Genesis 23:19: Every name the chapter has been using, in one sentence, over a grave

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."