Abraham buried Sarah his wife
Abraham burying his dead
I. CONSIDER HIM AS A MAN.
II. CONSIDER HIM AS A MAN OF BUSINESS.
1. His independence (Genesis 23:4; Genesis 23:6).
2. His exactness (Genesis 23:17-18).
3. His courtesy.
III. CONSIDER HIM AS A GODLY MAN.
1. He believed in immortality.
2. He believed that God would grant his posterity to inherit the land.
3. He believed in a future state of blessedness for the righteous. (T. H.Leale.)
Circumstances connected with Sarah’s burial
1. Observe the honour which the ancients paid to the dead. This proves that they had a secret glimmer of immortality.
2. Observe the transaction with the children of Heth. A scriptural precedent for exactitude in business.
3. Observe also how courteous phrases contain a higher excellence than they mean. “What is that betwixt me and thee?” The children of Heth had no intention whatever of being taken at their word any more than a man has now when he calls himself your humble servant or bids you command him. We must go back to an earlier age when phrases were coined and meant something, when gifts were gifts and nothing was hoped for in return, in order to catch the life that was once in our conventional phraseology. So now language preserves, as marble preserves shells of hoar antiquity, the petrified phrases of a charity and humbleness which once were living. They are dead, but they do at least this, they keep up memorials of what should be. So that the world, in its daily language of politeness, has a record of its duty. Take those phrases, redeem them from death, live the life that was once in them. Let every man be as humble, as faithful, as obedient as his language professes, and the kingdom of God has come!
4. Lastly, we find in connection with Sarah’s burial a Divine provision for the healing of Abraham’s sorrow. He was compelled to exert himself to obtain a place to “ bury his dead out of his sight.” Had he not had to arouse himself and procure a grave for Sarah, he would have brooded over his grief. This is the merciful plan of compensation which God has provided for us; the necessities of life call us from our sorrow. All these merciful provisions plainly show us that we are in a Father’s world. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Machpelah, and its first tenant
I. WE ARE FIRST ARRESTED BY ABRAHAM’S TEARS.
II. NOTICE ABRAHAM’S CONFESSION.
III. NOTICE ABRAHAM’S FAITH. (F. B. Meyer, B.A.)
I. IN ITS CONNECTION WITH SARAH IT IS A TOKEN OF RESPECT TO THE DEAD. The body deserves this.
1. Because it has been the man’s dwelling-place.
2. Because it has assisted the soul to express itself.
3. Because it is destined for a higher and nobler service.
The purchased grave
II. IN ITS CONNECTION WITH ABRAHAM HIMSELF IT SHOWS THAT HE PREPARED FOR DEATH.
1. It taught him that the highest earthly possessions terminate in a grave.
2. It implies that he waited for death.
I. IN ITS CONNECTION WITH THE JEWISH NATION IT SERVES AS A MONUMENT FOR THEIR INSTRUCTION.
1. Its purchase taught them that it would soon be theirs.
2. Its stillness taught them to be active.
3. Its solemnity taught them to seek that country where there is no grave. (Homilist.)
The cave of Machpelah
I. ABRAHAM’S SORROW.
II. ABRAHAM’S PURCHASE. Strange possession to be the first portion in the land which was promised! A place to bury the dead in--yet observe how this very purchase is an act of faith and a pledge for the future fulfilment of God’s promises.
III. ABRAHAM’S HOPE (Hebrews 11:13-16). We Christians to whom more light has been granted concerning the hopes of “the heavenly city” beyond this earthly life can see how, in Jesus Christ and His gospel, the sorrow for the dead and the fear of death are changed into thankfulness and hope. In Christ’s death, burial, resurrection we trace an upward course to life eternal. Death is conquered. “Paradise” is the peaceful resting-place of those who “sleep in Jesus.” Heaven is the final fulness of joy. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
Death and burial
Abraham declares himself a stranger and a sojourner in the land, and humbly prays for a burying-place to bury his dead, once so dear and so lovely, “out of his sight”; expressing thus a sad, universal, and most humiliating fact, that death “changes the countenance” of its victims, as well as “sendeth them away”; and so changes them that disgust succeeds to delight, terror to affection; and so dreadful is the mixture of the memory of past beauty and the sight of present decay, that the survivor needs no exhortation to hide his friend in the grave, but with eager haste commits parent, or child, or brother, or wife, or lover, into the dust, and almost rejoices as he shuts the coffin to know that that disfigured countenance he shall see no more. What a strange view of the power and mystery of death is implied in the thought of not hatred, but love, crying out for the eternal removal of its object out of its sight! But often it is not the mere physical rottenness which awakens this desire; often, too, there arise painful, agonizing, terrible thoughts on the sight of a departed friend. The whole of the past history of the friendship or love; its first commencement and the joys connected with it; the trials and troubles, perhaps partial estrangement or complete alienation for a time, which darkened its progress; the exquisite pleasures, or no less exquisite pangs, which alternated; benefits received from the departed which were unrequited, or injuries done to them which were never fully repaid; every harsh look or word on the side of the living remembered, while on that of the dead all but their smiles and kindness are forgotten; the scenes of the sick-bed; the last farewell on the brink of eternity; all these heartquaking, melting, rending images arise, and clustered around and pictured as they are on the mirror of that pale face and shut eye, might drive to insanity and howling despair, were it not that a veil for that mirror of past joy became sorrow, and past grief became distraction, has been provided, in the merciful lid of the coffin--a lid which henceforth only the worm, the eye of imagination sometimes venturing to peep into darkness, but as speedily withdrawing the gaze, and the light of the last morning, shall be able to penetrate. (G. Gilfillan.)
Significance of behaviour in the presence of grief
Circumstances test the true quality of men. Irreverence in the presence of grief is an infallible sign of the deepest degeneracy; it marks the ultimate deterioration of the human heart. On the other hand, to be chastened by sorrow, to be moved into generous pity and helpfulness, is to show that there is still something in the man on which the kingdom of Jesus Christ may be built. Never despair of any man who is capable of generous impulses. Put no man down as incurably bad, who will share his one loaf with the hungry, or give shelter to a lost little one. Poor and crude may be his formal creed, very dim and pitifully inadequate his view of scholastic theology; but there is a root in him which may be developed into much beauty and fruitfulness. For this reason, I cannot overlook the genial humanity and simple gracefulness of this act of the Hittites. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Ephron and Abraham--a life-like picture
It was quite in accordance with Eastern usage that Abraham did not apply directly to the proprietor of the plot in which the cave lay, Ephron by name, the son of Zohar, but made interest with him through the leading men of the city. Courtesy required, too, that their consent should be secured for the proposed arrangement. The whole narrative, which is most minute, wears the strongest local colouring. Abraham’s respectful attitude, his repeated prostrations with his face to the ground, the polite hospitality of the townsmen, the difficulty in coming to a bargain, the offer of Ephron to waive the question of price, his indirect mention of the four hundred shekels, the conclusion of the sale at the city gate in the place of concourse, the weighing of uncoined rings or ingots of silver which served for a medium of exchange, and the copious phraseology as of a legal document, by which, before witnesses, the cave, with the field, the fence around it, and the trees on it, were all conveyed in perpetuity to their new owner--these particulars correspond, we are assured by Dr. Thomson, a competent witness, to what may be seen at this day in Eastern bargain-making. It is true that nowadays the courtesy is merely formal, and such generous phrases as those of Ephron and his fellow-citizens are grown very hollow indeed. Still, it seems questionable to conclude, as Dr. Thomson himself has done, that they meant no more in that simple age, when the ceremonies of intercourse were newer and more truly reflected its spirit. Besides, it is hardly fair to place an occasion like that before us quite on a level with the ordinary chaffering of an Arab market-place. One must take care, no doubt, not to read all the incidents of a story, which is sacred as well as ancient, through such an unreal light as will invest them with fictitious dignity. On the other hand, we may equally err if, in our efforts to be realistic, we rob the record of its native dignity, or vulgarize the manners of antiquity because the manners of to-day are vulgar. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.)
Sarah’s tomb
Around the grotto which thus became the sepulchre of Abraham’s family, and which afterwards was to receive, not only his own dust, but that of his son and grandson with their wives, there has grown up an interest as enduring, and an obscurity as deep as attach to any grave on earth save one. The piety of some unknown age, probably Jewish, erected round the spot massive walls of noble masonry, which still exist. Inside these walls the devotion of early Christians consecrated a church, and over the church the devotion of the Mussulman a mosque. The gates of that mosque, the famous Haram of Hebron, had been closed against Western unbelievers for six centuries, when with extreme difficulty access to it was procured for the Prince of Wales and his suite in the year 1862. What they saw inside an enclosure so jealously guarded has been told with his accustomed precision of statement by Dean Stanley. Railed off, each one within its separate chapel, there lie the coffin-like shrines to which are attached the venerable names of Sarah and Abraham, of Isaac and Rebecca, of Leah and Jacob. These, however, are only empty monuments. The real tombs, if they exist at all, must be sought beneath the floor of the building, in the rocky cavern underground. To this vault a trap-door in the pavement promises to give access; but as yet its darkness remains unvisited and unviolated. So far as could be ascertained through such a brief and partial inspection of the mosque, it is clear that the contents of that sacred place answer exactly to the requirements of the scriptural narrative. Unfortunately, more than this cannot be said. It is reserved for some explorer more fortunate than even the Prince of Wales to disclose the well-kept secret of the tomb of the patriarchs. (J. O. Dykes, D. D.)
Sarah’s tomb
Only one European, Pierroti, an Italian architect in the service of the Sultan, has ever seen more than the floor of the upper chamber, with its six tawdry erections, placed there in accordance with a practice usual in Mahometan sepulchres. Pierotti, daringly pressing after the chief Sanon, or priest of the mosque, when he was entering the lower story on a special occasion, found the entry was by a horizontal door in the porch. First a carpet, then a grated iron door, was lifted; after which a narrow stair appeared, cut in the rock. Undeterred by blows and violence, he managed to descend this far enough to see into the lower cavern in a northern direction, and to notice sarcophagi of white stone; the true tombs of some of the illustrious dead, in striking corroboration of the statement of Josephus, that they were of fair marble, exquisitely wrought. There can be little doubt, indeed, that the remains of the three generations of patriarchs and their wives, Rachel alone excepted, still lie safely in this their venerable sepulchre. (C. Geikie, D. D.)
Origin of money
When he required this sepulchre, he offered so much money we are told-shekels of silver-and this money was weighed. This informs us that silver came so early as this period of the world to be currency. I mentioned, I think, before, that the earliest money was cattle. Hence, the Latin word pecunia, from which our expression pecuniary transactions is derived, comes from pecus, which means cattle. And it is very singular that in the Greek language every word that is used for purchase or property is a derivation from some other word denoting an animal. Thus the Greek word αρνυσθαι, which means, “to bargain,” is derived from a Greek word that means a lamb. Again, πωλεω, to sell, is derived from the word used for a colt. Again, the Greek word ωνεομαι, to profit, comes from a word signifying an ass. Again, the Greek word προβιας, revenue, is derived from the Greek word προβατον, sheep or cattle. In short, all the words in Greek and Latin that mean property transactions, buying and selling, are derived from cattle, and the earliest figures that were struck upon ancient coins were figures of cattle. A man was said to be possessed of so many thousand oxen or sheep, and when they entered into a bargain, they gave so many sheep or so many oxen to the person from whom they were purchasing. Here, for the first time, we have silver introduced as currency-that which, in fact, is still the currency of the greatest portion of the nations of the earth-gold being restricted to very few countries, as the representative of property-mainly, I believe, in this country; whereas on the continent it is, I believe, chiefly silver (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Abraham at Machpelah
What I wish to emphasize here is the open, manly honesty of Abraham. There was no cheapening of the price--nothing of “It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: and when he is gone his way, then he boasteth.” Here were only civility, courtesy, and integrity. He did everything in a business way, but he had respect for others as well as for himself. He recognized that there was another hearer than the multitudes assembled at the city gate, even God Himself, and he did not choose that He should hear anything of rudeness, or selfishness, or dishonesty from his lips. Oh, how much more pleasantly business would be conducted among ourselves if we were to act in this way! But too many of us are constantly on the watch for an advantage! The seller’s maxim too frequently is the selfish one of the Romans, “Caveat emptor”--“let the buyer look out for himself.” And the buyer, on his side, is too frequently just as eagerly anxious to over-reach the seller. It is far too often “diamond cut diamond” between them. But that both are bad does not excuse either, and God is listening to both. Ah! if we all remembered that, our stores would be different places from what they often are, and business would rise to its ancient and irreproachable renown. Faith in God--such faith as Abraham had-that is still the great necessity of life. For pureness, for integrity, for liberality, for courage, for courtesy, this is what we mainly need. It is as true to-day as when John wrote the words, “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Courtesy
It is related of Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli), that when he ascended the papal chair, the ambassadors of the several states represented at his court waited on him with their congratulations. When they were introduced, and bowed, he returned the compliment by bowing also; on which the master of the ceremonies told his highness that he should not have returned their salute. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” said the good pontiff, “I have not been pope long enough to forget good manners.”
Civility
When old Zachariah Fox, the great merchant of Liverpool, was asked by what means he contrived to realize so large a fortune as he possessed, his reply was, “Friend, by one article alone, in which thou may’st deal too if thou pleasest--civility.” (Moral and Religious Anecdotes.)
Courtesy to enemies
After the battle of Poitiers, in which the Black Prince fought and defeated the French king, the prince waited upon his captives like a menial at supper; nor could he be persuaded to sit at the king’s table. This was quite in accordance with the chivalry of the day. (Little’s Historical Lights.)