Genesis 23:17: A deed read out in full, and its one bearing does not check out
Read it →Commentary on Genesis 23:17
Genesis 23:17 records a legal sale: Ephron's field at Machpelah, the cave in it, and every tree inside its borders pass to Abraham before the people of the city. It reads like a title deed — but why buy a corner of land God had already promised him?
A Lawful Sale Before Witnesses
Abraham was grieving, yet he handled the burial like a piece of formal business:
Even in the presence of death he would keep the place of pilgrim and stranger among them. He would pay in full for a possession — not of a mansion or an estate, but of a grave. Ephron, in Eastern fashion, set his price very high for those days. Abraham weighed it out in front of everyone. That was the accepted way to make a lawful and secure transfer — a curious foreshadowing of modern exactness.
The Only Ground He Ever Owned
This plot was the sum of Abraham's real estate in the land God had promised him.
In these noble, simple manners and feelings of the early fathers we have a great truth. Abraham held the heir and all the promises, yet he had nothing here below. He had to buy a grave to bury his dead out of his sight. That is all he ever had as a present possession on the earth.
Far from weakening God's promise, the sale proves it still stands:
For who that owned this land, or any land, would think of buying his own possession? There he lays his dead in ground that is clearly not his own. He has to buy it for that purpose. The sale is the pledge to faith that he will have the land another day.
He Would Buy, Not Take a Gift
The sons of Heth offered the burial ground free of charge. Abraham refused, and the refusal was deliberate.
The kindness of the world would press a burial place on Abraham as a gift. True to his pilgrim character, he refuses to take the place of a prince who receives gifts. He is content to be the stranger who pays for what he needs. He refused to use the praise of the world to lift himself up. He will not let the kindness of the world move him off the stranger's path. As he had earlier refused the gifts of the king of Sodom, so now he declines the gifts of the children of Heth.
A Grave Bought in Hope
The purchase was more than a funeral arrangement. Commentators read it as an act of confidence, not defeat:
I believe Abraham showed his faith in resurrection when he bought Machpelah as a burial place... Faith cannot keep death in view for long; it has a higher object. Resurrection is what always fills the sight 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.
The trees named in the deed carry the same hope, and one writer extends it to Israel:
How good it is to remember that the grave has been bought. It is far from being only a scene of desolation. The trees flourish around it with their blossoms and fruit — the blessed hopes and assurances of immortality and a glorious resurrection. So too for Israel, buried for the present: the trees of promise still grow all 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 scattering, and restore them in blessing to the land.
The Field and the Treasure
One writer compares Abraham's buying of a whole field for one grave to a parable Jesus told:
Ephron himself offered to give Abraham the place without charge, but Abraham insisted on paying the full value of the land. We should surely compare this with Matthew 13:44. There a man finds treasure hidden in a field, then sells all 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. Abraham's treasure, of course, was Sarah, whom he would hide in the field. So the treasure stands for the godly in Israel, and the field is the world.
Summary
- Bought, not begged. Abraham turned down free land from the Hittites, just as he had turned down the king of Sodom's goods. He paid full price and stayed a stranger.
- Bought, not owned. A man does not buy what is already his. The sale proves the land was still to come, and it pledged that he would have it one day.
- Bought, and witnessed. He weighed out the silver in front of witnesses. Even in grief he was exact in business.
- Bought in hope. The grave was bought in hope, not defeat. The trees named in the deed stand around it like a promise of resurrection.
- Bought for a treasure. Abraham bought a whole field for the one he laid in it. In the same way, commentators suggest, Christ paid for the world for the sake of the treasure in it.
