What Does Genesis 35:27 Mean?

And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Jacob's arrival at Mamre/Hebron completes the return journey at the personal and family level. Mamre is the site Abraham made his home base in Canaan (Genesis 13:18, 18:1); Isaac also sojourned there. Jacob arrives at his father's location to find Isaac still living. The old man has outlived the twenty-two years of his son's absence; the reunion of father and son after more than two decades is narrated without dramatic scene, simply as an arrival that has finally happened.

The identification of Mamre as "Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron)" uses the ancient Canaanite name alongside the name by which the place was known in the narrator's time. Kiriath-arba means "city of four" or "city of Arba" (Joshua 15:13); Hebron is the name it holds through most of Israelite history. Hebron will later be David's first capital (2 Samuel 2:11) before he captures Jerusalem. Jacob's arrival at Hebron is the return to the patriarchal heartland of the covenant where the promises were spoken and the altars built generations before him.

The reunion with Isaac is the human conclusion of the return journey. Jacob left Canaan with his father's blessing (given under conditions of deception) and with his father's instruction to go to Paddan-Aram (Genesis 28:1-2). He returns to find his father old but alive at the same location where the patriarchal family has been based for generations. The covenant geography is intact: the family, the land, and the old man who embodies the generational promise are in the same place when Jacob arrives back from his long exile in Laban's household.