Genesis 22:14 Meaning and Explanation
“And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Few sentences in Genesis carry as much freight as a place name. Abraham has just come down from the hardest walk of his life, and instead of describing his feelings he fixes a word to the ground. Readers who wonder what faith actually produces can watch it here: a testimony pressed into geography, durable enough that later generations still repeated the saying.
Abraham names the mountain for what God did there: Jehovahjireh, the LORD will see and provide. The name became a saying in Israel, remembering that provision arrived at the place of obedience.
The Context of Genesis 22:14
The chapter opens with God testing Abraham and calling him to take Isaac into the land of Moriah for a burnt offering. Abraham rises early, travels three days, lays the wood on Isaac, and answers his son's question about the lamb by saying God will provide himself a lamb. At the altar the angel of the LORD halts his hand, and a ram appears caught in a thicket by his horns. Verse 14 follows immediately: Abraham names the site, and the narrator adds that the saying was still current when Genesis was written. The oath of blessing in verses 16 through 18 comes next.
What Does Genesis 22:14 Mean?
The naming is deliberate. Abraham had told Isaac that God would provide himself a lamb, using a Hebrew verb that means to see; now he takes that same word and makes it the name of the place. Jehovahjireh gathers the whole ordeal into one phrase about God's seeing. The second half of the verse shifts from Abraham's act to Israel's speech: 'as it is said to this day.' Someone kept repeating the line long after the altar stones were cold. The saying itself, 'In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen,' keeps the passive voice open, so the sentence can hold both what God sees and what God lets be seen.
Within the chapter, verse 14 is the hinge between the test and the oath. Everything before it moves toward an altar; everything after it moves outward toward the nations, since the LORD swears to multiply Abraham's seed and to bless all the nations of the earth through him. The name Abraham gives becomes the interpretive key to what just happened, since the substitute ram was already on the mountain before Abraham arrived. Moriah reappears in Israel's memory as the hill where Solomon later built the house of the LORD, according to 2 Chronicles 3:1, so the phrase about the mount of the LORD kept gathering meaning as worship gathered there.
Christian readers have long lingered here, and the chapter earns the attention. A father and an only son walk together toward a mountain; the son carries the wood; the father speaks of a lamb God will provide; and on the third day the place comes into view. John the Baptist would later point to Jesus with the words 'Behold the Lamb of God,' and Paul writes in Romans 8:32 of a Father who spared not his own Son. Genesis leaves Isaac alive and a ram in his place, so the pattern here remains a foreshadowing. The name on the mountain still stands over the whole story: provision was seen where obedience went.
Genesis 22:14 in the Original Language
yir'eh (יִרְאֶה), 'Jehovahjireh' -- the second element of the name is a form of the verb ra'ah, to see. Hebrew can use seeing for providing in the sense of seeing to a need, which is why Abraham's earlier promise that God would provide and this name share one root.
Bible Verses Related to Genesis 22:14
“And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.”
- Genesis 22:8
“Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where the Lord appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.”
- 2 Chronicles 3:1
“By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,”
- Hebrews 11:17
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
- Romans 8:32
Where Genesis 22:14 Echoes in Scripture
Hebrews 11:19 returns to this mountain and reports what Abraham was reckoning as he climbed: that God was able to raise Isaac up, even from the dead. That verse reads Abraham's confidence in Genesis 22:5, where he tells the young men that he and the lad will come again. Genesis gives the name; Hebrews gives the reasoning behind it. Together they show a trust that expected God to be present at the far end of obedience.
How to Apply Genesis 22:14 Today
Naming what God has done is a practice worth keeping. Abraham could have walked home in silence; he left a word behind so that others could find the story. We can do something similar with far smaller mountains: writing a date in a margin, telling a friend how a provision arrived, marking the anniversary of a mercy. Memory fades faster than we expect, and gratitude that stays unspoken tends to evaporate. When the next hard climb comes, a named place from an earlier one gives us something specific to stand on while we wait for God to be seen again.
Reflection & Prayer
What would we name the last place where God met us, and who has ever heard about it? Sit with one such memory before asking anything new. Prayer: Lord, you saw Abraham on the mountain and you see me here. Teach me to remember your provisions by name, to speak of them without embarrassment, and to walk toward the next hard thing trusting that you have already gone ahead. Amen.