Genesis 23:16

Sarah dies, and Abraham, who still owns none of the promised land, buys a field with a cave at Machpelah from the Hittites to bury her. Asking for the grave, he opened with the plain truth about himself: "I am a foreigner and an outsider among you" (Genesis 23:4). More than sixty years earlier God had appeared to him in this land and said, "I will give this land to your offspring" (Genesis 12:7). Later the promise widened to "all the land of Canaan, as an eternal possession" (Genesis 17:8). After all those years on that promise, Abraham owned none of it, and had to ask the neighbours for somewhere to bury his wife.

Abraham insisted on paying in full so the ground would be his beyond dispute, bought in public before witnesses on the strength of what God had said about the land. Before Ephron offered anything, Abraham had already asked for the cave "for full price" (Genesis 23:9). The Hebrew is bekhesef male, literally in full silver, from male (H4392), full. Four hundred shekels is about four and a half kilograms of silver, a sum the whole gate could watch go onto the scales.