Sarah's Death and the Purchased Burial Place

Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is recorded. The Hebrew spells it out in three parts, a hundred years and twenty years and seven years, with the word “years” repeated each time. She was ninety at Isaac’s birth, so he is thirty-seven now.

Kirjath-arba means the city of Arba, whom Joshua 14:15 calls the greatest man among the Anakim; the older name is glossed with the one the reader knows. In printed Hebrew Bibles the letter kaph in “to weep for her” is written small, one of the scribes’ deliberate small letters, which the rabbis read as restrained weeping.

“His dead” is a single word, meto, and it recurs through the chapter like a refrain: bury my dead, bury thy dead, eight times over. The body is lying there while he talks. The sons of Heth are the Hittites of Canaan, and how they relate to the great Hittite empire in Anatolia is still debated.

“A stranger and a sojourner” is ger ve-toshav, a foreign resident with no land rights. David takes up the same pair of words in Psalm 39:12: “I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.” “Out of my sight” is literally “from before my face”.

The Hittites answer as a body, and the chapter keeps them plural until Ephron steps out of the crowd. The Hebrew ends the verse with “saying to him”, and some scholars repoint the last word as “pray”, which would make it the first word of their speech in verse 6.

“A mighty prince” is literally “a prince of God”, nesi elohim. Hebrew sometimes uses the word for God as a superlative, the way “a city great unto God” in Jonah 3:3 means an exceedingly great city. Their offer is generous and also keeps him a guest: a tomb among theirs, not a tomb of his own.

Abraham bows to “the people of the land”, am ha-arets. Here the phrase means the full citizens with legal standing, the body whose consent a sale needs, not the common people it means in later books. The man who owns nothing bows to those who own it all.

“Intreat for me” is the verb paga, to meet with or press on someone’s behalf, as Ruth is told not to press Naomi in Ruth 1:16. Abraham already knows the owner’s name, his father’s name, and which cave he wants. The asking is public, but the choice was made in advance.

Machpelah is connected with a Hebrew root meaning double, and Jewish tradition took it as a double cave. Abraham asks only for the cave at the far end of the field, the smallest holding that would serve. “As much money as it is worth” is literally “full silver”, the phrase David uses buying Araunah’s site in 1 Chronicles 21:22.

“Dwelt” is yashav, to sit: Ephron has been seated in the assembly all along, listening to himself being discussed. “All that went in at the gate” is the legal phrase for those entitled to sit in the city court, the gate being where business and judgment were done.

Ephron offers more than was asked, the whole field instead of the cave at the end of it. Some scholars have argued from Hittite law that owning a whole field carried duties to the crown that part of one did not, so the larger gift may have been a burden; others now doubt the law applies. Three times he says “give”.

The second bow in the chapter. Abraham bows to the assembly rather than to Ephron, keeping the whole court as witness to whatever is said next. Genesis records the gesture and not a word with it.

The Hebrew of Abraham’s reply is halting: “But if thou, would that thou wouldest hear me”, a sentence that starts twice. The King James smooths it. What is clear is the word “money”, silver, spoken aloud before the assembly, so that a gift can no longer be claimed.

As in verse 5, the Hebrew closes with “saying to him”, which some scholars again repoint as “pray”, making it the opening of the reply. The verse holds the pause before a price is named.

Four hundred shekels is a large sum set against other land sales in Scripture: David pays fifty shekels for a threshing floor (2 Samuel 24:24) and Jeremiah seventeen for a field (Jeremiah 32:9). Whether Ephron is being generous or sharp, Genesis does not say; “what is that betwixt me and thee?” names the figure while waving it away.

In the Hebrew the second “Ephron” in this verse is spelled without one of its letters, and the rabbis read the shortened name as a man diminished by taking the money. “Hearkened” is shama, the “hear me” the whole negotiation has been asking for, now given back in silver weighed out rather than counted.

“Made sure” translates qum, to stand or rise: the field rose to Abraham, the same verb as Abraham standing up in verses 3 and 7. Listing the trees on a property is a feature of land contracts elsewhere in the ancient Near East, which suggests the verse keeps the form of a real deed.

The witnesses are named a second time, “all that went in at the gate of his city”, repeating verse 10 word for word. The purchase is the first recorded sale of land in the Bible, and it is done in public so that no one can later say it was a loan.

The burial is told in one sentence after nineteen verses of talk. Machpelah will receive Abraham in 25:9, and Jacob lists who else lies there in 49:31: Isaac, Rebekah and Leah. Jacob himself is carried there from Egypt in 50:13.

The verse repeats “made sure” and states the legal outcome: a possession “by the sons of Heth”. The title comes from them, recognised by the people of the land, which is the one thing the promise of 17:8 did not yet provide.