We noted the verses in Sefer Yehoshua (21:11-12) that describe how the city of Chevron was distributed after Benei Yisrael’s conquest of Canaan. The city itself was designated as a city of kohanim, one of the forty-eight cities that Benei Yisrael were to allocate for the tribe of Levi (see Bamidbar 35:1-8). The areas outside the city, we read, were given to Kalev. As the Torah tells in Parashat Shelach (14:24), God promised after the incident of the sin of the spies that Kalev, one of the two dissenting spies, would receive “the land to which he had come,” which the Gemara (34b) explains as referring to Chevron. During the spies’ excursion, the Gemara comments, Kalev left the group to visit the graves of the patriarchs in Chevron, and he was rewarded by receiving this region – Chevron – as his and his offspring’s personal possession. The verse in Sefer Yehoshua clarifies that this applied only to the suburbs outside the city, as the city itself was designated for kohanim.
It naturally emerges from this discussion that Me’arat Ha-makhpela, the patriarchal burial site, was situated outside the ancient city of Chevron. If, as the Gemara claims, God’s promise to Kalev referred to the area which he scouted – Me’arat Ha-makhpela – and this area turned out to be the outlying areas of Chevron, rather than the city itself, then we might conclude that the Makhpela Cave was outside the city. This should not be altogether surprising, as in ancient times graveyards were generally situated outside the cities, and this is in fact mandated by Halakha (Bava Batra 25a).
Indeed, the Torah clearly states in Sefer Bereishit (23) that Me’arat Ha-makhpela was situated in the “sadeh” that had belonged to Efron, and which he sold to Avraham. Professor Yehuda Kiel, in the Da’at Mikra commentary there in Bereishit, notes that the Biblical term “sadeh” often denotes the open land outside residential areas. Accordingly, Me’arat Ha-makhpela was located outside the city, in Efron’s “sadeh.” Furthermore, the Torah in Sefer Bereishit (23:19) describes Me’arat Ha-makhpela as being situated “al penei Mamrei” – which means either “in front of Mamrei” or “to the east of Mamrei.” Rav Yaakov Fish, in his Mat’amei Yaakov (Jerusalem, 5740), interprets this to mean that Efron’s fields were located outside Elonei Mamrei, a name for the city of Chevron.
We should also note that there appear to have been different nations inhabiting the Chevron region. As mentioned, Chevron – or at least part of Chevron – was also named Elonei Mamrei (Bereishit 13:18), which was named after an Emorite named Mamrei, who was a comrade of Avraham (Bereishit 14:13). This might suggest that Chevron was an Emorite city. Indeed, in the tenth chapter of Sefer Yehoshua, we read of the battle waged against Benei Yisrael by “all the Emorite kingdoms dwelling on the mountain range” (“kol malkhei ha-Emori yoshevei ha-har” – Yehoshua 10:6), which included the kingdom of Chevron. Yet, the area of Me’arat Ha-makhpela in Avraham’s time was situated in an area inhabited by the Chittim, and later, in Kalev’s time, it was inhabited by the mighty “yelidei ha-anak” tribe (as we mentioned yesterday). It is likely that a stable Emorite kingdom was situated in the actual city of Chevron, whereas the outlying areas were settled by various different tribes. Interestingly enough, Rav David Mandelbaum, in his Pardeis Yosef He-chadash (Parashat Shelach), cites a source identifying the “yelidei ha-anak” as the descendants of Efron, in which case the “yelidei ha-anak” are actually the same tribe as the Chittim.
Courtesy of Yeshivat Har Etzion - www.etzion.org.il