Genesis 23:2: The first death in the family, and the verse gives the town two names and a country
Read it →"And Sarah died at Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her." One sentence, and it is careful about where in a way that Genesis usually is not about a death. The town is named twice — the old name and the one the reader uses — and then the country is named as well, as if it mattered which nation's ground she died on. It does. The next twenty verses are a property transaction, and the whole point of the transaction is that Abraham has been told this land is his descendants' and owns none of it. Sarah dies in a country he is a resident alien in, and the chapter is about him buying a grave in it. Kiriath-arba means the town of four, or Arba's town; Joshua 14:15 says Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim. Hebron is the name it kept, and it is the ridge Abraham has been coming back to since Genesis 13:18, nineteen miles south of Jerusalem and three thousand feet up. The sources are unanimous about the ground: every vote goes to Tel Rumeida, the old tell on the western shoulder of the modern city. Canaan is drawn as it is drawn everywhere in this series — a ring at the land's own centre, up near the Jezreel, rather than at any place a person stood. That is what the sources do with a country, and it is worth seeing: the verse fixes Sarah's death inside a nation whose only agreed point on a map is a spot nobody in this story ever visits. She is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is recorded, and it is given in the verse before this one: a hundred and twenty-seven years.
Regions on this map
The ridge Abraham has come back to since Genesis 13:18, under the name it had before his and the name it has kept. The chapter that follows is about buying a piece of it.
Given both its names in one clause — Kiriath-arba, the town of four or of Arba, whom Joshua 14:15 calls the greatest of the Anakim, and Hebron, which is what it has been called ever since. It is three thousand feet up on the Judean ridge, nineteen miles south of Jerusalem, and Abraham has been pitching his tent by the oaks here since Genesis 13:18. Every vote in the gazetteer goes to Tel Rumeida, the tell on the western shoulder of the modern city.
Today: Tel Rumeida, Hebron, West Bank
Named here and again over the grave, because the whole point of what Abraham does next is which country the ground is in. He has been promised it and owns none of it.
Named at Sarah's death and again over her grave seventeen verses later — "in the land of Canaan" is how Genesis 23 twice fixes the field, as if the country were the point of the purchase. It is. The sources plot the whole land at its own centre, up near the Jezreel, so the ring here is a nation and not a place anyone in this chapter stood.
Today: the land between the Jordan and the sea (representative point)
Genesis 23:2 in full
- Genesis 23:2And Sarah died at (that is, ) in the land of , and Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.