Isaac Fried:
You wrote:
“Not mighty but lofty.”
There were three small villages near “lofty” or “mighty” trees west of Bethel whose names reflected those “lofty”, “mighty” trees, and which were historically dominated by an Amorite princeling that the Bible aptly refers to as Mamre. Here are the three village names:
1. )LWN. Allon. I Samuel 10: 3: Allon of Tabor. [This was the most important village.]
2. )YLWN. Elon. Joshua 19: 43: Elon. [Not the famous city of Aijalon at Joshua 19: 42. The tent-dwelling Patriarchs sojourned in a rural paradise, not near a big city.]
3. )YLWN. Elon. I Kings 4: 29: Elon-Beth-Hanan.
The $64,000 question is: how does one refer to these three villages dominated by Mamre, with their “lofty”, “mighty” names that refer to oak trees, in masculine construct plural? How do you say “Allons/Elons of Mamre”, with the accent on )LWN/Allon, in describing the Patriarchs’ favorite place to sojourn in southern Canaan? Doesn’t Genesis 13: 18 say it all? )LNY MMR)
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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