CHAPTER XIII. MACHPELAH. Sarah dies; her character-Burial-places-Abraham buys MachpelahThe contract-Money-Mosque of Hebron and Abraham's burialplace described-Life beyond the grave and resurrection of the body. FOR some years Abraham continued to reside at Beersheba, and then for some reason he moved northwards to his old quarters at Hebron. Thirty-seven years had passed since he last had pitched his tent there, and now he comes but to face the last great sorrow of his life; for here he loses the faithful companion of his pilgrimage, his trusty partner and wife Sarah. She had reached the age of one hundred and seven and twenty years when she was called away. A long life had passed by the side of a husband whom she loved and reverenced, a life in which she had been cherished, honoured, and tenderly treated. She was no ideal wife of an ideal hero. Real flesh and blood was she, with many of the foibles as well as many of the virtues of a woman. As a wife she sets an example of conjugal obedience and subordination; as a mother, of the warmest love. Old stories tell that it was the intelligence of Abraham's awful mission to Moriah that killed her, and that he found her dead on his return. The maternal instinct was always warm within her. This was one motive that made her so earnestly desirous of children, and that led her to take means to obtain a child even from her bondmaid. She is jealous and unreasonable. She is cruel to Hagar, and envious of her position as a mother; she lays all the blame of her own * Beer, "Leben Abraham's," pp. 72 ff. impatient act upon her husband; she resents the smallest injury to her own son Isaac, and casts away all care for the child of her adoption in attending to the interests of the legitimate heir. But she has true faith at last. This it was that rendered her worthy to be a mother. Impulsive and impetuous, she laughed derisively at the angel's word; but, confirmed by further assurance, she accepts the sign, and is happy in the reason for laughter which God gives unto her. But through all changes and under all circumstances she is an attached and devoted wife, and is held forth by an apostle as a high example, as the mother of all those who do well (1 Pet. iii. 6). And now this loving pair are separated; the tie that bound them is snapped asunder. "And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her." The firm, unyielding saint sheds tears of genuine sorrow, as any one of mortal mould would do, over his dead wife. Such tears are not unmanly. Jesus wept. They bring this holy man very near unto us; we know that he is one of ourselves; we clasp his hand by the grave of Sarah, and feel his grief to be our heritage. He had given way to his natural sorrow; he had perhaps gone aside into his lost wife's tent to mourn for her apart; now he comes forth from before his dead (the loved friend still his, though parted for a time), and seeks to find a resting-place for her dead body. Though one day, in his posterity, to receive possession of all the land, he owned not a foot of the country as yet; he had no home, no spot endeared by long association and the remembrance of the past. But he will now obtain a place of burial, a spot where he may lay in security his loved one's mortal remains, and thus, as it were, take possession of the land, and hand on the inheritance to his heirs. The sight of his departed wife had reminded him of his own mortality, of the insecure tenure on which he held his present life. "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you," he says to the children of Heth the Hittite, who inhabited the district; "give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight." No strange wish this, but one common to men of all time and of every place. The cultured heathen, the ordinary Christian, the illiterate savage, pay regard to the burial-place of their dead, respect the tombs of ancestors, though not for the same reason in all cases. Under the gospel, of course, the belief in the resurrection of the body has led to the reverent treatment of the dead; as shrines of the grace of God, others have regarded the mortal frames of their friends. The costly and elaborate embalming of bodies in Egypt sprang from the notion that the soul would some day need its earthly tabernacle; in other countries the preservation of the corpse was an instinct of natural piety and affection, arising from a mysterious respect for the departed, and a desire to secure the beloved form and features from the ravages of decay. Cremation seems to have been not practised in Palestine at this time, though in after ages among the Jews it was sometimes used both in honour and in punishment.' Rock-hewn graves were usual both in Canaan and other countries. In Ur, where natural rock is unknown, Abraham had seen vaulted chambers used for the bestowal of the corpse.2 In Oorfa, or Edessa (which was formerly supposed to be Abraham's birth-place), in the neighbourhood of Haran, the patriarch must have often beheld Machpelahs. Here are still found caves hewn out of the rock, containing, first, a hall some thirty feet long by twenty broad, the entrance to which is closed by a stone; and opposite to this entrance another opening leading into an inner chamber, round which lay the dead in niches cut in the walls.3 In Canaan, where limestone abounded, excavations were easily made. These were sometimes sunk in the soft strata and covered with a slab flush with the surface, sometimes raised above it more in the shape of a sarcophagus. Other tombs, again, are simple excavations, oven-shape or pigeon-hole loculi, as they are called; but the most common sepulchres are found in natural caverns, which are utilized by having shelves or receptacles cut in the sides or cavities. It was on such a natural cave that Abraham had set his heart. In his long residence at Hebron he had doubtless often seen and explored this grotto, and now it seemed to him to be admirably fitted to be the burial-place of his race. It was a double cave,5 i.e., either having two entrances or divided into two chambers; and its name was Machpelah, which appellation also applied to the district in which it was situated. No ancient site is better ascertained. An unbroken 1 Lev. xx. 14; xxi. 9; 1 Sam. xxxi. 12; Amos vi. 10. tradition has attached to the spot. The various claimants of the Holy Land have vied with each other in showing respect to this sepulchre. Jew, Christian, and Mahometan, have alike agreed in honouring this locality. The building which now encloses the płace stands on a little plain "before Mamre," opposite to the spot where the patriarch set up his tent when he dwelt beneath the terebinth tree. This cave he desired to have for his own for ever, that he might not have to mingle the dust of his family with that of the heathen, strangers to his race. To prevent all future disputes, he was minded to purchase it and the land in its immediate neighbourhood, and to have his title formally acknowledged before due witnesses by the owner of the soil. He begins by expressing his wish to the chief men of the place. They answer him with that Oriental exaggeration which is so common to this day, bidding him take his choice of their sepulchres. He had termed himself a stranger and a sojourner; they look upon him as a mighty prince, one who had done good service in the field of battle, had a strong retinue, was possessed of great wealth, and was highly esteemed; they are solicitous to receive such an one into communion with themselves, to bind him to them by the tie of common rights of sepulture. But this is far from meeting the wishes of the father of the faithful. He could not sully his pure worship with the Canaanites' idolatrous funeral ceremonies; if he was cutting himself off from all old family connections, and seeking a new resting-place far from Haran and the home of his fathers, he must have this sanctuary to himself, apart from alien denizens, and secure from heathen intrusion. The place belonged to Ephron, or Ephraim, as Josephus (“Antiq." i. 14) calls him, the son of Zohar; and Abraham, courteously bowing before the people of the land, entreated their good services in getting the possessor to sell it for its stipulated value. Ephron, on hearing his request, at once, in the customary complimentary manner of an Oriental effecting a bargain, offers to make him a present of it: "The field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people I give it thee; bury thy dead." But Abraham will not receive it as a gift. The land was God's bequest to him; he will not take a yard of it at the hand of man except as duly purchased. No one shall say that he has been enriched by boons obtained from the inhabitants. So a bargain is struck; the desired spot is sold to Abraham for four hundred shekels of silver, "" current money with the merchant." "This is the value of the ground,” says Ephron; "but what is that betwixt me and thee?" Such a small transaction is of no account with us rich men. In an eastern bazaar or place of resort you may any day hear similar bargains made in like words, and accompanied with identical tokens of respect and courtesy. The whole account is thoroughly true to nature, and is another proof of the unchangeable character of Oriental habits. One is struck with the care with which the contract was drawn up in this case. The account of the transaction reads like an extract from a legal document. It may be doubted, indeed, whether the terms were actually reduced to writing, as there is no evidence to decide the question whether letters were known to the inhabitants of the country; but the actual conditions were certainly recited before witnesses, and the contract thus became binding. At this present time bargains among the Fellaheen are not always made in writing, but declarations before witnesses are considered as obligatory as if the parties had affixed name and seal to a document.' The purchase of Machpelah is thus denoted in this ancient record: "The field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the border thereof round about, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city." The price paid was about £50 of our money, if we take the shekel of silver as weighing half an ounce. Coined money is not mentioned before the Babylonish Captivity, and the earliest existing Jewish coins were struck by Simon Maccabæus, B.C. 140. The Egyptians in very early times had money in the form of rings, but these rings were not of uniform value, and as a medium of exchange were always weighed. Babylonians and Assyrians, as the monuments show, weighed their uncoined money to make particular payments. The inhabitants of Canaan, especially those of the sea coast, were great traffickers, and were accustomed to transactions of barter, where goods were given in exchange for a certain amount of one of the precious metals. The current money with the merchant, mentioned on the present occasion, may have been bars or laminæ "Special Papers," p. 346. |