Mamre

Mamre is a place name in the hill country near Hebron, remembered in Genesis for its great trees and as the spot where Abram settled, built an altar, and received the promise of a son. The text says that Abram “moved his tent, and came and lived by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar there to Yahweh” (Genesis 13:18), so Mamre is located by the narrative itself within the Hebron area, in the southern Judean hills.

The name is used in two ways in Scripture. Genesis 14:13 speaks of “the oaks of Mamre, the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner,” men who were “allies of Abram,” so that Mamre also appears as a personal name belonging to an Amorite clan leader. The text does not say whether the place took its name from the man or the man from the place; one way to read this is that a family or clan name became attached to a well-known landmark, but that is an inference rather than something the narrative states. Linguistically, the Hebrew phrase rendered “oaks of Mamre” uses a word that can denote a great tree, an oak, or a terebinth, which is why English versions differ between “oaks,” “terebinths,” and older renderings such as “plain.”

Mamre carries a cluster of memorable scenes. Genesis 18:1 says “Yahweh appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day,” and the verses that follow describe three visitors, foot-washing and bread under the tree (Genesis 18:4–5), the announcement that Sarah would bear a son within the year (Genesis 18:10, 14), and Sarah’s laughter at the news in her old age (Genesis 18:11–13). The site also frames the end of Abraham’s life: Genesis 25:9 reports that Isaac and Ishmael buried him “in the cave of Machpelah … which is near Mamre.” Historically, the Hebron region lies roughly thirty kilometres south of Jerusalem, and a site associated with Mamre was venerated in the Roman and Byzantine periods, with churches built there and described by early pilgrims; the precise identification of the biblical spot remains debated among archaeologists and geographers.

Christian traditions read the Mamre scene differently. In much Eastern Orthodox and iconographic tradition, the three visitors of Genesis 18 are understood as a manifestation of the Holy Trinity, and the scene is commemorated as the Hospitality of Abraham; many Western and critical readers instead take the passage as Yahweh appearing with three men, two of whom are later called angels, and treat the Trinitarian reading as a theological interpretation rather than the plain sense of the narrative. The traditional site itself is likewise claimed by different communities, and the Genesis text gives no description precise enough to settle the question.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.