, his clothes became white as the light and look! there appeared with them Moses and Elijah talking together with him.
Jesus is connected to Elijah a number of times and when Jesus asks the disciples whom people say he is, they give Elijah as one of the identifications (Matt 16:14). Of course, Jesus himself connects the person of Elijah to John the Baptist as the “forerunner” of Micah 3:22, but Jesus himself as miracle-worker and as speaker of truth to power is closely aligned with the prophetic character of Elijah. And Jesus not only takes on the mantle of prophet (Matt 13:57), but is feared by the leaders because of his esteem by the people as a prophet (Matt 21:11, 46). Finally, Jesus made his way to Jerusalem with the expectation that he would be put to death like the prophets before him (Matt 23:29–39).
Thus when Jesus, speaking the Sermon from the mountain, says he fulfills the law and the prophets, Matthew’s specific use of location may clue the reader to two great leaders of the past instead of just one.
The Great Commission
The final mention of “the mountain” in Matthew is post-resurrection. Jesus had commanded his disciples to go to “the mountain” in Galilee. Was this the same location as the Sermon? When we examine the so-called “Great Commission” in Matt 28:19-20, we may have reason to make a connection.
As you go, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all I commanded you, and look! I am with you all the days until the end of the age.
Here on “the mountain” Jesus’s words connect directly back to the Sermon on the Mount: the disciples of 5:1 are to “disciple the nations … teaching what I commanded you.” On the same mountain Jesus gave the Sermon, he now commands his followers to teach those words to the nations.
Observations on the Greek text
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“… he went up to the mountain” (Matt 5:1b)
ἀνέβη εἰς τὸ ὄρος
Once again, for such a short phrase a number of observations present themselves. Following the introductory participial phrase (“Now seeing the crowds”) Matthew records ἀνέβη, the first of the two main verbs—the second is προσῆλθαν— which are joined by καί.
Ἀνέβη (aorist active indicative, 3rd person singular) is in the normal tense for narratives, aorist, to state the action as simple past fact. The verb is in its normal first position in the clause. By the way, ἀνέβη comes from the verb ἀναβαίνω with the interesting root -βα/βη, “go,” that combines with many prepositions to give direction; here with ανα, thus “to go up” or “ascend.” Though βαίνω is fairly common as the stand-alone verb in Greek texts, in the NT it only occurs in compounds with prepositions.
More interesting to me is the lack of a nominative subject. The implied subject is “he,” pointing all the way back to 4:17, the verse Jesus is actually named. From 4:18 to here, “he” and “him” is implied as referring to Jesus. So once again, the Sermon is simply the teaching component added to Jesus’s preaching and healing narrated directly before.
Like various forms of ἔρχομαι, ἀναβαίνω is intransitive; it does not (cannot) take a direct object. The subject cannot transfer “go” to an object. Instead, a directional prepositional phrase is the norm, as we see here: εἰς τὸ ὄρος “to the mountain.”
What is strange about this phrase is the presence of the article τό. Often, maybe normally, nouns following a preposition lack the article even though they are definite from context. The actual presence of the article needs explanation, then. This one is hard to explain, because there is no previous mountain in the context (remember the “anaphoric” article in front of “crowds” points back to the previous verse).
Why this article? I think we can detect here the “well-known” use of the article. Matthew refers to a “mountain” that was well-known as the place Jesus went to preach and to heal (and maybe to pray), and ultimately to give his final commission to the disciples. While we cannot be sure of the place Matthew refers to today, his readers knew of it; it was “the mountain.”
An Invitation
Are you interested in learning New Testament Greek? I will be teaching an intensive course with 50 hours of live instruction via Zoom from June to August. Please contact me at jack.painter@gmail.com or go to https://www.rightonmission.org/intro-to-new-testament-greek for more information. I would love to have you!