Genesis 23 Commentary
Sarah dies aged 127. She must be buried but Abraham is a foreigner and a stranger in the land. We guess his constant wandering made him appear more foreign than normal for a man who had spent a considerable number of years in Canaan.
It is also worth noting that Abraham needed a decent burial place for his esteemed wife. We will see later that this place became the official burial place for the patriarchs.
Abraham is seen buying land that essentially belonged to him. God had given it to him. This is one big question! We doubt if Abraham fully understood what God meant by land ownership. Maybe it’s us today who don’t understand what God meant.
Who hasn’t struggled with the thought that God has given us all things, yet we suffer for lack of basics!
Our struggles could partly be blamed on our poor understanding of ownership. It’s a definition we have borrowed from a devil-controlled world. For many of us, it means exclusive possession and use of what we think we own.
You cannot use it because it’s mine. The world’s view of ownership has greediness written all over the definition. Then you know our definition of ownership is off the mark!
Check the list of characters and players in this chapter and you know God isn’t one of them! In fact, the word “God” doesn’t appear and is not even referenced. We have a funeral and a need for a burial place. A business transaction ensues.
But should we really be this simple with the holy script?
Never mind the culture, but you can still pick the value that the community attached to Abraham as a human being. They respected him. He was a good man. We too can defend him. Remember his relationship with Abimelek and the treaty of peace between the men. He didn’t take advantage of his position, instead, he allowed his nephew Lot to be the first one to choose the land he wanted.
He refused gifts from the rescued kings.
His interactions with others were laced with the grace of the God he served. It’s little wonder that the Hittites gladly consent to Abraham’s request. It looks simple in our eyes but it wasn’t. Yes, there was a “seller willing and buyer willing” situation. But the community needed to give their consent, otherwise the sale doesn’t go through.
Abraham finds peace with the community because of several years of investment – a steady walk with the LORD.
See how the community values relationships above money! We have many lessons to learn from here. Of course, our communities are bigger and more complex, but the basics are the same. The community doesn’t meet every time there is a big decision to make. We have rules and constitutions and all sorts of documents to guide everything.
It all sounds great until we discover that we have this situation out of failure to meet and objectively consider each case individually. We have glorified failure so much that we want to run our families and our churches like this. We fail to help a brother in need because the rules demand that the brother be a member of the church for at least x years.
We fail to make a godly decision because we haven’t formed a quorum during our meetings!
Yes, this business transaction is smoothened by Abraham’s faith in the LORD God. After all, God isn’t absent from our daily issues! His presence is always in the walk!
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