Scripture · Genesis 19:17
Genesis 13:18
Abraham’s Oak
So Abram moved his tent and went to live near the Oaks of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.
A great twisting oak spreads beneath a full moon. Two small figures at the right give a human scale to the tree and the surrounding night.
About the artwork
A moonlit tree fills the sky, but its spreading branches need support. Look at the props beneath the low limb at the left. Tanner gives the oak the stature of a monument while allowing its age and vulnerability to remain visible. The people beside it are visitors to a remembered place, not securely identifiable figures from Abraham’s household.
The oak near Hebron was a pilgrimage site associated by tradition with Abraham. Tanner painted this canvas in 1905, years after his journeys to the Holy Land. Smithsonian researcher Jeffrey Richmond-Moll suggests that popular images of the tree, such as postcards, may have helped him recall it. The painting holds together travel, memory, and devotion: a place seen in modern times carries a story much older than the journey.
Featured in: Henry Ossawa Tanner’s Bible Paintings: Humiliated at Home, Honoured in Paris
What does Genesis 13:18 mean?
Genesis 13 follows Abram and Lot as they separate because the land cannot support both their households and flocks together. After Lot departs, God renews the promise of land and descendants to Abram. Verse 18 records Abram settling beside the oaks of Mamre at Hebron and building an altar there.
Abram’s altar marks the promised land as a place of worship before he possesses it in full. That helps explain why a tree could become a place of pilgrimage. Tanner’s oak belongs to the later memory of this landscape; the tradition does not establish that this was one of the trees beside which Abram settled.
Genesis 13:18 gives the named landscape its biblical association: Abram’s settlement at Mamre and the altar he built there.
Sources
Smithsonian American Art Museum — Abraham’s Oak. Exact canvas, 1905 date and current dimensions: 54.4 × 72.8 cm.
Smithsonian American Art Museum — A Souvenir from the Holy Land. Jeffrey Richmond-Moll on the pilgrimage site, supporting struts, Tanner’s travels, and the qualified possibility of a postcard memory aid.
Genesis 13 — Berean Standard Bible. Context for Genesis 13:18.
Also from Genesis:Elohim Creating AdamThe Creation of Adam
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