Market-place
Any place of public resort, and hence a public place or broad street ( Matt. 11:16 ; 20:3 ), as well as a forum or market-place proper, where goods were exposed for sale, and where public assemblies and trials were held ( Acts 16:19 ; 17:17 ). This word occurs in the Old Testament only in Ezek. 27:13 . In early times markets were held at the gates of cities, where commodities were exposed for sale ( 2 Kings 7:18 ). In large towns the sale of particular articles seems to have been confined to certain streets, as we may infer from such expressions as “the bakers’ street” ( Jer. 37:21 ), and from the circumstance that in the time of Josephus the valley between Mounts Zion and Moriah was called the Tyropoeon or the “valley of the cheesemakers.”
Moriah
The chosen of Jehovah. Some contend that Mount Gerizim is meant, but most probably we are to regard this as one of the hills of Jerusalem. Here Solomon’s temple was built, on the spot that had been the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite ( 2 Sam. 24:24 , 25 ; 2 Chr. 3:1 ). It is usually included in Zion, to the north-east of which it lay, and from which it was separated by the Tyropoean valley. This was “the land of Moriah” to which Abraham went to offer up his son Isaac ( Gen. 22:2 ). It has been supposed that the highest point of the temple hill, which is now covered by the Mohammedan Kubbetes-Sakhrah, or “Dome of the Rock,” is the actual site of Araunah’s threshing-floor. Here also, one thousand years after Abraham, David built an altar and offered sacrifices to God. (See JERUSALEM ; NUMBERING THE PEOPLE .)