Death and Burial of Sarah, Gen. 23

The testing of Abraham's faith and obedience in chapter 22 is in many ways the climax of God's dealings with Abraham. His has been an up-and-down walk of faith, not a steady ascent. But he has now proven all that God wishes him to prove. The events told here—Sarah's death and Abraham's  purchase of the field and cave of Ephron the Hittite—occurred 20 to 30 years after Abraham's test recorded in chapter 22. At the beginning of chapter 23 Sarah has reached the age of 127 years, which means Abraham is now 137 years old, and Isaac is 37.

There remain two important matters to ensure before Abraham dies:
(1) legally securing of some part of that land, as a kind of pledge,
(2) securing Isaac's descendants through a marriage. 

The first is accomplished in this chapter, and the second in chapter 24, where a bride is acquired for Isaac so that he can have a son to continue the line. Rebekah will be acquired three years after Sarah's death, when Abraham is 140. Abraham will live to the age of 175, and will live to see the birth of Isaac's twin sons, Esau and Jacob. He will have lived 100 years after he responded to God's call to leave Haran in Mesopotamia and travel to Canaan. 

Although Abraham is by now very old (137) and Isaac is 37, since Isaac is still unmarried and without a son, he is not yet the family head: Abraham still is, and cannot pass the baton to Isaac until he is married and with a son of his own. 

A.1. The Death of Sarah, 23:1-2

The family is still living in the south. In chapter 22 they were in Beersheba. Now they have moved northward to Hebron, referred to here by its older name Kiriath-arba. That name, which means 'city of four', probably refers to four tribal or family groups who originally joined in a confederation to found the city. The name Hebron itself means 'confederation'. 

Her death is the first recorded death in Abraham's family. And like any pious man, Abraham mourns for his wife and tends to the matter of giving her a proper burial. And since families then normally wished to be buried in a common family burial place, he needed to secure one that could not only house Sarah's remains but his own and those of his sons and grandsons and their families. Although he has wandered about, living a nomadic lifestyle in Canaan for over 60 years, he has no legal status as a permanent member or citizen of any community. He is what is called an 'alien', someone with limited rights of settling in an area but not acquiring real estate or rights of permanent residence—in Hebrew the word for such a person is gēr. He could accept a limited privilege from the town council of Hebron to bury Sarah on someone else's property. But that would not give him the guarantee that his descendants could use the same area later for his own burial. Furthermore, securing a family burial place would constitute the first step in laying legal claim to part of the land that God had promised would all eventually belong to his descendants. This would mean persuading the town council of Hethites that they should allow him to actually buy property and use part of it for the family tomb. 

A.2. Abraham buys land from Ephron the Hethite, 23:3-20

The majority of town leaders are called 'sons of Heth' in this chapter. Although another way of referring to them is with the English translation 'Hittites', they should not be confused with the Indo-European people now called 'Hittites' whose newly founded kingdom lay in Turkey far to the north, and who never penetrated this far south. Instead, these 'sons of Heth'—whose names are not Hittite, but Semitic and virtually identical in type to Hebrew names—are descendants of Heth, the son of Canaan and brother of Sidon and the Jebusites, in Genesis 10. They represent the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the land of Palestine and are not immigrants from Turkey or Syria in the far north. To avoid this confusion with the Hittites of Turkey these 'sons of Heth' should be called 'Hethites", not "Hittites'. Not being foreign immigrants, but long-time established inhabitants of Canaan, these Hethites have legal claim to all of the real estate in the area around Hebron. 

The narrative of Abraham's negotiations first with the council as a whole and subsequently—in their presence—with Ephron, the owner of the land in question, is full of potentially confusing details. 

Initially, Abraham presents himself to the town council in verse 4, declaring his present legal and social status as a 'stranger and alien residing among you'. Using the verb 'give' in the sense of 'sell', he requests that they permit him to buy property on which to bury his recently deceased wife Sarah. The matter cannot be delayed because she must be buried promptly. One wonders why—at his and her advanced age—Abraham had not anticipated her death and procured the property earlier. In verse 6 the town rulers acknowledge his status as an outsider, but an honored one, when they call him 'a mighty prince (temporarily residing) among us', and offer to grant him the right to bury Sarah on the property of one of themselves. This kind of temporary solution to the urgent need of burial is unsatisfactory to Abraham, who wants to be able to have a guaranteed ownership of the burial place for later use. 

The negotiations are loaded with statements showing how polite and gracious the negotiating parties are to each other. Abraham bows respectfully to the council members, but pleads for a better solution to his problem. 

In verses 8 and 9 Abraham asks the town council to intercede for him with Ephron, to allow Abraham to pay the full price for a parcel of his land with a cave in it, suitable for the family burial ground. The words 'as a possession' in verse 9 indicate that Abraham wants no loan, which might later be retracted, but an official and legal purchase, a transfer of ownership from Ephron to himself, made legal by the full payment of the purchase price in the presence of the members of the council. 

In verse 10 we learn that Ephron is in fact a member of this sitting council. In verse 11 Ephron agrees to sell the property, but leaves the purchase price unstated. Again the verb 'give' conceals the real meaning of 'sell'. He is not actually offering to give it. But in vv. 12-13 Abraham's reply shows that he wants no ambiguity about this transaction: it must not be considered in any way to be a loan; it must be a sale, a legal transfer accompanied by payment. 

In the different parts of the ANE land ownership and the transfer of land were handled differently. In Ancient Egypt the actual ownership of land was rarely transferred. What was purchased was the rights to income from the property. Consequently in what look like sale documents the prices of fields and acreage are unbelievably low: 400 years after Abraham, in the time of pharaoh Akhenaton of Egypt, a field was 'sold' for the price of a cow (Westbrook, R., “Mesopotamia: Old Babylonian Period” A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law. Volume One [2003], 337). 

When land was actually sold, in some cultures the price would be much higher, if the buyer was not kin to the seller. 

Many of the attested Hebrew laws ensured that land sold outside the kinship group could be restored to the original owner (Leviticus 25). … At Ugarit there are real estate contracts that provide favorable prices for those who wish to repurchase land that belonged to their fathers. For example, a Ugaritic text (Ugaritica V, 6) reports that a lady named Pidda purchased an estate that once belonged to her father for four hundred shekels of silver. The person that sold the land to Pidda, however, had to pay one thousand shekels of silver if he wanted to repurchase the property. (Hector Avalos, "Legal & Social Institutions in Canaan," CANE, 629)

To anyone in his kinship group Ephron would have sold this land for roughly one-third what he demanded from Abraham. 

In vv. 14-15—masked in the language of over-politeness—Ephron hints at the purchase price, which is enormous: 400 shekels of silver. He tests Abraham's willingness to part with such a sum, thinking he can bargain further.

In the final days before the anticipated capture of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, Jeremiah bought a three-acre field at the deflated bargain price of 17 shekels (Jer 32:9). 

But Abraham is in no mood to bargain, and he is a rich man who can afford to pay the escalated price, in order to get what he needs to bury Sarah and to establish his family in the land that God has promised to give them. So (v. 16) without making any counter offer, he simply says "Deal! Here's the 400 shekels. The council is witness to our transaction."

The apparent oral nature of the negotiation and sale in Genesis 23 should not be misread as something unofficial or non-binding. At north Syrian city of Emar:

Sale was an oral transaction before witnesses, sometimes accompanied by ceremonies. The Emar tablets … record the sale of land and slaves, for which the tablet acted as a document of title. A record of [a subsequent] litigation [on the sale] shows that, as elsewhere, payment of the whole price was necessary before ownership could pass. (Westbrook 2003:682f.)

Notice that Abraham insists on paying the whole price up front, so that there can be no subsequent contesting of the validity of the transfer. 

Verses 17-18 look like a slightly altered form of what must have been part of the deed of sale. It mentions the exact location of the property and indicates that there is no easement on it to permit Ephron or any other person to harvest timber or fruit from the trees growing on the property. 

God promised Abraham four things: (1) that he would become the father (i.e., ancestor) of many nations,  (2) descendants who would eventually amount to the number of the stars of heaven and the sand of the seashore, (3) that his descendants in the line of blessing (i.e., through Isaac) would eventually possess the whole land of Canaan, and (4) that Isaac's descendants (and one 'seed' in particular) would be the instrument of blessing for all humanity. 

Obviously, a good beginning has been made to promise #1, since Hagar's son Ishmael will father the Arabs, and through his next wife Keturah, Abraham will father other sons each of whom will produce a nation.

Promises 2-4 will take much time to find fulfillment, but a beginning needed to be made for promise (3)—acquiring the land—and (4) descendants through Isaac.

 Now Abraham actually owns a small part of the land which his descendants will eventually possess in toto. When we study the next chapter next fall, we will see the steps he takes to procure a suitable bride for his son Isaac, in order to ensure the beginnings of his descendants in the promised line.