Genesis23chapter 23

Genesis 23:1

Sarah is the only woman in Scripture whose age at death is recorded, and the verse states it and then counts it again, these were the years of the life of Sarah. She was ninety when Isaac was born, so the son she waited on for twenty-five years is thirty-seven when she dies. Calvin notes that Moses reports her death in a single word and then spends a whole chapter on her burial. Genesis sets the death immediately after the binding of Isaac and gives no cause, and Gill reports the old Jewish reading that word of the binding was what killed her.

Genesis 23:2

Kirjath-arba means the city of Arba, and Joshua says that Arba was a great man among the Anakim, so the first grave in the covenant family is dug in the town named after the greatest of the giants. Caleb takes that town later and drives the three sons of Anak out of it, and David reigns there seven years before he ever sees Jerusalem. Two verbs are used of Abraham, that he came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her, and Henry reads the pair as grief that was felt as well as performed.

Genesis 23:3

He rises from the ground where mourners sat and turns straight to business with the sons of Heth, the Hittites who hold the country God had promised him. He owns none of it. Stephen says it flatly in his defence, that God gave Abraham no inheritance in the land, not so much as to set his foot on, and this is the chapter where that becomes a practical problem with a body to bury.

Genesis 23:4

That is how the man to whom the whole country had been promised describes his standing in it. Hebrews takes the words up for all the patriarchs, who died in faith and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Leviticus later puts the same phrase in God's mouth about Israel living in that land, ye are strangers and sojourners with me, and David prays it back in First Chronicles. What he asks for is small, a possession of a buryingplace, and it is the first piece of ground he has ever asked anyone for.

Genesis 23:5-6

They answer with high courtesy and call him a mighty prince among us, which Clarke renders literally as a prince of God. The man who has just called himself a stranger is named a prince by the people of the land, and neither description is false. They offer him the choice of their sepulchres and promise that none will withhold a grave, which is generous and still no use to him, since a borrowed tomb is not a possession and a possession is the word he used.

Genesis 23:7-9

Abraham bows to the people of the land, the first of two bows in this chapter, and asks them to speak to Ephron on his behalf. He has already found the spot and he names it, the cave of Machpelah at the end of Ephron's field. His terms are fixed before any price is mentioned, for as much money as it is worth, paid openly, in front of them all.

Genesis 23:10-11

Ephron has been sitting in the gate the whole time, among all that went in at the gate of his city, which is where the elders sat and where a sale was made binding. He answers in public and offers the ground as a gift, saying I give it thee three times in one verse. The gift is bigger than the request, since Abraham asked for a cave and Ephron attaches the field around it, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the speech as a show of generosity that expected to be paid for.

Genesis 23:12-13

He bows a second time and then refuses the gift, asking to pay silver for the field. A gift can be remembered differently later and a witnessed price cannot, so the only ground he will ever hold in the land of promise is bought rather than granted. Henry draws the general rule out of it, that dominion is not founded in grace, and that a promise of the land did not entitle him to take a foot of it from the men living on it.

Genesis 23:14-16

The price arrives wrapped as a courtesy, four hundred shekels of silver, what is that betwixt me and thee. Jeremiah later buys a field at Anathoth for seventeen shekels, David pays fifty for a threshingfloor and its oxen, and Omri buys the whole hill of Samaria for two talents, which is why the older commentators read this figure as a high one named politely. Abraham does not argue over it. He weighs the silver out in the hearing of the sons of Heth, current money with the merchant, which was metal weighed on a scale rather than coin counted out.

Genesis 23:17-18

The wording turns into a deed here, listing the field, the cave, and all the trees that were in the field in all the borders round about. Trees are named because trees are what mark a boundary and what a later claimant would argue over. It is confirmed to Abraham in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate, and Clarke calls this the earliest record we have of the purchase of land. Jeremiah's purchase runs the same shape, silver weighed and the deed witnessed, done as a pledge that the people would come back to that ground.

Genesis 23:19

Sarah is the first of six laid in this cave. Abraham follows her, and Isaac and Ishmael, sent apart years earlier, stand over this grave together to bury him. Jacob names the rest of the roster on his deathbed, Isaac and Rebekah and Leah, and makes Joseph swear to carry him up out of Egypt and lay him here. The bought grave in Canaan is what pulls the family back up out of Egypt, and Joseph's own bones wait four centuries on the same reasoning.

Genesis 23:20

The chapter ends on a legal formula rather than a lament, made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth. The only ground he holds in the whole land promised to him is one field with a grave in it, paid for at the seller's price. The second and last parcel any patriarch buys in Canaan is Jacob's field at Shechem for a hundred pieces of money, and that one ends as Joseph's grave. Hebrews reads the whole arrangement as deliberate, that they died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.