Genesis 23

5. At the next eventful appearance (Gen. 17) Abraham had been waiting in faith for the son of promise a quarter of a century, and was perhaps tempted to think the fulfilment fast becoming impossible. Pertinently therefore the first words of the Lord were—“I am the Almighty God! Walk before me and be thou perfect;” fear nothing; my covenant stands fast. I will multiply thee exceedingly! Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him, reiterating his promise of posterity, giving unwonted prominence to the family feature of his covenant—“a God to thee and to thy seed after thee”—and instituting the rite of circumcision.

6. The sixth and last recorded appearance followed the triumph of Abraham’s faith in the sacrifice of his only son. In this the Lord reaffirmed the great elements of his promise—posterity as the stars of heaven; triumphant over their enemies; a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Thus at successive and somewhat remote intervals and mostly on special occasions the Lord manifested himself to his servant to confirm his faith, to enlarge the range of promise and to signify his pleasure in the obedient trustful life of his friend.

One other special feature in the great covenant with Abraham should be noticed. In many respects this covenant made Abraham and his posterity a peculiar people, discriminating broadly between them and every other nation, and accumulating the blessings of God upon them in no stinted measure. But the Lord put into this covenant one counteracting element of great power: He ordained them to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. Into this great system which made them his peculiar people, openly and clearly he put the germinal idea of a salvation to be provided for the wide world. This covenant people were to be the almoners of all these blessings to the otherwise benighted and perishing nations. At the very least here was opened a thoroughly rich field for prayer, the broadest scope for real sympathy with the benevolence of the Great Father of all the nations and a powerful antidote against the narrow exclusiveness which might otherwise have shrunk and shrivelled their piety and narrowed their aspirations to themselves and their land. How often in the heart of the good men of later times—the men like Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah,—must the kindling thought have been sprung by this great germinal promise—When shall these things be? H. C.

1. And the life of Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years: these were the years of 2 the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (the same is Hebron), in the land of 3 Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham rose 4 up from before his dead, and spake unto the children of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead 5 out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear us, 6 my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; 7 none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham rose up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the children of Heth. 8 And he communed with them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of 9 my sight, hear me, and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for the full price let him

10 give it to me in the midst of you for a possession of a buryingplace. Now Ephron was sitting in the midst of the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead. And Abraham bowed himself down before the people of the land. And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt, I pray thee, hear me: I will give the price of the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, My lord, hearken unto me: a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver, what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the children of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. So the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the border thereof round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre (the same is Hebron), in the land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the children of Heth.

The following table exhibits the leading incidents in the life of Abraham, and his age at the time when that is either specified in the record or can be fixed:—

Age. Incident. Record.

70 (?) Call from God at Ur…

75. Call repeated at Haran … 12:1-4.

Migration to Canaan… 12:4, 5.

Halt at Sichem—Third Divine manifestation at Bethel… 12:6, 7.

Journey to Egypt. … 12:10-20.

Return to Bethel—Separation from Lot… 13:1-13.

Fourth Divine manifestation. 13:14-17.

80 (?) Settlement at Mamre (Hebron)… 13:18.

Rout of the invaders … 14:1-16.

Interview with Melchizedek. 14:17-24.

Fifth Divine manifestation—Covenant of faith… 15:

85. Flight of Hagar… 16:1-14.

86. Birth of Ishmael … 16:15, 16.

99. Sixth Divine manifestation—Covenant of circumcision.. 17:

Seventh Divine manifestation—The three angels … 18:1-14.

Sodom and Gomorrah—Abraham’s intercession… 18:16-33.

Destruction of the Cities of the Plain… 19:

Sojourn at Gerar… 20:

100. Birth of Isaac… 21:1-5.

Casting out of Ishmael—Eighth Divine manifestation… 21:8-21.

The compact with Abimelech—Beersheba… 21:22-34.

Age. Incident. Record.

125 (?) The great temptation—Mount Moriah … 22:1-14.

Ninth Divine manifestation—The oath and the blessing … 22:15-18.

137. Death and burial of Sarah… 23:1, 2. The cave of Machpelah … 23:3-20.

140. Mission for Rebekah—Marriage of Isaac… 24: Marriage with Keturah—its issue… 25:1-4.

175. Death and burial of Abraham… 25:7-9. W. II.

23. This chapter is interesting as containing the first record of mourning for the dead, of burial, of property in land, of purchase of land, of silver as a medium of purchase, and of a standard of weight. Mourning for the dead was, no doubt, natural on the first death. Burial was a matter of necessity, in order, as Abraham says, to remove the body out of sight. Property in land was introduced where tribes became settled, formed towns, and began to practise tillage. Barter was the early mode of accommodating each party with the articles he needed or valued. This led gradually to the use of the precious metals as a “current” medium of exchange—first by weight, and then by coins of a fixed weight and known stamp. M.

The next event recorded in Abraham’s life is the death of Sarah, at the age of 127, at Hebron; so that Abraham must have returned from Beersheba to his old home. P. S.—We are informed in Num. 13:22, that Hebron was built seven years before Zoan, or Tanis, the ancient capital of Lower Egypt. At the conquest of Palestine Hebron was taken by Caleb, whose possession it became, being in the allotment of the tribe of Judah. It was afterward assigned to the Levites, and became a city of refuge. David kept his court there in the first seven years of his reign, before Jerusalem was taken. During the Babylonish captivity, the Edomites appropriated Hebron when they invaded the south of Judah, and it became the capital of a district which continued to be called Idumwa long after the territory of the Edomites had been incorporated with Judea. It is situated about 27 miles south of Jerusalem, eastward of a chain of hills which intersects the country from north to south. It stands on the slope of an eminence, at the summit of which are some misshapen ruins of an ancient castle. Bash.—Although the valleys opening on the northwest of the town might not altogether inappropriately be termed plains, the whole region is greatly elevated, and Hebron itself, two thousand eight hundred feet above the Mediterranean, or four thousand one hundred above the Dead Sea, is the highest town in Palestine. Those who approach it from the southern deserts encounter more or less of fatiguing ascent for fifty miles, while those who come from Jerusalem find that they are making their way slowly upward over innumerable ridges and valleys to a height of six hundred feet above the sacred city. Once in Scripture its elevated position is referred to—in the expression, “Kirjath Arba, which is Hebron, in the mountain of Judah” (Josh. 20 : 7). Sometimes the patriarch sojourned in the country to the south and southwest of Hebron, bordering the Philistines’ land, especially in the neighborhood of Beersheba, 25 miles distant; yet Hebron ever had for him a superior attraction. Here he was living when his wife Sarah died, and here he purchased the only ground he seems ever to have owned—the burial field of Machpelah—where, in time, his sons Isaac and Ishmael met to lay his body beside that of his wife, and where, in turn, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, found their last earthly resting-place. N. C. B. [See p. 312.]

1. And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old.** Sarah is the only woman in the sacred writings, whose age, death, and burial, are distinctly noted. And she has been deemed worthy of higher honor; for Paul (Gal. 4 : 22, 23) makes her a type of the church of Christ; and her faith in the accomplishment of God’s promise that she should have a son, when all natural probabilities were against it, is particularly celebrated in the

Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 11 : 11). Sarah was about ninety-one years old when Isaac was born, and she lived thirty-six years after and saw him grown up to man’s estate. With SARAH the promise of the incarnation of Christ commenced, though a comparatively obscure prophecy of it had been delivered to Eve, and with MARY it terminated, having had its exact completion. Thus God put more honor upon those two women than upon all the daughters of Eve besides. A. C.

There were many excellencies in the character of this remarkable woman. As a wife, she was loving, faithful, and deferential, a type of conjugal reverence (1 Pet. 3 : 6)—characteristics mentioned frequently with special approval in the Word of God; as a mother, most tender and thoughtful in respect to all things pertaining to the real interest of her only child. Though not an “ideal type of excellence,” her excellencies outshone her defects, and she stands before us as “truly feminine” in both the one and the other. Hughes.

Sarah dies when Isaac is thirty seven. We know something about what she was as a wife to Abraham, but little of what she was as a mother to Isaac, and about as little of what he was as a son to her. In the passage which records her death and burial he is never mentioned. His figure is lost in the shadow of that stately form of Abraham, bowed down with sorrow, doing the last honors to the dead. That Isaac fully shared his father’s grief—that the tie between mother and son was tender and strong—is clear from the fact that it took three years and Rebekah besides to comfort him after his mother’s death. W. H.

2. Abraham mourned for Sarah. Consecration to God’s purposes does not eradicate our deep human love; rather it heightens, refines, sanctifies it! Every father is more a father in proportion as he loves and serves the great Father in heaven. We should be on our guard against any system of religion or philosophy that seeks to cool the fervor of natural and lawful love. It may be very majestic not to shed tears; but it is most inhuman, most ungodly. Christianity educates our humanity, not deadens it; and when we are in tears it helps us to see through them nearly into heaven. J. P.

The friendship of the Eternal One was a poor boon, comparatively, unless it survived this life. The blessing promised in that solemn covenant was surely too vast to be exhausted here. Nay, the man who had sacrificed home and friends for God might deem himself “of all men most miserable,” if no “abiding city” was to reward his hopes hereafter. His consciousness that the Everlasting Undying One was become his Shield and exceeding great Reward, could not fail to wrap within it a trust in immortality, undeveloped, it may be, and dim, yet real and not to be shaken. Of such a man it was more literally true than even of others that he “died in faith.” The promises he had “embraced” were promises he had “not received.” He saw them only afar off. Through death he had to go to meet them. Perhaps at no hour of his life were such questionings of a life beyond, or a keen sense of the transitoriness of his sojourn here, more likely to be forced upon the mind of Abraham than when he sat a broken-hearted widower beside his dead. Dykes.

4. The tenderness of grief, the sacredness of death, the dignity of faith, the courtesy of sympathy, the nicety of honor, the liberality of love, the consecration of faith and hope,—these all are pictured here with a simplicity like Homer’s, but which surpasses any poetry in speaking directly to the heart. It is the universal elegy of human grief, “Give me a possession, a secure and sacred spot, where I may bury my dead.” J. P. T.—The patriarch’s resolution to acquire by purchase, and not otherwise, an hereditary place of sepulture, with the importance evidently attached to its acquisition, can only be understood in the light of his peculiar relations to the land of Canaan. Heir as he was by divine promise of the whole land, recognized by its citizens as a “prince of God,” this man had lived in it for over sixty years without owning one yard of soil. He had acquired no fixed property. Home he had none but a shifting tent. But must this apply to him dead as well as living? Sarah’s decease raised this question, and the devout instinct of her husband felt its way to the true answer. An exile through life, he will claim the land as his own in death; his own, not to enjoy it for himself, but to hold it in pledge for his seed, to whom it has been guaranteed of God. Men’s graves are the heritage of their posterity. Dykes.

3-18. Abraham wished to make his possession of this cave of Machpelah secure to his posterity. The only way in which he can do this is by a public act and deed in the presence of many witnesses. It was the custom of the times, as it is the custom of Easterns still, to employ mediators in every transaction of this kind. W. H.—Then ensues the conference in the gate,—the Oriental place of assembly, where the negotiators and the witnesses of the transaction, as at the present day, are gathered from the many comers and goers through “the gate of the city.” The Hittite inhabitants offer him the most sacred of their sepulchres for the cherished remains. The Patriarch maintains his determination to remain aloof from the Canaanite population, at the same time that he preserves every form of courtesy and friendliness, in accordance with the magnificent toleration and inborn gentleness which pervade his character. A. P. S.—Ephron offers the field as a free gift—too generous an offer, whose acceptance might in the end be more costly, and would be less secure. Firm to his purpose, yet never failing in his courtesy, Abraham first bows again to the assembled citizens, and then turning to Ephron, insists on purchasing. In true Oriental fashion the son of Zohar says: “The land is worth four hundred shekels; what is that betwixt me and thee?"—above, perhaps, the real value, but Abraham has gained his point. The price is specified. He has come prepared; the silver is weighed out on the spot, “current money with the merchant.” The purchase is completed and ratified by a description of the property, such as you might find in any deed of conveyance still. “And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, and the cave that was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure.” In manner so picturesque was the first commercial transaction that we have any record of, carried out; and so was purchased the oldest family burying ground that any land can show; its history in patriarchal times, its story down to our own days, rendering it the most interesting tomb in all the earth. W. H.

10. Of all that went in at the gate of his city. That is, of all the citizens or inhabitants. Kidder.—The gates of cities in these days, and many ages after, were the places of judicature and common resort. Here the governors and elders of the city met to hear complaints, administer justice, make conveyances of titles and estates, and, in short, to transact all the affairs of the place. Hence that passage in the Psalmist, “They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate;” that is, when they are accused by them before the court of magistrates. It is probable that the room or hall where these magistrates sat was over the gate, because Boaz is said to “go up to the gate;” and the reason of having it built there seems to have been for the convenience of the inhabitants; who, being all husbandmen, and forced to pass and repass every morning and evening as they went and came from their labor, might be more easily called as they went by, whenever they were wanted to appear in any business. So that from the whole it appears, that Abraham could not have made his purchase from Ephron, without his having recourse to the city gates. Stackhouse.—All affairs of moment among the Algerines are laid before the Dey, or the principal officers, who sit constantly in the gate of the palace for that purpose. Thus we read of the “elders in the gate” (De. 22 : 15) and of “him that reproveth and rebuketh in the gate” (Is. 29 : 21). The Ottoman Court likewise seems to be called the Porte, from the distribution of justice and the dispatch of public business carried on in the gates of it. Dr. Shaw.

15,16. The business-like method of Abraham in his traffic conforms to the careful reckonings so abundant in Egypt, and to the existence of a hundred Chaldean tablets filled with business contracts, before and after the time of Abraham. S. C. B.—Abraham pays the money: he pays it readily, without hesitation; pays it in full, without diminution; and pays it by weight, current money with the merchant, without deceit. See how anciently money was used for the help of commerce; and see how honestly money should be paid where it is due. Though all the land of Canaan was Abraham’s by promise, yet the time of his possessing being not come, what he had now occasion for, he bought and paid for. H.

17-20. The one spot of earth which Abraham could call his own, the pledge which he left of the perpetuity of his interest in “the land wherein he was a stranger,” was the sepulchre which he bought with four hundred shekels of silver from Ephron the Hittite. It was a rock with a double cave (“Machpelah”), standing amid a grove of olives or flexes, on the slope of the table-land where the first encampment had been made. Round this venerable cave the reverence of successive ages and religions has now raised a series of edifices which, while they preserve its identity, conceal it entirely from view. But there it still remains. Within the Mussulman mosque, within the Christian church, within the massive stone enclosure built by the Kings of Judah, is, beyond any reasonable question, the last resting-place of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah; “and there Jacob buried Leah;” and thither, with all the pomp of funeral state, his own embalmed body was brought from the palaces of Egypt. Of all the great Patriarchal family, Rachel alone is absent. A. P. S.

No ancient site in Palestine is more satisfactorily identified than this by historic landmarks and credible uninterrupted traditions. Jews, Christians, and Moslems, alike venerate the place; but with extremest jealousy the Moslem possessors guard the entrance, even of the outer enclosure, against the foot of any except the true believer. By means of skilful diplomacy, entrance was a few years since obtained for the Prince of Wales, on his tour through Palestine, with a few attendants; yet these were not permitted to descend to the cave below the mosque—the real burial-place—but were obliged to content themselves with a sight of the cenotaphs of the patriarchs, which are placed on the main floor of the mosque. N. C. B.—The wall which encloses the Haram (or sacred precinct in which the sepulchres themselves are reported, and probably with truth, still to lie) is a monument certainly equal, and probably superior in age to anything remaining in Palestine. It is a quadrangular building of about 200 feet in length by 115 feet in width, its dark gray walls rising fifty or sixty in height, without window or opening of any description, except two small entrances at the S. E. and S. W. corners. It is surrounded by a colonnade of forty-eight square pilasters. It stands nearly on the crest of the hill which forms the eastern side of the valley on the slopes and bottom of which the town is strewn. Dic. B.

Abraham designed to perpetuate among his posterity the expectation of the promised land. It was the most likely means of keeping alive in every succeeding generation the hope of ultimately possessing the whole land. Accordingly we find it did produce this very effect; for as Abraham and Sarah were buried in that cave, so were Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah, notwithstanding Jacob died in Egypt. And Joseph also, though buried in Egypt, gave commandment that when the Israelites should depart out of the land of Egypt to possess the land of Canaan, they should carry up his bones with them, and bury them in the sepulchre of his progenitors. Bush.

It is this consideration which ever after made that venerable cave at Machpelah precious and even sacred in the eyes of later generations of Jews. By means of it, Israel virtually retained a lawful hold upon the land of promise throughout those six centuries which were still to roll away before Joshua led the tribes into possession. The pompous funeral procession which bore the embalmed remains of Jacob back from Egypt, that they might be laid beside his father and his grandfather, testified to the depth of this feeling on the part of his exiled children.

Like the instructions which Joseph left concerning his bones, it showed that the sons of Abraham clung to a grave in Canaan as a pledge that the land itself was to be one day their own. Machpelah has thus become a signal figure of the claim which the spiritual Church of God asserts upon the earth we dwell in. One day the globe itself, purified from evil, is destined to become the enduring inheritance and home of all the saints. For the present, however, Christ’s people hold it only as Israel in its exile held Canaan, by their graves. One empty grave near Jerusalem, with countless more, which in their turn are likewise to be emptied,—these are the sole possessions in virtue of which just men departed can still call the earth their own. These are the pledges of its future possession. Their hope rests, like Abraham’s, on God’s word alone. Its fulfilment lies as far off, perchance, as his. It is not less invisible, save to far-sighted faith. Dykes.