Genesis 23

Genesis 23 is a masterpiece of legal precision embedded in narrative. Sarah dies at Hebron in the land of Canaan at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years. Abraham comes to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her, then rises from before his dead wife and speaks to the Hittites who are the inhabitants of the land. He is a sojourner among them — the legal term is important; he has no inheritable claim — and he asks to buy a burial place. The Hittites respond with courtly generosity: Abraham is a prince of God among them; let him choose the best of their burial places; none of them will withhold it. Abraham asks specifically for the cave of Machpelah, owned by Ephron son of Zohar.

Ephron immediately offers the field and the cave as a gift, in the hearing of the Hittites at the gate — the public space where legal transactions were conducted. Abraham declines the gift and asks Ephron to name a price. Ephron names four hundred shekels of silver, adding that what is that between you and me? Abraham weighs out four hundred shekels of silver according to the weights current among the merchants — the commercial standard, not the royal standard, establishing that the transaction is a market purchase and not a royal grant or gift. The field and the cave in it and all the trees in the field and its boundaries round about are made over to Abraham as a possession in the sight of the Hittites, before all who go in at the gate. Sarah is buried there. Later Abraham himself, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and Jacob will also be buried in the cave of Machpelah. The purchase is the patriarchs' one concrete legal stake in the promised land.