Genesis 13:18

Genesis 13:18

(with Genesis 14:13)

Mamre is the first village that comes before us distinctly in any authentic history. If Ararat was the cradle of the races of our world, Mamre was the cradle of the Church.

I. Mamre was a church among the trees.

II. It was a refuge for faith. Abraham and the patriarchs were emigrants; they left for the honour of God. The East is full of traditions concerning Abraham and his hatred to idolatry, and how he forsook the worship of the fire and the sun. He had come from the neighbourhood where the Babel society was founded, faith, not in God, but in the vanity of bricks it had all ended in confusion, but the sacred memories of Mamre, where Abraham reared an altar to the Lord, these linger and send out their influence still. A high faithfulness ruled the life of Mamre, the life of domestic piety, the first story given us of the life of faith, where Abraham raised an altar and called upon the name of the Lord.

III. The village of Mamre was the village of sacred promise. What night was that, when among its moorlands the Lord appeared unto Abraham in a vision and consecrated those heights by the glowing promises which we still recognise as true? In that little mountain hamlet was given the promise of Messiah's reign.

IV. Mamre: what guests came thither? Here was that great entertainment made, "where," says quaint Thomas Fuller, "the covert of the tree was the dining-room, probably the ground the board, Abraham the caterer, and Sarah the cook; a welcome their cheer; angels, and Christ in the notion of an angel, their guests."

V. At Mamre are the oldest authentic graves of this earth among them the grave of Abraham, the friend of God.

E. Paxton Hood, Preacher's Lantern,vol. iii., p. 167.

References: Genesis 13. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis,p. 39; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis,vol. i., p. 194; Parker, vol. i., p. 200, and Pulpit Analyst,vol. ii., p. 334.Genesis 14:1. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. v., p. 87.