Genesis 23:19–20

I believe that in buying Machpelah for a burying-place, Abraham gave expression to his faith in resurrection. "He stood up from before his dead." Faith cannot keep death in view for long. Resurrection is what always fills the vision of faith, and in its power faith can rise up from before the dead. Death is the boundary of Satan's power; but where Satan ends, God begins.

This was the same faith. The faith of a dead and risen man, the faith that had already received Isaac and offered Isaac, now buries Sarah. Abraham believed in resurrection. He believed in God as the God of resurrection — the God who gives life to the dead, and calls things that do not exist as though they did. The cave of Machpelah tells us this.

God had revealed Himself to Abraham as the Almighty and as the God of resurrection. He had assured him that the land where he lived as a stranger — all the land of Canaan — was his for an everlasting possession (Genesis 17:8). It was all his by promise, though not yet in his possession. Trusting God's promise, he was careful to lay Sarah's body to rest in the promised land. In the land of Canaan she had lived with Abraham as a stranger and a pilgrim. "In the land of Canaan" she had died, and "in the land of Canaan" she was buried.

Hebrews 11 tells us plainly that these all — Sarah included — died, not in possession, but in faith. This passage is the most striking witness of it. Until Sarah's burial Abraham owned not so much as a place to set his foot. He remains a pilgrim and a stranger to the last. He has to buy even a burying-place. He would have Canaan only under the glory of the Lord, and in the day of resurrection. He is content to wait until then.

The name "Machpelah" means a "doubling," or a turning back on itself — a hint, it would seem, of resurrection.

Abraham bought it from the sons of Heth (fear) with the silver money (of atonement). So it becomes the portion of faith — a tomb, yes, but with a fruitful field attached, and right opposite Hebron. It stands in view of "participation" with Christ. For Christ has been in death. Through death He destroyed the one who had the power of death, so that He might free those who lived their whole lives as slaves to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15). Death then becomes simply being made like Him in His death.

How good it is to remember that the grave was bought and paid for. It is far from being only a scene of desolation. The trees with their blossoms and fruit — the blessed hopes and assurances of immortality and a glorious resurrection — flourish around it. So too for Israel, buried for the present. The trees of promise still grow around the field of her burial. They declare that the Lord will yet visit His people, bring them up out of their graves of national dispersion and restore them in blessing to the land.

We have to travel on to Hebrews 11:9-16 to get light on that point. There we discover that he had expectations tied to a scene lying not only outside the land of promise but outside the earth altogether. He went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land. He did that because he was "looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." We further read that he desired "a better country, that is, a heavenly one."

The noble manners and feelings of these early fathers show us a great truth. Abraham had the heir and all the promises, yet he owned nothing here below. He had to buy a grave to bury his dead out of his sight. That is all he had as a present possession in the earth.

It is completely wrong to say that God later gave him a possession in Canaan — the piece of land he bought from Ephron as a burial place. God's gift is absolute and future... Who that already owned this land, or any other, would think of buying what was his own? There he lays his dead in land so clearly not his own that he has to buy it for the purpose. That is the pledge to faith that he will have it another day.

Why was Abraham so particular about this purchase? Why was he so eager to make his claim to Ephron's field and cave good in a righteous way? Why so determined to weigh out the full price "current with the merchant"? Faith is the answer. He did it all by faith. He knew the land was his in prospect. He knew that in glory his descendants would yet own it. Until then he would owe nothing to people who would one day be driven out of it.

We may be sure that we should compare this with Matthew 13:44. There a man finds a treasure hidden in a field, then goes and sells all that he has to buy the field. The field is the world, and the Lord Jesus has sacrificed everything to buy it, just for the sake of the treasure... He would not simply demand the world back. He would accept it on no other terms than paying the full price for it.

Abraham weighed out the purchase money, four hundred shekels of silver in the currency merchants used, and handed it over... and there he buried Sarah. How strange a thing to do for "the heir of the world"! Where those title deeds were stored for safe keeping, no one can say. But we may be sure that the God of Abraham will see to it. The One who "was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power" will come to take up His earthly rights among His ancient people.

He bought that place and took every care to make it his own, to have it as his possession. Beyond it he cared nothing for a single acre of the whole land. That tells us of his faith in resurrection... He placed both Sarah and his son Isaac into the hands of the One who, as he knew, gives life to the dead. The grain of wheat that died, as he knew, would live again. The handful of sacred dust, as he knew, was to be gathered again.

All was his by promise, though not yet in possession. In the faith of God's promise he was careful to lay the body of Sarah to rest in the Promised Land... In the same faith, at a later date, the sons of Isaac bury their father at Hebron, in the land of Canaan. So too, in due time, his sons bury Jacob in faith in the land of Canaan, in the cave of Machpelah, though he dies in Egypt. In the same fine faith, Joseph, as he came to die, makes the children of Israel swear to carry his bones from Egypt to the land of Canaan.