Commento su Genesi 13:18

ממרא MAMRE — the name of a man.

ויאהל אברם, an expression denoting the encamping, erecting one’s many tents.

ויאהל אברם, he moved his tent from there and pitched it from one place to another until he arrived at Eloney Mamre. This is not the same אלון מורה mentioned in 12,6. The previous place was located in the plain, and the owner of that site was called Moreh. Here we speak of at least two plains belonging to a person called Mamre, the brother of Eshkol and the brother of Aner.

The name of a person. I.e., not the name of a place. For it is written (v. 24): “The men who went with me Aneir, Eshkol and Mamrei.”

ויאהל אברם ויבא וישב, “Avram pitched his tent and arrived and settled;” actually, we would have expected the Torah to write the following sequence: ויבא אברם ויאהל וישב, “Avram arrived, pitched his tent, and settled;” we learn from the inverted sequence that the meaning of the word: ויאהל, here cannot be the usual meaning, i.e. “he pitched his tent;” here it means that “he folded his tent.” There are many words in the holy Tongue that have two different meanings depending the context in which they appear. The second meaning may be the opposite of the usual one. The best known example of this is the word דשן, which in Leviticus 6,3 means ash, residue, whereas in Exodus 27,3 is used as something being collected in special containers instead of something to be scattered removed. At any rate, Avram moved his tent from noman’s land in the land of Canaan to inhabited regions, i.e. elon moreh.

אשר בחברון, within the general area of Chevron.

ויבן שם מזבח, in order to call people to worship the Lord G’d at the altar he had built there. Wherever Avram made a permanent halt, stayed for a period, he used to build an altar and preach in the name of the Lord.