And Abram passed through the land,.... Entering the northern part of it, as appears by his going southward, Ge 12:9 he went onunto the place of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh; the place afterwards called Shechem, from a prince of that name in the times of Jacob; and so it was called when Moses wrote, and therefore, by way of anticipation, calls it so here; it was about the middle of the land of Canaan, and the same with Sychar, a city of Samaria, in the times of Christ, Joh 4:5.
Moreh was the name of a man, from whence the plain took its name, which was near Sichem; some render it the oak of Moreh , perhaps the same with that in Ge 35:4 or a grove of oaks of that name; the Syriac and Arabic versions render it the oak of Mamre wrongly.
And the Canaanite [was] then in the land; in that part of the land where they were in Jacob's time, see Ge 34:30 this land belonged to the posterity of Shem, but Canaan's offspring seized upon it and held it, as they did in the times of Moses, but were then quickly to be removed from it; but now they were settled in it in Abram's time, which was a trial of his faith, in the promise of it to his seed, as well as it was troublesome and dangerous to be in a country where such wicked and irreligious persons lived.