About 17 years have passed between Chapters 22 and 23, the
sacrifice of Isaac and the death of his mother, Sarah. In Genesis 22, Abraham
reached the pinnacle of faith and obedience as he takes Isaac to Mount Moriah
to sacrifice him there. Now in Genesis 23, Abraham descends into the depths
as we watch him grieving, saying goodbye
to his wife, Sarah.
Chapter 23 is about the death of Sarah, the wife of Abraham,
but it contains much more than the death of Sarah. Here we learn lessons about
grieving, about true values. We
learn about our ultimate home.
23:1 The death of
Sarah. Sarah lived one hundred and twenty-seven years; these
were the years of the life of Sarah. Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is
recorded. Another interesting fact is
that nowhere in the Bible are we told to look to Mary the mother of Jesus as an
example of a godly woman (and doubtless she was), but twice we are told to look to Sarah as such an example (Isa. 51:1-2 ; 1 Pet. 3:3-6).
23:2 Abraham grieves
over Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath Arba (that is,
Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to
weep for her. Sarah was 127 years old when she died. Isaac, her son Isaac
would now be thirty-seven. She died before she would see her son Isaac married,
but God was gracious to allow her to see her son
to be a man.
Abraham mourned and wept over Sarah. What a hard day it is
when a man must bury his wife- his best friend!
Grief is a good and proper, God given
emotion to man. Every emotion in proper proportion and measure (e.g.
joy, sorrow and even anger) is good. At the grave of Lazarus Jesus wept (Jn. 11:35) and it was commented upon by
the Jews, ‘See how he loved him’ (Jn. 11:36).
But Christians ought never to be overtaken by their grief
to the point in which they become emotionally crippled and hopeless, unable to
function. There is a distinction between
grief and despair. Grief is proper and good according to the Scriptures. It is
important to grieve and to shed tears. There is, after all a real sense of loss.
The death of Sarah is a very hard experience for Abraham. But that sense of
loss must not lead to despair. Despair is grief without hope. Paul,
in writing to the Thessalonians makes this point, “But we
do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that
you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). The death of a loved one can be a very soul- crippling experience and it can be a distracting factor to our living,
and some people never properly recover from grieving. They grieve without
hope. Abraham does not. In Chapter 25 we shall see that Abraham will remarry,
and Keturah his second wife will bear him 6 more sons (25:2). Remarriage was no
betrayal of Sarah. Sarah would always have a special place in Abraham’s heart.
So then, as was customary in those days, and being nomadic
people, the body of Sarah was placed in a tent, and Abraham is with her and it
is here that we find him weeping. The memories that flood his mind are many. He probably remembers when they were first
married, when they were first called by God to leave their family in Ur and go
to an unknown land- the land of promise. Sarah had shared everything with him -
his uncertainty, his hardships, the unsettled life and the sinful decisions. He
remembers how Sarah cried bitter tears over her barrenness. In her desperation
to give him a son, she even offered her servant girl Hagar to him and Ishmael
was born. He remembered too, how finally Isaac, the son of promise was born. And
now she is dead. We can scarcely imagine the impact of Sarah's death upon
Abraham. They had had been married, perhaps, for well more than a 100 years.
And now Abraham must carry on this life without her.
23: 3-9 Abraham buys
land for Sarah’s burial from the Hittites. “I am a foreigner and a foreigner among you”. Abraham was a foreigner among these Hittites,
but that was not what made him feel as a foreigner. Hebrews
11:8-10 helps us to understand. He
wasn’t ultimately looking for a piece of earthly real estate. “He was look for that city that has
foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” He recognized his real home and abiding was
not here on earth. David knew this truth
(1 Chron. 29:14 and Ps.
39:12). And that is one of the great
reasons why Abraham did not despair when Sarah died, and why David did not
despair when his little son died (2 Sam.
12:15-23). Their hearts were not in
the hands of death and grief. Their hearts were in God’s hands.
The commentator Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse illustrates this in a moving story.[1]
He told of a young woman whose husband
had been killed in action during the war. When the telegram came, she read it and
then said to her mother. "Mother, I
am going up to my room and please don't disturb me." Her mother called
the father at work and told him what had happened. He came home and immediately
went up to the room. He opened the door quietly. He saw her kneeling beside her bed. The
telegram was spread open on the bed before her as she was bowed over it. And as
he stood there,he heard her say, "Oh,
my heavenly Father, Oh, my Father, my heavenly Father." Without a word
the man turned around and went back down the stairs and said to his wife, "She is in better hands than
mine."
And now Abraham asks for a place to bury her. “Give me property for a burial place among
you” (23:4). He had a particular
place in mind – the cave of Machpelah. It was situated on the land owned by Ephron
the son of Zohar. Abraham had earlier lived in this area and here he had built
an altar to God (Gen. 13:18).
23: 10-16 Abraham
negotiates with Ephron the Hittite for the land of Sarah’s tomb. This is one of few places in the land
of Palestine that has been authenticated today. One can visit the cave of
Machpelah- the cave of the Patriarchs.[2]
This is also where Isaac and Ishmael would bury Abraham (Gen 25:9). Isaac and Rebekah were both buried here (Gen. 49:31). Jacob buried Leah here (Gen.49:31); Joseph buried Jacob here (Gen. 50:13). Joseph did not want to be buried
in Egypt. He wanted his bones brought back to the land of Canaan and buried
with the patriarchs (Gen. 50:25). It
is located in the old city of Hebron. A mosque has been built above it.
Ephron says to Abraham, “I
give you the field and the cave”. He
did not mean it literally. This was apparently a typical way of negotiating in ancient cultures. First, the seller offered to give the item
free of charge – confident that the buyer would refuse the ceremonial offer.
When the buyer refused ‘the gift’, the seller would suggest a price, which in
our case he claimed was modest but was really very high. Abraham paid 400
shekels (23:15). By comparison, Jeremiah
paid 17 shekels for a field (Jer. 32:9)
and David paid only 50 shekels to buy a
site on which the temple in Jerusalem was built. (2 Sam 24:24). This was a rip off!
23:17-20 Abraham buys
the field and buries Sarah. The text emphasizes that this property was Abraham’s land by title
deed. It was the only piece of land
Abraham ever owned, in the land promised to him. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a
famous Russian writer of short stories and novels. He wrote a short story
entitled, “How much land does a man
need?”
The central character of this story is a man called Pahom, a greedy
man. He complains that he does not own enough land. He says: "if I had
plenty of land, I shouldn't fear the devil himself". Unbeknown to him,
Satan is sitting behind the stove and listening. Satan accepts his challenge
and also tells him that he would give Pahom more land, and then to snatch
everything from him. I will omit a lot of detail of Pahom’s greedy
pursuit of land, but at the end of the story he is introduced to a family, the
Bashkirs, who own a huge amount of land. Their offer is very unusual. For a sum of one thousand roubles, Pahom can
walk around as large an area as he wants. He starts early in the morning,
marking his route with a spade along the way. If he reaches his starting point
by sunset that day, the entire area of the land which he has marked will be
his, but if he does not reach his starting point as the sun goes down, he will
lose his money and receive no land. He is delighted as he believes that he has
hit upon the bargain of a lifetime. The day comes. He stays out as late as
possible, marking out land until just before the sun sets. Towards the end of
the day, he realizes that he is far from the starting point and runs back as
fast as he can to the waiting land owners, the Bashkirs. He finally arrives at
the starting point just as the sun sets, but he has utterly exhausted himself
from the run, and as he arrives Pahom drops dead.
His servant buries him in an ordinary grave only six feet
long and three feet wide. This answers the question posed in the title of the
story, “How much land does a man need?”
From Abraham’s perspective this was the only
land that he needed on this earth to bury the mortal remains of his loved ones.
The heavenly city was waiting. When you die the only piece of property you will
own will be a plot in a cemetery. Everything else will belong to someone else.
There is a lesson to
be learned about the request for a
burial place. Sarah’s soul is gone, but
her body is here, and it is precious to the Lord and to Abraham. The body- the remains ought to be precious to
us too. When Mary discovered that the tomb in which Jesus was laid is empty, she
doesn’t say, “They have taken away Jesus’
body and I don’t know where it is.” Her Lord had been taken away. Where was
he? Abraham was conscious that this was the body of Sarah and it needed to be shown
respect and love. This body must have a proper resting place, and a loving
burial. Burial plans ought to matter to us. Where his
dear wife was to be buried was more than a matter of sentiment. Burying his
wife was also a statement of faith. Have you considered what is going to happen
to your body after your death? Where are you going to be buried? Have you drawn
up a will? Do your loved ones know of your wishes? Have you thought of what you
want said or sung at your funeral service? Who do you want to take that
service?
CONCLUSION:
The big point behind
this story is that Sarah dies in
the land of Canaan, the land of promise, a reminder of the ultimate promise as
found in Hebrews 11:13, “All
these died in faith without receiving the promises, but having seen them and
having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were
strangers and exiles on the earth.” This chapter is about persevering to
the end, trusting in God and his promises, trusting in Him even when our dreams do not materialize in this world.
Sarah died. There is escape from death. In fact,
the whole world is a hospital and every person in it is a terminal patient. The question is ' how will you die?' Sarah died
in hope and in faith, even though she never never saw her son’s bride; she never saw her
offspring in this life; she never saw her grandchildren . She never saw her ultimate offspring – the Messiah in
this life.
But this we know, that
when she died, when she left this body, her faith turned to sight, and whatever
was unclear for her on earth is now
clear in heaven, as she has become a
citizen of the eternal city.
From that perspective you and I stand exactly
where Sarah and Abraham stood 4000 years ago. We have not yet received the
fulfillment of all God has promised. But we have the down payment,
the inner assurance of the Holy Spirit, based upon the promises in the Word.
We will die, but the
promises of God continue and await the fulfillment when we get to our heavenly Canaan. He who has been with us so far will not leave
us when we depart from this world.
Thank God then for these lessons and encouragement from the life of Sarah.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Patriarchs
The Cave of the Patriarchs, also called the Cave of Machpelah (Hebrew: מערת המכפלה, About this sound Me'arat ha-Makhpela trans. "cave of the double tombs")
and known by Muslims as the Sanctuary of Abraham or the Ibrahimi Mosque ,
located in the heart of the old city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) in the Hebron
Hills.[Gen. 23:17-19][Gen. 50:13] The
site of the Cave of the Patriarchs is located beneath a Saladin-era mosque,
which had been converted from a large rectangular Herodian-era Judean
structure.
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