Their use in the Old Testament

The spiritual mountains and hills of the Old Testament are admittedly hard to differentiate, for it seems at times as though they both represent the same thing: i.e., the twelve tribes of Israel. To complicate things, the mountains can also be seen to represent the neighboring nations who copied Israel and offered sacrifices to their idols in the "high places." Also, Israel is not the only legitimate "mountain" found in the Old Testament; prophecies concerning the Grace-Age mountain (the New Testament Church) are there as well (Daniel 2:35).

Understanding their different applications

The key to understanding the difference between the "mountains" and the "hills" of Scripture is the difference between "faith and grace" and "law and works." When the Israelites walked in the faith of their father Abraham, they were known as mountains. When they reverted to legalism and tried to appease God by the works of the law, they were known as hills. Both mountains and hills rise above the earth so that they are easy to see, and thus was Israel always set apart so that men and women might see that the God that made them was concerned for man and was doing a work on his earth.

In our individual walk, we all will find mountains and hills, as well as valleys. Before we can get to the hills we have to walk through the valleys of testing. And before we can get to the mountaintops of faith—the peaks of healings, miracles, and secret places with God, we must climb the solid/stable hills of the law that support the mountains. (Remember, Jesus said that He had not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it. And Paul wrote the Romans that the righteous demands of the law are fulfilled in the believer who walks not after the flesh [after the dictates of the law], but after the Spirit.)