Hills

The hills appear in two poetic passages as figures of antiquity — landmarks old enough to measure the depth of a blessing or the weight of a divine appearance. Both texts attach the same adjective: everlasting.

The Everlasting Hills as a Measure of Blessing

In Jacob's blessing of Joseph, the elder draws a comparison between his own blessing and the inheritance of his fathers, reaching for the oldest landmark he can name: "The blessings of your father Have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors To the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: They will be on the head of Joseph, And on the top of the head of him who was separate from his brothers" (Gen 49:26). The hills set the upper limit — the blessing reaches as far back as the most ancient features of the land.

The Everlasting Hills Bowing in Theophany

Habakkuk's vision of God's coming reverses the picture. The same antiquity that elsewhere measures a blessing now buckles before the speaker: "[His Speech] stood, and measured the earth; He looked, and drove apart the nations; And the eternal mountains were scattered; The everlasting hills bowed down; His goings were [as] of old" (Hab 3:6). The "everlasting hills" remain everlasting — but they bow. The point of the verse is exactly the contrast: features old enough to be called perpetual collapse before the goings of one whose ways are themselves of old.