Genesis 23:20

Gen 23:20 And the field, and the cave that [is] therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth.

Ver. 20. Were made sure] sc., by witnesses, without writings: but now it is hard to be sure of anything; there is so much robbery and rapine amongst the sons of men.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen 23:20. A burying-place — It is worth noting, 1st, That a burying-place was the first spot of ground Abraham was possessed of in Canaan. 2d, That it was the only piece of land he was ever possessed of, though it was all his own in reversion. Those that have least of this earth find a grave in it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

That is, all the people confirmed the sale.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 20. And the field, c. were made sure] ויקם vaiyakom, were established, caused to stand the whole transaction having been regulated according to all the forms of law then in use.

1. IN this transaction between Abraham and the sons of Heth concerning the cave and field of Machpelah, we have the earliest account on record of the purchase of land. The simplicity, openness, and candour on both sides cannot be too much admired.

2. Sarah being dead, Abraham being only a sojourner in that land, shifting from place to place for the mere purpose of pasturing his flocks, and having no right to any part of the land, wished to purchase a place in which he might have the continual right of sepulture. For this purpose, 1. He goes to the gate of the city, the place where, in all ancient times, justice was administered, and bargains and sales concluded, and where for these purposes the elders of the people sat. 2. He there proposes to buy the cave known by the name of the Cave of Machpelah, the cave of the turning or the double cave, for a burying place for his family. 3. To prevent him from going to any unnecessary expense, the people with one voice offer him the privilege of burying his wife in any of their sepulchres; this appearing to them to be no more than the common rights of hospitality and humanity required. 4. Abraham, intent on making a purchase, Ephron, the owner of the field and cave, values them at four hundred shekels, but at the same time wishes Abraham to receive the whole as a gift. 5. Abraham refuses the gift and weighs down the silver specified. 6. The people who enter in at the gate, i.e., the inhabitants coming from or going to their ordinary occupations in the country, witness the transaction, and thus the conveyance to Abraham is made sure without the intervention of those puzzlers of civil affairs by whose tricks and chicanery property often becomes insecure, and right and succession precarious and uncertain. But this censure does not fall on lawyers properly so called, who are men of honour, and whose office, in every well-regulated state, is as useful as it is respectable. But the accumulation and complex nature of almost all modern systems of law puzzle even justice herself, and often induce decisions by which truth falls in the streets and equity goes backwards. In the first ages of mankind, suspicion, deceit, and guile seem to have had a very limited influence. Happy days of primitive simplicity! When shall they return?

3. We often hear of the rudeness and barbarity of the primitive ages, but on what evidence? Every rule of politeness that could be acted upon in such a case as that mentioned here, is brought into full practice. Is it possible to read the simple narration in this place without admiring the amiable, decent, and polite conduct displayed on both sides? Had even Lord Chesterfield read this account, his good sense would have led him to propose it as a model in all transactions between man and his fellows. There is neither awkward, stiff formality on the one hand, nor frippery or affectation on the other. Decent respect, good sense, good nature, and good breeding, are all prominently displayed. And how highly laudable and useful is all this! A pedant or a boor on either side might have destroyed the simplicity of the whole transaction; the one by engendering caution and suspicion, and the other by exciting disgust. In all such transactions the beau and the boor are equally to be avoided.

From the first no sincerity can be expected, and the manners of the latter render him intolerable. The religion of the Bible recommends and inculcates orderly behaviour, as well as purity of heart and life. They who, under the sanction of religion, trample under foot the decent forms of civil respect, supposing that because they are religious they have a right to be rude, totally mistake the spirit of Christianity, for love or charity (the soul and essence of that religion) behaveth not itself unseemly. Every attentive reader of the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, will clearly discern that the description of true religion given in that place applies as forcibly to good breeding as to inward and outward holiness. What lessons of honesty, decent respect, and good manners could a sensible man derive from Abraham treating with the sons of Heth for the cave of Machpelah, and William Penn treating with the American Indians for the tract of land now called Pennsylvania! I leave others to draw the parallel, and to show how exactly the conduct and spirit of patriarch the first were exemplified in the conduct and spirit of patriarch the second. Let the righteous be had in everlasting remembrance!

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(20) Were made sure unto Abraham.—For the difficulties connected with St. Stephen’s apparent confusion of this transaction with that recorded in Gen_33:19, see Note on Act_7:16.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20. were made sure] This verse repeats and summarizes the transaction which for all subsequent ages symbolized to the Israelites their ancestral connexion with, and sacred rights in, the land of Canaan.

a buryingplace] Besides Sarah there were buried in the cave of Machpelah, Abraham (Gen_25:9), Isaac (Gen_35:27; Gen_35:29), Rebekah and Leah (Gen_49:31), Jacob (Gen_50:13).

The cave, which is traditionally identified with the burying-place of Abraham, is still regarded with immense veneration by the Mahommedans. A large mosque has been erected over it. In 1869 the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick, and in 1881 the late King Edward VII, who was then Prince of Wales, received permission to visit the cave. But, as a rule, Christians are not allowed to view it.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying-place by the sons of Heth. The palpable discrepancy between the statements of the Hebrew historian in this chapter concerning the patriarchal sepulcher and those of the Christian orator when addressing the Jewish Sanhedrim (Act_7:16) has been well characterized as praegravis quaedam et perardua, et quorundam judicio inextricabilis quaestio (Pererius). Of course the Gordian knot of difficulty may be very readily cut by boldly asserting that a mistake has been committed somewhere; either by Stephen, the original speaker, under the impulse of emotion confounding the two entirely different stories of Abraham"s purchase of Machpelah and Jacob"s buying of the field near Shechem (Beds, Clarke, Lange, Kalisch, Alford, and others); or by Luke, the first recorder of the Martyr"s Apology, who wrote not the ipsissima verba of the speech, but simply his own recollection of them (Jerome); or by some subsequent transcriber who had tampered with the original text, as, e.g., inserting Abraam, which Luke and Stephen both had omitted, as the nominative to wjnhsato (Beza, Calvin, Bishop Pearce). The Just of these hypotheses would not indeed be fatal to the Inspiration of the record; but the claims of either Luke or Stephen to be authoritative teachers on the subject of religion would be somewhat hard to maintain if it once were admitted that they had blundered on a plain point in their own national history. And yet it is doubtful if any of the proposed solutions of the problem is perfectly satisfactory; such as

(1) that the two purchases of Abraham and Jacob are here intentionally, for the sake of brevity, compressed into one account (Bengel, Pererius, Willet, Hughes); or

(2) that Abraham bought two graves, one at Hebron of Ephron the Hittite, as recorded by Moses, and another at Shechem of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem (Words. worth); or

(3) that the words "which Abraham bought for a sum of money" should be regarded as a parenthesis, and the sentence read as intimating that Jacob and the fathers were carried over into Shechem, and (afterwards) by the sons of Hamor the lather of Shechem interred in Abraham"s sepulcher at Hebron (Cajetan). Obvious difficulties attach to each of them; but the facts shine out clear enough in spite of the encompassing obscurity, viz., that Abraham bought a tomb at Hebron, in which first the dust of Sarah was deposited, and to which afterwards the bodies of himself, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah were consigned, while Joseph and the twelve patriarchs, who all died in Egypt, were brought over to the promised land and buried in Jacob"s field at Shechem.

HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY

Ver. 20.

Lessons from the sepulcher.

the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying-place." Abraham"s first and only possession in Canaan, a sepulcher. The importance of the par-chase appears in the careful narrative of the transaction. For himself he was content to live as a stranger and pilgrim; (cf. 1Pe_5:7) but Sarah"s death led him to acquire a burying-place. Declining the offer to use any of the sepulchers of the people of the land (cf. the separation at death between God"s people and aliens), he bought the field and the cave, and carefully prepared the evidence of the purchase. The purchase showed his faith in God"s truth; one of the branches of Adam"s temptation. (Gen_3:4) It had been promised that his seed, after dwelling in a land not theirs, should return and possess that whereon he stood (cf. Jer_32:14, Jer_32:15) Type of entrance into rest after pilgrimage (cf. 2Co_5:1) It showed also his faith in a resurrection (cf. Psa_16:10) The desire that he and his family should lie in the same sepulcher speaks of a life beyond the present. Parted by death, they were one family still. Sarah was to him "my dead." There was a link between them still. The living and dead still one family. Doctrine of communion of saints (cf. Mat_22:32) Death was the gate of life (cf. 1Th_4:16) Canaan a type of the rest which remaineth; Abraham of the "children of the kingdom," pilgrims with a promise. No rest here. Life full of uncertainties. One thing sure, we must die. But

I WE ENTER THE HEAVENLY REST THROUGH DEATH; THE CITY OF GOD THROUGH THE VALLEY OF BACA. Here we walk by faith. Great and glorious promises for our encouragement, that we may not make our home here; yet we know not what we shall be. Sight cannot penetrate the curtain that separates time from eternity. Thus there is the trial, do we walk by faith or by sight? We instinctively shrink from death. It is connected in our mind with sorrow, with interruption of plans, with breaking up of loving companionship; but faith bids us sorrow not as those without hope. It reminds that it is the passing from what is defective and transitory to what is immortal. Here we are trained for the better things beyond, and our thoughts are turned to that sepulcher in which the victory over death was won; thence we see the Lord arising, the pledge of eternal life to all who will have it.

II THE SEPULCHRE WAS MADE SURE TO ABRAHAM. In time he should enter it as one of the company gathered there to await the resurrection day; but meanwhile it was his. And if we look upon this as typical of our interest in the death of Christ, it speaks of comfort and trust. He took our nature that he might "taste death for every man." His grave is. (2Co_5:14) We are buried with him," "planted together in the likeness of his death." The fact of his death is a possession that cannot be taken from us. (Col_3:3, Col_3:4) He died that we might live. If frail man clings to the tomb of some dear one; if the heart is conscious of the link still enduring, shall we not rejoice in our union with him whose triumph makes us also more than conquerors?

III THE FIELD AND CAVE. How small a part did Abraham possess in his lifetime, but it was an earnest of the whole; he felt it so, and in faith buried his dead (cf. Gen_1:25; Heb_11:22) An earnest is all we possess here, but still we have an earnest. In the presence of the Lord, (Joh_14:23) in the peace which he gives, in the spirit of adoption, we have the "substance of things hoped for," a real fragment and sample of the blessedness of heaven. M.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

A burying place - 'Tis worth noting,

1. That a burying-place was the first spot of ground Abraham was possessed of in Canaan.

2. That it was the only piece of land he was ever possessed of, tho' it was all his own in reversion. Those that have least of this earth find a grave in it.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The repetition of the statement, that the field with the cave in it was conveyed to Abraham by the Hittites for a burial-place, which gives the result of the negotiation that has been described with, so to speak, legal accuracy, shows the great importance of the event to the patriarch. The fact that Abraham purchased a burying-place in strictly legal form as an hereditary possession in the promised land, was a proof of his strong faith in the promises of God and their eventual fulfilment. In this grave Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, were buried; there Jacob buried Leah; and there Jacob himself requested that he might be buried, thus declaring his faith in the promises, even in the hour of his death.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

ויקם...מאת בני חת, All the townspeople had agreed to the sale of Efron’s fields to Avraham. They were quite keen for Avraham to own an ancestral plot in their midst.

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.