16

A FINAL RESTING PLACE

Thus thou shalt plant a garden round the tomb,

Where golden hopes may flower, and fruits immortal bloom.

James D. Burns¹

Sarah was younger than Abraham, but she died before He did. She had traveled a long way with her husband, had been faithful to His cause, had been instrumental in giving Him a child by Hagar, and then had given birth to a son of her own whose descendants would be extremely important to humanity. She was, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá notes, a woman who “glorified the human race” by her excellence, and Abraham mourned her passing.²

Sarah died in Mamre, a couple of miles outside the village of Hebron, which is about twenty-five miles south of Jerusalem. Hebron was controlled by a local Canaanite tribe that seems to have been indifferent to the presence of Abraham—neither hostile nor particularly welcoming. They might have had respect for Abraham, but He was clearly not part of their society and held no status in their eyes as a Messenger of God. He was just a humble sojourner, a resident alien Who lived in a tent and herded sheep that dined on wild grasses. When it came to burying a wife who was also a foreigner, Abraham would have been expected to follow the usual custom of using either a pit or a cave to hold the body.

If Abraham were to dig a shallow pit, it might be in an informal community cemetery already established to hold family members and servants that had been part of the extended households of Abraham and Lot. Each pit in the cemetery would probably have been lined with flat chunks of rock and topped off with a heavy slab of stone plus a heap of boulders. A large pottery jar, of the kind used to store grain or oil, might have been placed on top as a marker. An alternative method of burial, also in common use, would have been to find a cave on a rocky hillside in the wilderness and use it as family tomb where Abraham, too, when the time came, could be laid to rest beside Sarah.

But, in what must have been a surprising move to those around Him, Abraham did neither of these things. Instead, He went into the town of Hebron.

Abraham approached the elders of the town and bowed before them in greeting, saying, “I am a sojourning settler with you. Grant me a burial holding with you, and let me bury my dead now before me.” The men welcomed Abraham with perfunctory courtesy, but they ignored the idea of His buying any of the land lying within their control, probably because the notion of selling to an outsider would have been repugnant. They suggested, instead, that He choose one of the existing tombs in Hebron, promising that “none of us will refuse you his grave for burying your dead.” ³

Community and family tombs—caves or excavations that could hold multiple bodies—were common throughout Canaan. The elders might well have assumed that before Sarah was placed in one of the tombs, her body would spend several months in a shallow hillside pit where it could decompose. After that, the burial in Hebron would be a simple matter of gathering her bones and putting them in a box or jar. The jar would subsequently be placed in one of the existing tombs, where it would occupy very little space.⁴

Abraham bowed once again to the elders to show His respect and then deftly used their offer as a means of turning the conversation in the direction He intended it to go. “If you are willing to let me bury my dead,” He said, “Intercede with Ephron, son of Zoar, on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field.”⁵

The cave of Machpelah lay at the outer edge of the town, near Mamre, a location that would have made its sale at least marginally palatable to the townsmen because Abraham could approach it without walking across any of the property that already belonged to Hebron’s other residents. And, enticingly, Abraham also announced that He wasn’t looking for a bargain: “Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”⁶

Ephron, who had been sitting quietly among the elders, heard every word—as Abraham undoubtedly intended. He refused to take any money but offered the cave, along with the surrounding field, as a gift to Abraham, though in a manner that may have been contemptuous and clearly was not meant to be taken seriously. “I will give you the cave and the field. Here in the presence of my people, I give it to you. Go and bury your dead.”⁷

Abraham, naturally, declined the spurious offer. But He pounced on the fact that Ephron had linked land and cave and made them a package deal. “I will give the price of the field,” Abraham said, and “accept it from me that I may bury my dead there.”⁸ The tenor of the text of Genesis indicates that buying both land and cave was really what Abraham had intended all along, but that He had been wise enough to ask only for the cave at the beginning and let the first hint of selling the land come from the mouth of the owner.

Ephron, whether through greed at being able to name a price without any bargaining or from scornful glee at the chance to publicly humiliate an outsider, demanded an exorbitant sum: “Well, the land is worth four hundred pieces of silver but what is that between friends?”⁹

Abraham now had exactly what He needed, though at the outset it had seemed impossible—the offer of land and an appropriate cave in Hebron for a price determined by the owner and witnessed by the city elders. And, high though the price was, He had come prepared to pay it.

At this point, Ephron faced the prospect of concluding the deal or losing face in front of his peers. And because Abraham was paying exactly what was asked, with none of the usual bargaining to lower the price, Ephron and the rest of the townspeople would never be able to claim at a later date that a fair price had not been paid: “So Ephron’s field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre, the field and cave which was in it, and all the trees which were in the field, that were within all the confines of its border, were deeded over to Abraham for a possession.”¹⁰

Machpelah means two caves or double caves, but that shouldn’t necessarily be taken as indicating huge underground caverns. A traditional burial cave in Canaan, whether natural or man-made, was often quite small, maybe the size of a small bathroom. It was connected to the surface of the earth by a vertical shaft or a horizontal passageway through which someone could carry a body or jar of bones. After entombment, the entrance to the cave would be sealed with a boulder or slab of rock. Stones, rubble, and earth would be thrown into the shaft, filling it and rising in a mound to mark the location. For a second interment, the mound would be removed and the shaft cleared out so that the tomb could be reentered.

When Abraham died, He was entombed in the cave of Machpelah with Sarah. Because Abraham had bought the land outright, as a permanent family burial place, Isaac inherited the rights to it and was also buried there, as was his wife, Rebekah. The body of Isaac’s son, Jacob, was mummified in Egypt, where he had been living, and it was carried back to Canaan so that he could also be placed in the tomb alongside the remains of his first wife, Leah. A few traditions say that Ishmael was buried in the tomb as well, but that seems unlikely.

As the number of people who believed in Abraham grew, so did the honor accorded the tomb. Hebron itself, located along one of the trade routes between Egypt and Mesopotamia, also grew, expanding from a small settlement into an important city. After the advent of Moses and the return of the Israelites, Jews flocked to the city as pilgrims, and many sought to be buried near the tomb, all of which added to the city’s renown. In 1000 BC, David was crowned king there and made it his capital. Later on, about a hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a nine-foot-thick wall of chiseled stone blocks was built around the site, and the ruins of these walls still stand.

After the Romans invaded Palestine and sacked Jerusalem in AD 70, many Jews fled to other countries, but a small group remained in Hebron with the specific intent of caring for the tomb. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Jews were supplanted by Christians as official caretakers. Christians, who regarded Abraham as a forefather and revered Him as a saint, were vigilant in their protection of the site. They built a roof over the walls, enclosing the area, and used it as a church, though Jews were still given at least occasional access to the tombs. When a formal basilica was built above the tombs in the sixth century, the custom of allowing Jewish access was continued, and Jews were also allowed to worship in a special section of the building.¹¹

Christian occupancy yielded to Muslim rule in AD 678 when a Muslim army took control of Hebron. Muslims, like Jews and Christians, venerated Abraham, and they continued the tradition of taking great care of the site. They converted the Christian basilica into the Mosque of Ibrahim, but it was reconverted to a church when Christian Crusaders successfully invaded in AD 1100. Eighty-seven years later, Muslims regained control, and they have maintained ownership of most of the site since then, although a Jewish area with a small synagogue still exists at the north side of the shrine area.

In spite of the fact that the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have not always gotten along well together, their shared respect for the tomb bought so carefully by Abraham has made it one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest) continually cared-for religious sites on earth. Its presence in the world today is a potent reminder of the enduring strength of the promises made to Abraham’s descendants.