Charles Ellicott Commentary Genesis 22:14

"And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh. As it is said to this day, In the mount of Jehovah it shall be provided." — Genesis 22:14 (ASV)

Jehovah-jireh.—This means, Jehovah will provide. In Genesis 22:8, Abraham had said, “Elohim-jireh,” meaning God will provide. He now uses Jehovah as the equivalent of Elohim. It is also said that from this arose a proverb: “In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen,” or rather, In the mount of Jehovah it shall be provided. The verb literally means to see, or to see to a thing, and the sense of the proverb plainly is that in humanity’s necessity, God Himself will attend to it and provide necessary help and deliverance.

The Samaritan, Syriac, and Vulgate have a better reading, namely: “In the mount Jehovah will provide.” This reading makes no change in the consonants, which alone are authoritative, but only in the vowels. These vowels were added after the Christian era and represent the tradition of the Jewish school of Tiberias. The Septuagint, without changing the vowels, translates it as, “In the mount Jehovah shall be seen,” which would be a prophecy of the manifestation of Christ. The other two renderings, besides their general proverbial sense, also point forward to the provision on this very spot of the sacrifice that was to take away the sins of the world .

But when and how did this grow into a proverb? And who added this note? It may have been inserted by Moses when he arranged these marvellous documents; it is less probable that it was inserted by Ezra and the men of the Great Synagogue when they collected and revised the various books of Holy Scripture after the exile. In either case, the proverb serves as a national testimony to the genuineness of the record. It proves that the events recounted in it were so impressed upon the memory of Abraham’s descendants that they shaped their thoughts and language.