Acts 7:15 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Jacob went down into Egypt, and died After having been supported there about seventeen years, by the filial gratitude and tenderness of his son Joseph; and our fathers The patriarch's children also ended their lives in the same country; and were carried over into Sychem That is, as Jacob was immediately carried, with solemn funeral pomp and procession, to be buried in the cave of Machpelah, with Abraham and Isaac, (Genesis 50:13,) so the patriarchs also, having been embalmed, and put into coffins, in Egypt, (Genesis 50:26,) were, at the return of Israel from thence, carried over to Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre Made in that field which Jacob bequeathed to Joseph, as a peculiar legacy; he having first, as Abraham had done in a like case, bought it for a sum of money, (that is, for one hundred pieces of silver,) of the sons of Emmor, the father of Sychem From whom, in particular, the place was named; and the Amorites having afterward seized it, Jacob had by force recovered it out of their hands. See notes on Genesis 48:22; Joshua 24:32. It seems that St. Stephen, rapidly running over so many circumstances of history, had not leisure (nor was it needful, where they were so well known) to recite them all distinctly. Therefore he here contracts into one two different sepulchres, places, and purchases, so as, in the former history, to name the buyer, omitting the seller; in the latter, to name the seller, omitting the buyer. Abraham bought a burying-place of the children of Heth, Genesis 23. There Jacob was buried. Jacob bought a field of the children of Hamor. There Joseph was buried. You see here how St. Stephen contracts these two purchases into one. This concise manner of speaking, strange as it seems to us, was common among the Hebrews: particularly when, in a case notoriously known, the speaker mentioned but part of the story, and left the rest, which would have interrupted the current of his discourse, to be supplied in the mind of the hearer. And laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought The first land which these strangers bought was for a sepulchre. They sought for a country in heaven. Perhaps the whole sentence might be rendered thus: So Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over into Shechem, and laid by the sons [that is, descendants] of Hamor, the father of Shechem, in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money. So Bengelius and Wesley.