the Fourth Week of Advent
Click here to join the effort!
Bible Dictionaries
Mamre
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or An ancient Amorite. Genesis 13:18, "the plain (rather the oaks or terebinths) of Mamre"; Genesis 14:13; Genesis 14:24, brother of Eshcol, friend and ally of Abraham. The chieftain had planted the terebinths, or was associated with them as his tenting place; so "the oak of Deborah" (Judges 4:5). Mamre was less than a mile from Hebron (Josephus, B. J. 4:9, section 7); but Robinson makes it two Roman miles off, now the hill er Rameh.
Constantine, to suppress the superstitions veneration to the terebinths, erected a basilica or church on the spot. That it was on an elevation appears from the record that Machpelah faces it (Genesis 23:17-19; Genesis 25:9). Abram resided under the oak grove shade in the interval between his stay at Bethel and at Beersheba (Genesis 13:18; Genesis 18:1; Genesis 20:1; Genesis 21:31). If Machpelah be on the N.E. side of the Hebron valley, then Mamre as "facing it" must have been on the opposite slope, where the governor's house now is. (See HEBRON.)
These files are public domain.
Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Mamre'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/m/mamre.html. 1949.
