Genesis 23: The Only Land Abraham Ever Owned Was a Grave

Sarah died at Kiriath-arba, the town later called Hebron, at 127 years old. "Abraham went out to mourn and to weep for her" (Genesis 23:2).

Then he got up from beside her body and went to ask the Hittites for a grave.

What happens in Genesis 23?

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.

The Hittites offered him the finest of their tombs. Ephron, who owned the cave at Machpelah, offered him the whole field as a gift, in front of the town. Abraham bowed to them twice and kept asking to pay. Ephron named a price, four hundred shekels of silver, and Abraham weighed it out "in the hearing of the Hittites" (Genesis 23:16). The field, the cave and every tree inside its boundaries passed to him "in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city" (Genesis 23:18).

Why did Abraham insist on paying?

God says nothing in this chapter. No vision, no voice, no angel at the gate. Abraham acts on words God had spoken decades before, and he acts in public. A gift leaves the giver's family with a claim on the ground. A sale weighed out before witnesses at the city gate is a record that stands. Abraham wanted the first piece of the promised land on the record, legally his, in the country God had said would belong to his children.

This is what holding a promise looks like in a week of grief. Of all the land of Canaan, Abraham would hold one field and one cave in his lifetime, and he buried Sarah there as a man who expected the rest to follow.

How does Genesis 23 point to Jesus?

Stephen, on trial in Jerusalem, said God gave Abraham "no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground" (Acts 7:5). Hebrews says Abraham and his family "died in faith, without having received the things they were promised" (Hebrews 11:13). The cave at Machpelah filled with people who died holding that promise: Sarah, then Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah and Jacob.

Jesus answered a question about the resurrection with God's words from the burning bush, "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Matthew 22:32). The men in that cave still had a living God. Then Jesus Himself was laid in a tomb cut into rock outside Jerusalem, and on the third morning an angel told the women, "Come, see the place where He lay" (Matthew 28:6). Christ is "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Everyone buried at Machpelah was buried waiting for Him.

What do you do with a promise you have not seen yet?

Abraham knew God well enough to pay full price for a grave in the land God had promised him. That is how God made Himself known to Abraham: He spoke, and Abraham trusted Him for the rest of his life on the strength of it.

If God has promised you something and you are still waiting, put it on the record. Write the words and the date in the Doxa app, the way Abraham's purchase was witnessed at the gate. Then write down the small part you already hold, your one field. On a day when the grief is heavy and you hear nothing from heaven, you will have both in front of you.

What has God promised you that you are still holding without seeing it?

Deeper study today in the Doxa Deeper Dive: the two words Abraham used for himself at the gate, and who prayed them to God after him. Read it here.