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BIBLE
STUDY LESSON
For
the week beginning Sunday November 25, 2018
THE BURIAL
OF SARAH
Genesis 23
At the end of chapter 22 we are re-introduced to Nahor, who was Abraham’s
brother, and to Milcah, Nahor’s wife. They were still living in Padan-aram, a
large plains area in Mesopotamia, 450 miles to the south of Beersheba were
Abraham now dwelled. Milcah had now bore Nahor eight sons, and, in addition,
Nahor’s concubine, Reumah, had also bore him four other children. Nahor’s
youngest son by Milcah was named Bethuel, and he became the father of Rebekah,
who would become the future wife of Isaac.
Sandwiched in between this horizontal
genealogy of Nahor at the end of chapter 22, and the marriage account of Isaac
and Rebekah in Genesis 24, we find the account of the death and burial of
Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who was, at the time of her passing, 127 years. Here the
scripture tells us that she died in Kiriath-arba (later called Hebron), a city
that is located about 28 miles northeast of Beersheba. There Abraham remained
and wept and mourned for Sarah for an unspecified amount of time, before
leaving her body and going to the Hittite elders to request a place to bury his
beloved wife.
The Hittite elders responded positively to
Abraham’s request telling him that they would be proud to offer him the very
best tombs that they have. Abraham humbled himself before them and said, “Since
this is how you feel, be so kind, as to ask Ephron son of Zohar to let me have
the cave of Machpelah, down at the end of the field. I want to pay the full
price, of course, whatever is publically agreed upon, so I may have a permanent
burial place for my family” (Vs.5-9 - NLT).
Ephron, who was sitting there among them,
answered Abraham and publically stated before all of the elders, “No sir,
please listen to me, I will give you the cave and the field. Here in the
presence of my people, I give it to you. Go and bury your dead”.
However, Abraham, who believed that the
land he was standing on, had already been given to him and to all of his
descendants as a permanent possession, by GOD, did not want to risk any future confusion,
or take-back attempts of the property, by any of the descendants of Ephron later
on, after his death.
By buying the property, Abraham would
insure that the land would legally be his to pass down to the next generation
of his family and beyond. And so, in essence, Abraham was making an investment
in the promises of GOD, on faith, and as it turned out, this would be the only
piece of the promised land that Abraham would actually legally own in his
lifetime. By insisting on buying the property, Abraham was faithfully
exhibiting that his hope was in the CREATOR of the land that was promised to
him, and not in the people who legally possessed it at that time.
And so Abraham paid the publically
suggested price of 400 shekels of silver for the field, the cave, and all of
the trees that were nearby. And he buried Sarah there in the cave near the
future site of Hebron, which also later became known as “the city of David”. In
fact, not only was Sarah buried there, but also Abraham (Genesis 25:9, Isaac
and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah (Genesis 49:29-31 and 50:13).
A Sunday school lesson
by,
Larry D. Alexander
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