“1 Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. 2 She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.
3 Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, 4 “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.”
5 The Hittites replied to Abraham, 6 “Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.”
7 Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. 8 He said to them, “If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf 9 so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”
10 Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. 11 “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.”
12 Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land 13 and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”
14 Ephron answered Abraham, 15 “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.”
16 Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.
17 So Ephron’s field in Machpelah near Mamre—both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field—was deeded 18 to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. 19 Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan. 20 So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site.”
I remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mother died. I saw the headline on a magazine in the checkout aisle of a grocery store where I worked. On the cover were these words from the movie star, “with the loss of my mother, my world has fallen apart.” That struck me because in movie after movie nothing hurt Arnold. He was the Terminator. He fought the Predator. He was the picture of strength and yet he said, “with the loss of my mother, my world has fallen apart.”
I remember thinking, “if Schwarzenegger’s world fell apart when his mother died, what will happen to my world when my mother dies?” Now, I was eighteen years old at the time. Eighteen-year-olds think such thoughts. Eight-year-olds think such thoughts. You don’t have to reach a certain age to consider profound matters. That would be good for us to remember when it comes to the covenant children of this church. We think about death—our own and more often the death of a loved one; “with the loss of my mother, my world has fallen apart,” makes sense to anyone who has ever loved or been loved.
We are entering the final lap of the biography of Abraham and biographies end in death. Yours will end this way. The biographies of those you love will end this way, and with that death will come profound loss; “with the loss of my mother, my world has fallen apart.”
This Scripture is about the death of a loved one. It doesn’t have glib answers. It simply focuses on death and the promises. You can’t understand Abraham without the promises. You can’t understand what it means to have faith like Abraham without understanding the promises, and the promises enable us to live by hope in the midst of grief. That’s just one truth about death and it is the claim of this sermon: the promises enable us to live by hope in the midst of grief.
We will study this in two points. First: the death of Sarah. Second: a burial site in the Promised Land. We see the death of Sarah in verses 1-2. We see a burial site in the Promised Land in verses 3-20.
First: the death of Sarah. God had visited Abraham’s home. He had spoken audibly to Abraham on several occasions. He had made particular promises that uniquely affected this man. Abraham was called “God’s friend.” Abraham’s wife still died.
A man can be a friend of God and still bury his wife. That happens more regularly than we can bear to understand, and yet that needs to be said because we are very prone to forget it. Some of us live relatively charmed lives. We have a standard of living that would have been unimaginable to almost everyone throughout human history. We live in a culture that uses its massive resources to hide the fact that this world and life is under a curse and has been since the fall into sin. Some of us have it so good that we are surprised by trouble. We assume that life will be lovely and that something has gone shockingly wrong if it isn’t. Scripture gives us a much different picture—a realistic picture.
The wife of God’s friend died; verse 1, “Sarah lived to be a hundred and 127 years old.” Before the flood, God had said that human life spans would be reduced to 120 years at the longest. Sarah had a full life span plus. She also had her share of troubles; as Gordon Wenham put it, Sarah’s “life was far from easy. She suffered the shame of childlessness till she was ninety. Twice she was trapped in a foreign king’s harem by her husband’s unbelieving folly. Twice she was provoked beyond the breaking point by her slave-girl Hagar or her son Ishmael. Once she had seen her own son leave to be sacrificed by his father. From the way her husband treated her sometimes, one might wonder whether he really cared about his wife at all.” We must also note that Sarah left the comfortable, cosmopolitan lifestyle of Ur to live in tents. She left her family and friends to live as an immigrant.
If Sarah was a member of this church, we would think that she had been through quite a bit. I hope we would also have the good sense to respect her, not simply because she has suffered—as if suffering in and of itself could confer authority. We would be wise to respect her because she moved forward in suffering by faith; the book of Hebrews reminds us that, “by faith, even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.”
You and I would do well to well to look to Sarah to remember who we are. As Isaiah told the people of God in his day, “Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth.”
Sarah’s life was difficult and at times Abraham made it more difficult. He did, however, love his wife. This story makes Abraham’s love and adoration for his wife abundantly clear. Scripture can’t tell you everything in every story. Moses didn’t take the time to tell us about Abraham’s love for Sarah during the stories about the sacrifice of Isaac or the covenant of circumcision because that wasn’t his focus. Each story has its focus and part of the focus of this story today is to tell the hearer that Abraham loved his wife.
Sarah died at Kiriath Arba, which was near Mamre. Abraham and Sarah had lived for many years and had received many of God’s promises in that region before they moved to Beersheba. There is something fitting about Sarah dying near the place where she was promised a son. We don’t know when Abraham and Sarah moved from Beersheba to Kiriath Arba. We just know that Sarah died in Kiriath Arba, which came to be known in Israel as Hebron. The two names of the town are an editorial comment included to let you know that Sarah was buried in what would become the Promised Land. Sarah didn’t live to see Kiriath Arba become Hebron. She didn’t live to see Canaan become Israel. She died in faith of promises yet to come—promised which God kept. That’s good for us to remember because not all the promises of God to us will be kept in our lifetimes.
We don’t know if Abraham was away when his wife died. The text is ambiguous, simply telling us that, “Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.” This language of mourning implies the traditional mourning customs such as Abraham ripping his clothes, disheveling his hair, cutting his beard, scattering dust on his head, and fasting.
Such customs were designed to give vent to what was inside. Such customs could, of course, become meaningless just as our funeral customs can become meaningless. I’m sure there were husbands who cut their beards and disheveled their hair for a wife they didn’t cherish just as there are husbands today who wear black and look somber at funerals for a wife they didn’t cherish. Customs can become meaningless, but they are designed to allow for genuine grief.
For our part, I fear that we are far too self-controlled when it comes to grief. We could do with more open displays of emotions. Some of us seem at times on the verge of apologizing for having emotions. We could probably do with more clothes ripping and hair disheveling. God has made us as emotional creatures. As Calvin put it, “to feel no sadness at the contemplation of death is rather barbarism and stupor than fortitude of mind.”
If you read about Abraham’s grief and feel deep and profound sadness for the loss of a loved one or the thought that you might lose a loved one, that isn’t a sign of weakness. That is a sign that you are understanding a bit of why Moses recorded this story. Think about Jesus. He wept out of sorrow and anger at the wrongness of death. He didn’t apologize for his emotions. If you are in grief over the death of someone you love and I or an elder or a brother or sister in Christ come to visit, please don’t apologize for showing emotions. Just be what you’ll be in that moment. “Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her,” and so do the children of Abraham.
We’ve spent two verses looking at the death of Sarah; the remaining eighteen verses are devoted to securing a burial site for her. This is because this burial site has to do with the promises; that’s our second point: a burial site in the Promised Land. The remaining text describes a negotiation. This negotiation between Abraham and the Hittites has the Ancient Near East, and even the modern Near East, written all over it. It oozes deference and courtesy. Abraham rose to bow before he made his requests. The Hittites bent over backward to show their earnestness saying over and over, “listen to us, sir.” I say all that because this negotiation might seem a bit foreign to us; Scripture is in many ways a foreign text that requires a willingness to understand.
Abraham chose to handle this negotiation in public; twice the phrase, “before the people of the land,” is used and once we read that this happened in, “the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate.” This public nature is repeated in order to make clear that Abraham’s claim to the field in Machpelah was beyond dispute. This is important because when you read this negotiation through near eastern eyes, you see that the Hittites were very hesitant to sell Abraham this field. They were full of deference and courtesy, but they didn’t want to sell him the land. That’s one of the reasons they offered to let him use their tombs; verse 6, “Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.” That’s why when Abraham expressed interest in Ephron’s field, Ephron said, “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it.” If Ephron gave Abraham the field, it would still belong to Ephron if push ever came to shove. John Walton was right to say that, “Arable land was so precious in the ancient world that owners usually refrained from selling it to anyone outside the kinship group.” If they sold the land to Abraham, a foreigner would have a voice among them. Imagine if a big agricultural conglomerate out of China started buying up land around here. Do you think the local farmers would have any thoughts on the matter?
The Hittites were incredibly cordial and it is clear that they had deep respect for Abraham, but they were not eager to sell him any land. Abraham had to muscle his way in. Here’s how he did it; he began by saying, “sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” It’s hard to deny someone in grief. The Hittites responded by telling Abraham that he could use any of their tombs; “Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.”
Abraham ignored their offer and was specific about the land he wanted to buy; “If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah… Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.” Again, it is hard to deny a man in grief. Now it was Ephron’s turn to reply, ‘“No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.”’ Abraham ignored this offer because he wanted the actual rights to the property. Abraham followed their sign of deference and said, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”
Ephron responded by trying to price Abraham out of the market; “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.” This would be like offering to sell your farmland for $125,000 an acre. You don’t expect it to be taken. Ephron didn’t expect Abraham to take it. Abraham took it. “Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.”
Abraham didn’t haggle, which was almost unthinkable in that culture. He paid the first asking price because he knew that would be the only sure way to secure this field.
Now some of you have already picked up the great irony of this passage: Abraham, who has been promised this entire land, still needed to negotiate and pay an exorbitant sum in order to buy one field in order to bury his wife. The man who owns it all by promise has to pay through the nose for one small part of it for the most understandable of reasons. The promises of God are sure and certain, but the life of faith is neither automatic nor easy.
Abraham paid this exorbitant price because this wasn’t about really about land. If this were about land, Abraham would have tried to buy land decades before. This was about promises. It was a statement of trust in the promises. This purchase was a bit similar to the prophet Jeremiah buying a field shortly before the exile. He bought as a statement of trust in God’s promise to bring the people back to the land. Abraham bought this land as a statement of trust in God’s promise that this land would belong to his and Sarah’s descendants.
Sarah died with faith in these promises and so she was buried in promise. She was buried in certain hope that God would keep His promises. She was buried not only in hope of the Promised Land, but in hope of new life. If you remember our last study, you remember that Abraham had reasoned that resurrection was necessary for God to keep a promise; that’s Hebrews 11:19, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead.” Abraham still reasoned that God could even raise the dead.
Abraham buried his wife in this cave believing that God could raise the dead. Abraham was buried in this cave believing that God could raise the dead. Isaac would be buried in this cave as would Rebekah and Jacob and Leah. Before he died in Egypt, Joseph made his family promise to bring his bones to this cave for burial, and at the time of the Exodus they did. They didn’t do that because there was something magical about this cave. They did that because even in death faith trusts in the promises of God. As Hebrews put it, “these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”
Abraham wept when Sarah died. He ripped his clothes. He cut his beard. He disheveled his hair. He could say with Schwarzenegger, “my world has fallen apart.” What did he do with that grief? He went to the promises. He went to God.
That’s what the promised son of Abraham invites you to do. As he looked his own death square in the face, Jesus didn’t tell his disciples, “God had a cave prepared for our bones, guys.” He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
That’s the promise of new creation. You bury your believing loved ones exactly the same way Abraham buried believing Sarah. You bury them in the sure knowledge that God will keep His promises.
Abraham saw that the promises were the conduit to resurrected life. The same goes for us. The promises made to Abraham are the conduit to resurrected life. Thomas asked this conduit a question, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” The promised son of Abraham said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The promises are the only path forward in death, which is why Jesus is the only way to the Father. The promises are the only path forward in death. That was why Abraham could bury Sarah in hope. That’s why you must turn to the promises when your world falls apart. That’s faith like Abraham’s. Amen.