Genesis 13:18 - Exposition

Then —literally, and, acting immediately as the heavenly voice directed— Abram removed —or rather pitched (cf. Genesis 13:12 )—his tent, and dwelt —settled down, made the central point of his subsequent abode in Canaan (Wordsworth)— in the plain — בְּאֵלֹנֵי = oaks (Gesenius) or terebinths Celsins); vide Genesis 12:6 — of Mamre —an Amorite chieftain who afterwards became the friend and ally of Abram ( Genesis 14:13 , Genesis 14:24 ), and to whom probably the grove belonged— which is in Hebron —twenty-two miles south of Jerusalem on the way to Beersheba, a town of great antiquity, having been built seven years before Zoan, in Egypt ( Numbers 13:22 ). As it is elsewhere styled Kirjath-arba, or the city of Arba ( Genesis 23:2 ; Genesis 35:27 ), and appears to have been so called until the conquest ( Joshua 14:15 ), the occurrence of the name Hebron is regarded as a trace of post-Mosaic authorship (Clericus, et alii ); but it is more probable that Hebron was the original name of the city, and that it received the appellation Kirjath-arba on the arrival in the country of Arba the Anakite, perhaps during the sojourn of Jacob's descendants in Egypt (Rosenmüller, Bantugarten, Hengstenberg, Keil, Kurtz). The place is called by modern Arabs El Khalil, the friend of God. And built there an altar unto the Lord.