Image Details
Henry Fenn and J. D. Woodward; from Colonel Sir Charles W. Wilson, Picturesque Palestine (1883)
“The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.’ So Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord” (Genesis 13:14–18).
In his 19th century travelogue the British explorer Colonel Sir Charles W. Wilson identified the traditional site where Abraham was thought to have pitched his tent. The great oak tree, known as “Abraham’s oak,” is portrayed by Harry Fenn and J. D. Woodward in Wilson’s 1883 account of his travels, Picturesque Palestine.