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What is its characteristic? — it shall be called..."the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain." Mountains make towns; mountains support hotels. Did not some simpleton say, What a curious thing it is that rivers always come near towns? Some men do speak upside down; they are not wholly to be blamed, every man has not every gift: but the fact is just the contrary, it is the town that goes near the river. The Thames never came near London, but London built itself on the banks of the Thames. And why did the Thames become so very important? Because it is so very clean? I will leave that to the popular judgment. But because the Thames is a fine high road to the sea, and the sea beats upon the farthest shores, offers a still broader highway for the transit of the commerce of the world. As with rivers, so with mountains. Men get as near some mountains as they can. They have not yet built upon the top of the Matterhorn, but they would if they could. I am not aware that there is a hostelry upon the summit of Mont Blanc, but I have no doubt there are men who would put a hostelry there tomorrow if they had the ability to do so. From some mountains you must build at a certain distance. They do not permit familiarities. Sometimes we have to calculate the quality and read the history of a mountain before we build near it. Vesuvius must be calculated with, must be consulted; because Vesuvius is a mountain of proverbially fitful temper, and when Vesuvius does speak we do not want to be present. But there are mountains in the Bible that men would live upon; they are green to the very top, their summits are paradises, if not in the poor, narrow, horticultural sense, yet in some ideal sense of uplifting, as if they would bring us nearer heaven than any other mountains ever brought us. What shall be said of Lebanon and Tabor and Hermon? What shall be said of hills shaggy, with forests, strong with rocks, rich with honey, garnished and carpeted with choicest flowers? When the pilgrim asks his way to the city of truth, the guide will point him to the mountain and say, The city nestles under yonder hill, and that hill is a benediction, a defence, and a stairway to loftier elevations still There are some men who do not see mountains, who do not care for mountains, who cannot interpret mountains, and who consequently prefer what they call tablelands; they like to see a great stretch of sky. Other men could not live without high hills, they say the air gets purified somehow by circulating round these great elevations; besides, they love to climb. Man is surely a climber by nature. What is that singular instinct in him which leads him to look up? When did the ox look up? When did the beasts of the field count the stars of twilight as they leaped within the vision of man? Surely it belongs to man, singularly, to look up, in the fullest sense of the term, significantly, devoutly, wonderingly, and hopefully. Sometimes it comes into us that we must have wings, faculties we have not yet discovered, and if we could but discover them we should flee to some prenatal clime, to some other birthplace, to some long ago and forsaken home. There are other men who cannot be satisfied until they have put down in memorandum books the names of the mountains they have seen. Who gave the mountains these names? The mountains do not know them; the mountains are not dogs to be called by names. Others want to see the mountains as they stood before man was made. Thus we have a variety of nature to deal within the prosaic, the poetical, the hermitage-loving spirit that yearns for solitude and boundlessness and the eloquence of silence; and the other nature that pines for the city, the gaslighted thoroughfare, the rattle and the tumult of public life. When the spirit of the living God comes into us we shall all love mountains, we shall say with the poet, "God made the country, and man made the town," and in that time of spiritual uplifting, when all our faculties are aglow with Divine fire, mountains will be ways to heaven, and all things growing upon their verdurous sides shall be hints and tokens of the eternal paradise. Religion always works this mystery in a man's nature; it elevates his taste, it dignifies his imagination, it gives nerve and pith to every faculty he has. No man can be a Christian in reality and remain a little narrow-minded creature. No small mind, in the sense of a mind that loves smallness, can ever love Christ. Every Christian is a great man. We may of course have to redefine the term "great," and have to make many who are first last, and many who are last first, but if elevation of thought, purity of desire, radiance of hope, dawning immortality, and all the moral inspiration belonging to it — if these enter into greatness, then no man ever called Jesus "Lord" without entering into the possession and the enjoyment of that blessed inheritance.

(Joseph Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: Again the word of the LORD of hosts came to me, saying,

WEB: The word of Yahweh of Armies came to me.