Why was a burial place so important in the Bible?

"These all died in faith." The history strikingly illustrates this. They valued their dead bodies and the burying places which held them. While they lived, they were content to sojourn in Canaan without having so much as to set their foot on. But "they died in faith." The promise of God had made over that land, that very land, to them, though they themselves were to be gathered to their fathers (Gen. 15); and this was the warrant for their dying in faith, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection unto the enjoyment of it. They would link their dead, though not their living, bodies with that land. Their care in securing the field of Ephron, the cave of Machpelah, for a burying-place, tells us this; and so the jealousy with which those of them who died in Egypt secured the carriage of their bones over to the promised land. All this verifies that "they died in faith." Whether their bodies lay in Machpelah or Sychem mattered not, for their bones would, in either case, be equally linked with the promised land. Stephen tells us that all the fathers were animated with this same faith. (Acts 7:13) And I quite agree with those who say that this solves that difficult verse. (Acts 7:16) Stephen shortly tells us that all were carried over from Egypt to Canaan, but whether to the ground which Abraham bought of Ephron, or that which Jacob bought of Hamor, it mattered not, for both equally linked their hopes with the promised inheritance. By faith they "gave commandment concerning their bones." (Heb. 11:22)

The patriarchs of the Jewish family all put special value on their dead bodies; they were religiously laid up in Machpelah, and this care and zeal of theirs was the confession of their sure and certain hope of resurrection. But they connected resurrection with the land of Canaan. And therefore Jacob and Joseph, who died in Egypt, provided that their bones should be carried over and laid in Canaan, thus telling us that their hope of resurrection was the same as their hope of final possession of the promised land. All this, it is true, was perfect in those who had but earthly resurrection hopes.

Burial in the land began with Sarah. It was no mere feeling or fancy, sentiment or superstition, but a fruit of faith, in Abraham. He looked to have from God's hand the land wherein he laid her body. The gift of Canaan was far surer than any possession of a burying-place meanwhile. I deny not that he desired a better country, that is, a heavenly, that he looked for the city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. But he rejoiced to see the day of Christ and expected in it the wresting of the earth from the hands of the enemy, and knew that all the land of Canaan would be his for an everlasting possession.

Hence the importance to the patriarchs, while preserving their pilgrim character, of burial in Canaan. So, when Abraham was gathered to his people, his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the same spot, "in the cave of Machpelah in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre, the field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife" (Gen. 25:9-10). There too was Isaac laid by his sons Esau and Jacob (Gen. 35:27-29). And so it was with Jacob, though he died in Egypt, for Joseph had him embalmed; "and his sons did unto him according as he commanded them, for his sons carried him into the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burying-place of Ephron the Hittite before Mamre" (Gen. 50:12-13). Joseph again (Gen. 50:25-26) "took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence." Hence he too was embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt; but when deliverance came, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him (Ex. 13:19), which the children of Israel in due time buried, not in the cave of Machpelah but in Shechem, "in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver; and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph" (Joshua 24:32).

Abraham had carefully possessed himself of Machpelah, on the occasion of Sarah's death; and there he had buried Sarah, and there Isaac and Ishmael had buried him; and there, at this time, Jacob and Esau bury Isaac and there afterwards his twelve sons bury Jacob.

The purchase of this parcel of ground, and the care the patriarchs manifested in the matter of their burial there, tell us of their faith in their own happy resurrection and its attendant inheritance of the land. It tells us that hope was in their souls as surely as faith — that as they rested, without a doubt, in the certainty of their call and adoption, so did they, with like assurance, in the life and inheritance prepared for them in the world to come. They lived in faith, and they died in faith. They were a people in whose souls the life of faith and hope was known and enjoyed. They betray nature again and again; they err, they shift and contrive and play false with God at times through unbelief; they incur discipline and rebuke, and at times are humbled before men; but they seem never to doubt the blessed facts, that they were adopted and endowed by the God of glory. Faith and hope lived in their souls. I say not that they had what we have. There is now an unction, an earnest, and a witness, fruit of the given, indwelling Spirit, imparting not only the power but the character of this day of ours. But the patriarchs, in their infant age, seem never to doubt. And this is precious — that God, even in the earliest communications of Himself — communications of Himself to His elect even in their childhood, or, in the infant days of Genesis — would be known by them as One to be trusted both for the present and the future.

God had revealed Himself to Abraham as the Almighty, and as the God of resurrection, and had assured him that the land wherein he was a stranger — all the land of Canaan — was given to him for an everlasting possession (Gen. 17:8). 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 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 (vv. 2, 19). In the same faith, at a later date, the sons of Isaac bury their father at Hebron, in the land of Canaan (Gen. 35:27-29). So, too, in due time, Jacob, though he dies in Egypt, is buried in faith by his sons in the land of Canaan, in the cave of Machpelah (Gen. 50:13). In the like fine faith, Joseph when he came to die, takes an oath of the children of Israel that they shall carry his bones from Egypt to the land of Canaan (Gen. 50:25-26; Ex. 13:19).

The closing command of Jacob to his sons now comes before us, and still we hear the accents of faith. It is worthy of note that his thoughts turned to the original spot that had been bought by Abraham near Mamre. As Rachel had been so special an object of his affection we might have expected that he would have desired to be buried by her side. But no! there was this spot that had been purchased in the land, to faith a kind of pledge that one day God would fulfil His promise and all the land would be theirs. There had been laid Abraham Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah and there would he be buried.

In the first place, here we have the vow which Jacob exacts from Joseph—that he shall be buried in Canaan, in the sepulchre of his fathers. He thus links himself with them as waiting, even in death, for the promise to be fulfilled. Thus the promise is a promise of life which death cannot vanquish or undo.

Now, I believe that in purchasing Machpelah for a burying-place, Abraham gave expression to his faith in resurrection. "He stood up from before his dead." Faith cannot long keep death in view; it has a higher object, blessed be the "living God" who has given it. Resurrection is that which ever fills the vision of faith; and, in the power thereof, it can rise up from before the dead. There is much conveyed in this action of Abraham. We want to understand its meaning much more fully, because we are much too prone to be occupied with death and its consequences. Death is the boundary of Satan's power; but where Satan ends, God begins. Abraham understood this when he rose up and purchased the cave of Machpelah as a sleeping place for Sarah. This was the expression of Abraham's thought in reference to the future. He knew that in the ages to come, God's promise about the land of Canaan would be fulfilled, and he was able to lay the body of Sarah in the tomb, "in sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection."

First, Jacob dies, and is buried. Again we find him charging, this time all his sons, to bury him with his fathers in Machpelah. Do we not need the impressive reiteration that the promise of life is all untouched by death? The living man sends his dead body in to take possession in hope of his inheritance.

Before the call of Rebekah is recorded, Sarah passes away. How simple and lofty is the whole scene connected with the burial of this holy woman! Abraham, in all the dignity of his bereavement, would secure even in death that separation from the world which their life had maintained. He would not bury his dead in the choicest sepulchre of the men of the land, for faith looks onward to resurrection and the obtaining of an abiding inheritance. The tomb must be purchased, suggestively with the money later on used as a type of redemption. How good it is to remember that the grave is purchased, and so far from being a mere scene of desolation, the trees with their blossoms and fruits, the blessed hopes and assurances of immortality and a glorious resurrection, flourish around it. So too for Israel, for the present buried, there are still the trees of promise growing all around the field of her burial, declaring 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.