Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

What Does “Mamre” Mean at Genesis 13: 18?
 
1.  “Mamre” at Genesis 13: 18 = “an Amorite grove of oak trees” (plural, 
per el-ni in the plural).  This magnificent grove of oak trees is in the 
Hebron 
place, a rustic locale that is not a city.  As we see in #2 below, 
tent-dwelling Amorites live in this rustic locale of the Hebron place, hence 
the 
association of this grove of oak trees in the great outdoors (not in a city!) 
with the 
Amorites.
 
2.  “Mamre” at Genesis 14: 13 = (i) the same as #1,  a-n-d  (ii) an 
individual Amorite whose name, “Mamre”, means “Amorite”.  This tent-dwelling 
Amorite 
lives in the Hebron place, which is a rustic locale.  He does not live in a 
city.  (The townspeople in the Hebron place live in a different part of the 
Hebron place, in the city called Kiriath Arbe, and are the “sons of the 
Hittites”
 [historical Hurrians], not Amorites like Mamre.  Abraham must buy Sarah’s 
burial plot from these “sons of the Hittites”/Hurrian townspeople, at the 
city “
gate” [Genesis 23: 10, 18] of the city of Arbe (Kiriath Arbe) [Genesis 23: 
2], rather than Abraham being able to deal concerning this matter with 
Abraham’s 
confederates, the rural, tent-dwelling Amorites in the Hebron place.) 
 
3.  “Moreh” at Genesis 12: 6 = “an Amorite oak tree” (singular, per elown 
in the singular).  This magnificent single oak tree is located in a rural 
area 
east of Shechem (in the maqowm/“district” or general area of Shechem, not in 
the city of Shechem itself).  The townspeople of Shechem are Amorites, as is 
confirmed at Genesis 48: 22 when Jacob says that Joseph will get a fair 
share/“
shechem” of what had been taken from the Amorites.  (The Amorites who 
wrongfully consort with Jacob’s daughter Dinah at Shechem are disparagingly 
referred 
to in chapter 34 of Genesis by the Patriarchal nickname “Hivites”, a 
non-historical word that disparagingly compares the unrighteous Amorite 
townspeople of 
Shechem to the hated warriors from far to the north -- the classic Hittites 
[who were of concern to Canaan and the Hebrews only once in history, when 
mighty 
Hittite King Suppililiuma I suddenly conquered all of Syria and northern 
Lebanon in the Late Bronze Age, and thereby gravely threatened Canaan proper 
for a 
few years].)
 
Note that the Amorites/Canaanites/“Hivites” at Shechem are bad and urban, 
acting like small-time wannabe Hittites, whereas by sharp contrast, the 
Amorites/Canaanites at the Hebron place are good and are rural tent-dwellers. 
 This 
accurately reflects the historical diversity of the Amorite/Canaanite people.
 
4.  “Moriah” at Genesis 22: 2 = “the Amorite mountain”.  It is located in 
Galilee, in northern Canaan, a part of the world historically dominated by 
Amorites in the Late Bronze Age.  
 
Linguistic Plays on “Amorite”
 
In virtually all words that mean “Amorite”, in virtually all languages, the 
root is always M-R.  For the basic Hebrew word that means “Amorite”, a 
prosthetic aleph is added at the beginning to the M-R, for ease of 
pronunciation, 
resulting in:  aleph-Mem-Resh-yod/)MRY/aMRy/“Amorite”.  That introductory 
prosthetic aleph is then dropped in the three individual proper names in 
Genesis 
that basically mean “Amorite”:
 
(i)  mem-Mem-Resh-aleph/MMR(/mMRa/“Mamre”
(ii)  Mem-yod-Resh-he/MYRH/MyRh/“Moreh”
(iii)  he-Mem-Resh-yod-he/HMRYH/hMRyh/“Moriah”
 
In order to see that the root of “Amorites” is M-R (not aleph-M-R), with the 
initial aleph being merely prosthetic (rather than being part of the root), 
consider that the oldest word for “Amorite” is the Sumerian “MAR.TU”.  “TU” 
means “land” in Sumerian, so the root of the oldest word for “Amorite” is 
MaR, that is, M-R, with no introductory vowel sound.
 
Who Are the Amorites in Genesis?
 
In the Patriarchal narratives, the “Amorites” are those Canaanites who 
dominated the northern 2/3 of Canaan in the Patriarchal Age (which is the 
Late 
Bronze Age).  Once one recognizes that (i) “Moreh” at Genesis 12: 6 means 
“Amorite
”, and that (ii) the Canaanites with whom the Patriarchs deal are 
predominantly Amorites, then both sentences of Genesis 12: 6 make sense.  The 
reason why 
a magnificent oak tree east of Shechem is called Moreh/“Amorite” in the first 
sentence of Genesis 12: 6 is because, as duly noted in the second sentence of 
Genesis 12: 6, during the Patriarchal Age this part of Canaan (the northern 
2/3 of Canaan) was dominated by northern Canaanites/“Amorites”.  Rather than 
being a non sequitur, the second sentence of Genesis 12: 6 nicely explains 
the 
preceding sentence:  Moreh/Amorite = Amorites/northern Canaanites.
 
“MAR.TU” (for Amorites) in Sumerian, and “amurru” (for Amorites) in 
Akkadian, mean “Westerners”.  From the standpoint of people in southern 
Mesopotamia, 
these people/Amorites were “westerners”, as they began to dominate 
northwestern Mesopotamia and Syria after 3000 BCE.  From the standpoint of 
the Hebrews, 
however, these same people (the Amorites) would have been thought of as “
northerners” (though their ancient name, which means “Westerners”, was 
retained), 
since they had originally come from the north, and the Amorites remained 
strongest in northernmost Canaan and points north of Canaan.  The short-lived 
Amorite country of “Amurru” in the Late Bronze Age (well known from the 
Amarna 
Letters) was basically northern Lebanon.  Ugarit, just north of Amurru, was 
largely an Amorite society.  So historically, “Amorites” were northerners who 
for 
many, many centuries had dominated northern Canaan.  Indeed, some analysts 
have claimed that the Biblical references to “Amorites” consistently come 
from 
E or the Book of Amos, being the only northern Canaan Biblical authors.  
Despite the many scholarly controversies as to the origin and meaning of the 
word “
Amorites”, it should be clear that the Amorites are associated primarily with 
 
n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan, and had little if any presence in southernmost 
Canaan.  It is true that some books of the Bible, excluding Genesis, 
reference 
Amorites as being very far south, but that is not accurate historically.  
Such a 
use of the term presumably equates “Amorites” with “Canaanites” for all 
purposes, whereas historically and in the Patriarchal narratives, the 
Amorites are  
n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaanites (and their ethnic brothers and cousins north of 
Canaan).  The southernmost Amorite townspeople portrayed in the Patriarchal 
narratives live at Shechem, in north-central Canaan.  The tent-dwelling 
Amorites 
with whom Abraham is in confederate relationship at the Hebron place, south 
of 
Shechem, seem to be displaced persons like the Hebrews, who are not living in 
their native land.  If the Hebron place is the Aijalon Valley, 17½ miles west 
of Beth-el, then in the Patriarchal narratives the southern periphery of the 
Amorite presence may extend as far south as the Aijalon Valley in central 
Canaan, but the Amorites are dominant people in Canaan only at Shechem in 
north-central Canaan and points north.
 
Scholars often state that the Biblical Amorites simply cannot be squared with 
the historical Amorites.  But that is not true as to the Patriarchal 
narratives.  Once one realizes that “Mamre” is at the Aijalon Valley in 
central 
Canaan, not at the later city of Hebron in southern Canaan, with Mamre not 
being an 
Amorite stronghold but rather being the southernmost periphery of Amorite 
people in Canaan, and that Mt. “Moriah” is in Galilee, not somewhere near 
Gaza 
or Jerusalem in southern Canaan, then the portrayal of Amorites in the 
Patriarchal narratives begins to match very nicely with the well-documented 
secular 
history of the Late Bronze Age.  That is to say, the more one is willing to 
re-evaluate the geography of the Patriarchal narratives based on matching 
ancient 
inscriptions of town names in secular history to town names in the text of 
Genesis, rather than the conventional attempt to force the Patriarchs to be 
viewed as sojourning in the future state of Judah, even though there is not a 
single ancient inscription of a town name in secular history to back up that 
conventional view, then the more historically accurate the Patriarchal 
narratives 
turn out to be.  Since “Amorites” are prominent in the Patriarchal 
narratives, 
we should rightly expect a  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan orientation in the text, 
which indeed is the case.  (The same is true for the words “Hittites” and “
Hurrians”, which are words that reflect a  n-o-r-t-h-e-r-n  Canaan 
orientation.)
 
Some scholars have recognized that each of “Mamre”, “Moreh”, and “Moriah” 
may basically mean “Amorite”, as all four words have M-R as their root.  Once 
it is realized that all three of these places are located in the northern 2/3 
of Canaan (which is not the traditional view), then one sees why it makes 
historical sense for all three of these places to be closely associated with 
the 
Amorites in the Patriarchal narratives.  (Historically, there were few if any 
Amorites who lived as far south as southern Canaan, in the future state of 
Judah.)
 
Only once one understands the underlying geography of the Patriarchal 
narratives can one really understand the meaning of these three words in 
Genesis -- 
Mamre, Moreh and Moriah, all of which are M-R words that essentially mean “
Amorite”.
 
Jim Stinehart, Evanston, Illinois




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