other
hebron
חברון · קרית ארבע · ממרא · אשכול
Bottom line
One city, four names (Bereishis Rabbah 58:4). Chevron is the standing name, which the column says seems to derive from ח-ב-ר, connection or friendship. Kiryas Arba is the older one (Yehoshua 14:15), and the live question is whether arba is the number, "City of Four," or the personal name of the giants' father, "City of Arba"; Rashi holds each way in a different place, and the column records a third view, that the name is not Semitic at all and never meant either. Mamre and Eshkol are the names of Avraham's two allies, and the Torah uses both of the place as well. Do not translate Kiryas Arba in a running text; give the name and let a note carry the "four."
At a glance
| Hebrew | translit | English | what sets it apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| חברון | Chevron | Hebron | seems to derive from ח-ב-ר, connection, friendship; gematria of chaver na'ah and of "this is Avraham," 266 (Rabbeinu Efrayim) |
| קרית ארבע | Kiryas Arba | City of Four / Tetrapolis / City of Arba | the older name; "four" (Bereishis Rabbah 58:4), the giant Arba's own name (Rashi to Yehoshua 14:15), or, to other scholars, neither, the name being non-Semitic in origin |
| ממרא | Mamre | Mamre | the plain Chevron sits in (Rashi to Bereishis 35:27), or the city's earlier name after the warlord Mamre (Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann) |
| אשכול | Eshkol | Eshkol | named for Avraham's ally; the vav appears only from the second mention, for the eshkol of grapes (Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky) |
Where the authorities disagree
Is arba in the name the number four or a man's name?
- The number. Bereishis Rabbah 58:4 offers a string of fours: four tzaddikim lived there and were circumcised there (Aner, Eshkol, Mamre, and Avraham); four avos are buried there (Adam, Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov); four imahos (Chavah, Sarah, Rivkah, Leah); four giants ruled it (Achiman, Sheishai, Talmai, and their father); it was the base from which Avraham pursued the four kings; four parties took portions in it (the tribe of Yehudah, the Leviim, the Kohanim, and Kalev's family); and it is one of only four rocky districts in Eretz Yisrael. Rashi (to Bereishis 23:2) folds the second and third together: four couples are buried there. Rabbeinu Bachaya Ibn Chalava and Rabbi Yehuda Ibn Chalava tie the four to Yehudah, Yaakov's fourth son, whose tribe inherited the city.
- A personal name. Rashi (to Yehoshua 14:15), Daas Zekeinim and Ibn Ezra (to Bereishis 23:2): Arba was the father of the three giants killed in the conquest (Bamidbar 13:22, Yehoshua 15:14, Shoftim 1:10), so the name is "City of Arba." Rabbi Avraham Maimuni: Arba was either the city's founder or its first king. (Its king in Yehoshua's day was Hoham, Yehoshua 10:3.)
- Neither. The column reports, without naming them, that other scholars suggest the name Kiryas Arba is of non-Semitic origin and originally had nothing to do with the number "four" or with a giant named Arba.
Rabbi Avraham Menachem Rappaport presses the grammatical objection: Bereishis 35:27 has Kiryas HaArba with the definite article, and a proper noun does not take one, so the presence of the hei suggests that arba there must be read as the common noun "four." Two answers, plus the escape offered by the third view above. Rashi (to Bereishis 35:27) partially circumvents the problem: in a two-word name the article sometimes attaches to the second word while governing the compound. Radak (there) also seems to address it: the city carries the name for both reasons at once, for Arba the father of the giants and because four giants ruled it, so the numeric sense is present and the article is in order. The Bottom line keeps the readings live, as Rashi himself does.
Who Arba was. Rashi: the giants' father. Rabbi Dr. Moshe Zidel (d. 1971) speculates otherwise. Targum Yonasan (to Devarim 1:28) renders "sons of giants" as "sons of Ephron the giant," and Zidel takes this to mean that the Targum understood Ephron and Arba to be one man, Ephron being the one from whom Avraham bought the Me'aras HaMachpelah (Bereishis 23; 25:9; 49:29-30; 50:13). He justifies it linguistically: the root of arba, ר-ב-ע, is visible in the ordinal revi'i where the alef drops, and from there he posits a link by metathesis and the bet/peh interchange to ע-פ-ר, dust, the root of Ephron. The column adds the comparative evidence he leans on: the Akkadian turbu'u means "dust" and its root answers to Hebrew ר-ע-ב, and a possible Hebrew cognate, rova, seems to be twinned with avak, dust (see Bamidbar 23:10). Zidel then theorizes a step further, deriving Chevron itself from Ephron, ayin interchanging with ches and bet with peh, so that Kiryas Arba and Chevron would both be ways of tying the city to Ephron. Against this, Tosefta d'Targum and the Peshitta to Yehoshua 15:13-14 and 21:11 explicitly make Arba into Tzochar, Ephron's father, with the three giants as Ephron's sons; see also Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, Taama d'Kra to Bereishis 23:8. The Bottom line follows Rashi's plain identification and records Zidel's as the speculation the column calls it.
What Mamre is. From Bereishis 13:18 it reads as though the Plains of Mamre are in Chevron rather than another name for it, while Bereishis 23:19 and 35:27 identify the place Mamre with Chevron and Kiryas Arba. Rashi (to Bereishis 35:27): Mamre is the name of the plain in which Chevron lies. Rabbi David Zvi Hoffmann (1843-1921) theorizes that the city was originally Elonei Mamre after its warlord Mamre, and took the name Kiryas Arba only later, when the giants conquered it.
Distinctions
Chevron (חברון)
The column notes that the city seems to be mentioned in the Amarna letters and in Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, where it figures as one of the important centers of the land of Canaan. The name seems to derive from the Hebrew/Semitic root ח-ב-ר, connection, joining, friendship. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 88:13) calls Avraham Hashem's chaver na'ah, His fine friend; Rabbeinu Efrayim (to Bamidbar 13:22) notes that Chevron and chaver na'ah have the same gematria, and (to Bereishis 37:14) that it equals "this is Avraham," 266, so that the city's own name alludes to its most illustrious citizen. The column adds that these explanations are paralleled in the Arabic name for the city, al-Khalil, literally "the friend [of God]," another allusion to Avraham. The same sense stands behind Chevron as a personal name: Kehas, grandfather of Moshe and Aharon, had a son Chevron (Shemos 6:18, Bamidbar 3:19, Divrei HaYamim I 5:28, 6:3, 23:12), which Rabbeinu Efrayim reads as a mark of the Kohanim's work, forging the chibbur between Israel and their Father in Heaven and eating kodashim in chaburos.
Kiryas Arba (קרית ארבע)
The Torah names it as Sarah's place of death, "and Sarah died in Kiryas Arba, which is Chevron" (Bereishis 23:2), and repeats the identification (Bereishis 35:27; Yehoshua 14:15, 15:13, 20:7, 21:11; Shoftim 1:10). Kiryah is a city, so the name reads literally as "City of Four," or, as the column puts it, "Tetrapolis." Yehoshua 14:15 and Shoftim 1:10 mark this as the earlier of the two names. For what arba means, see the dispute above. In our own day Kiryas Arba is the Jewish town beside Chevron proper, not the city itself.
Mamre (ממרא) and Eshkol (אשכול)
Both are names of Avraham's confederates (Bereishis 14:13, 14:24) and both attach to the place. For Mamre see above. Eshkol: the spies come to Chevron (Bamidbar 13:22) and in the next pasuk reach Nachal Eshkol (13:23), which reads as one place under two names, as the Midrash has it. The pasuk gives the reason for the stream's name, that they cut an eshkol, a cluster of grapes, from there (13:24). Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky reconciles the two: the site was already Nachal Eshkol when the spies arrived, named for Avraham's ally Eshkol, whose name is written without a vav, which is why the place-name is first written chaser and only afterwards with the vav, in allusion to the cluster.
Rendering guidance
- Render the names, do not translate them: Chevron, Kiryas Arba, Mamre, Eshkol. "The City of Four" belongs in a note or an apposition, not in the pasuk.
- Trap: English "Hebron" and "Kiryath-arba" look like two towns to a reader. The Torah goes out of its way to say they are one; where a passage names both, keep the identification explicit, "Kiryas Arba, that is Chevron."
- Where a derashah turns on arba meaning four, translate it there and only there, and say whose reading is being used, since Rashi to Yehoshua 14:15 takes the opposite view from the Midrash.
- Elonei Mamre: "the Plains of Mamre." Where the passage treats Mamre as the district and Chevron as the city within it, keep them distinct in English; where the Midrash treats them as one name among four, say so.
- Nachal Eshkol: "the Valley of Eshkol," with "cluster" reserved for the eshkol of grapes itself, so that the wordplay in Bamidbar 13:23-24 survives.
Sources
Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The City of Four," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Cheshvan 5782 (2021-10-30): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/9416-the-city-of-four.md. Primary loci the article cites: Bereishis 13:18, 14:13, 14:24, 23:2, 23:8, 23:19, 25:9, 35:27, 37:14, 49:29-30, 50:13; Shemos 6:18; Bamidbar 3:19, 13:22-24, 23:10; Devarim 1:28; Yehoshua 10:3, 14:15, 15:13-14, 20:7, 21:11; Shoftim 1:10; Divrei HaYamim I 5:28, 6:3, 23:12; Bereishis Rabbah 58:4 and 88:13; Targum Yonasan to Devarim 1:28; Tosefta d'Targum to Yehoshua 15:13-14 and 21:11; Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, Taama d'Kra to Bereishis 23:8; Peshitta to Yehoshua 15:13-14 and 21:11. The article prints Yehoshua 14:5 in its opening list of cross-identifications; the pasuk that identifies Kiryas Arba with Chevron is 14:15.