A Grave in the Promised Land

Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven. She died at Hebron, in Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn and weep for her. Then he stood up from beside his dead wife and went to negotiate for a grave. Genesis 23 gives the negotiation in full, with the elaborate courtesy of the ancient Near East. Abraham calls himself a foreigner and stranger among the Hittites. They call him a mighty prince and offer him any tomb he likes. He asks for the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron. Ephron offers to give it to him. Abraham insists on paying. Four hundred shekels of silver, weighed out in the hearing of the Hittites at the city gate. The field, the cave, and all the trees within its borders are deeded to Abraham.

That is the only piece of the promised land Abraham ever legally possessed. Sixty-two years after God told him this land would belong to his offspring, he owns a burial plot.

The one idea in this chapter is that faith buys the grave in the land of the promise. Abraham could have carried Sarah's body back to Harran, where his family was. He could have buried her wherever the Hittites offered. Instead he insisted on owning a piece of Canaan, paying full price, making it a matter of public record. He was staking a claim to a promise he would not live to see fulfilled. Sarah's grave was an anchor dropped into the future.

The writer of Hebrews says that Abraham and Sarah died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and welcomed them from a distance. That is what the field of Machpelah is. Later Abraham would be buried there, and Isaac, and Rebekah, and Jacob, and Leah. Generations of the promise, laid to rest in the one field they owned, waiting.

Christians still do this. We bury our dead in hope, and the grave becomes a claim. We are saying that the promise is real, that the land is coming, that resurrection is not a metaphor. If you have stood by a grave this year, know that you were doing what Abraham did. You were paying full price for a foothold in a country you have not yet seen.