Genesis 23

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 26, 91, 74

   חַיֵּי "life" is a plural of abstraction and is printed in the singular (26); the verb agrees with it in the plural (וַיִּהְיוּ). The number keeps the Hebrew order and repeats "year" with each part, singular after "hundred" and "twenty," plural after "seven" (91). Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 58:1, reads the repetition: at a hundred she was as at twenty in freedom from sin, and at twenty as at seven in beauty. Sarah is the only woman in the Bible whose age at death is given. The closing phrase "the years of the life of Sarah" is a heading-like summary, and gives the weekly reading its name, Ḥayyei Sarah, though the portion tells of her death.

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   קִרְיַת אַרְבַּע "the town of Arba," or "town of four." Josh 14:15 explains it by a man: "Arba was the great man among the Anakim" (also 15:13; 21:11). Genesis Rabbah 58:4 counts four: the four couples buried there, Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. The gloss "that is Hebron" is the narrator's, as at 35:27. Names table.

   See the table

3. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "to mourn for Sarah" (KJV, RSV)

   Ruling 2

   סָפַד is the loud lament for the dead, with wailing and the beating of the breast: "beating upon breasts" (Isa 32:12); "they lamented over him, 'Alas, my brother!'" (1 Kgs 13:30); "they shall lament over him as one laments over an only one" (Zech 12:10–12). It is a public act at the side of the dead, not the inner state. "Mourn" is left for אָבַל (37:34–35), which names the state and its season.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 79

   In the Leningrad Codex and the Masoretic tradition the כ of וְלִבְכֹּתָהּ "and to weep for her" is written small. The feature does not change the sense and is translated as an ordinary letter (79). Baal ha-Turim reads it: he wept only a little, for she was old. Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 58:5, joins the death to the chapter before: Sarah died when she heard of the binding, that her son had been made ready for slaughter and nearly slaughtered, and Abraham "came" from Mount Moriah.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 10

   מֵתוֹ "his dead" is the participle used as a noun, "his dead one," and the chapter repeats it eight times without once giving Sarah's name in the negotiation (vv. 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15). "Rose from upon the face of his dead": he had been bowed over her body. The verb "rose" begins the chain of the chapter (vv. 3, 7, 17, 20; see the note at v. 17).

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you" (KJV, RSV)

   Ruling 2

   גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב is a pair: the גֵּר is the sojourner, the resident alien (15:13; Exod 22:20), and the תּוֹשָׁב, from יָשַׁב "dwell," is the one settled without being a citizen, the resident dependent on a household (Lev 25:6, 40, 45). "The land is mine, for sojourners and residents are you with me" (Lev 25:23); "a sojourner I am with you, a resident like all my fathers" (Ps 39:13; 1 Chr 29:15). The LXX has πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος, which Heb 11:13 and 1 Pet 2:11 take up of believers on earth. Rashi, after Genesis Rabbah 58:6, hears a threat in the pair: "If you will, I am a sojourner; if not, I am a resident and will take it by right, for the Holy One said to me, 'To your seed I will give this land.'" "Sojourner" is גֵּר's settled gloss; "dweller" is יָשַׁב's participle and "settle" is נוּחַ's, so "resident" is the first fix.

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 122

   אֲחֻזַּת קֶבֶר "a tenure of a grave." אֲחֻזָּה is land held (122g), from אָחַז "hold" (22:13, the ram "caught"). It was promised at 17:8: "all the land of Canaan for a tenure of the age." The first of it that Abraham holds is a grave, bought, not given. The phrase returns at the close (v. 20), and at 49:30 and 50:13. קֶבֶר is first fixed as "grave" (see the Lexicon).

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "a mighty prince" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 38, 123, 1

   נְשִׂיא אֱלֹהִים has no verb agreeing with אֱלֹהִים, and the phrase is in the mouth of the sons of Heth, foreigners, so the lowercase "elohim" stands (38; 123c), as at 20:11 and 21:22–23. Two readings divide the versions. (a) A superlative, "a mighty chieftain": the name added to a noun to raise it to its highest degree, "wrestlings of elohim" (30:8), "a terror of elohim" (35:5; 1 Sam 14:15), "a great city to elohim" (Jonah 3:3), "mountains of El" (Ps 36:7); D. Winton Thomas collected the usage (VT 3, 1953). This is the KJV and RSV. (b) A chieftain belonging to elohim, raised up by them: the LXX "a king from God" (βασιλεὺς παρὰ θεοῦ), the Vulgate princeps Dei, Onkelos "a great one before Adonai." English cannot hold both, and the construct "of elohim" keeps the Hebrew phrase, from which a reader can take either (1). נָשִׂיא keeps "chieftain," one lifted up (17:20; 25:16), and the courtesy "my lord" keeps deferential address (22).

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   עַם הָאָרֶץ "the people of the land" is a phrase with a history. Here it is the full men of Hebron, gathered at the gate, with power to approve a transfer of land; Joseph sells grain "to all the people of the land" (42:6). In Kings it is the landed men of Judah who make and unmake kings (2 Kgs 11:14–20; 21:24; 23:30); in Ezra they are the local people who weaken the hands of the returned (Ezra 4:4); and in the rabbis the am ha-aretz is the man unlearned in the law (m. Avot 2:5). The phrase is kept whole each time.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "If it be your mind" (KJV) / "If you are willing" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    נֶפֶשׁ "soul" is also the seat of desire and will: "let her go to her soul," that is, where she wishes (Deut 21:14); "do not give me to the soul of my foes" (Ps 27:12). Jehu's אִם־יֵשׁ נַפְשְׁכֶם "if it is your soul" (2 Kgs 9:15) is the same idiom. The core gloss "soul" holds, with יֵשׁ "there is" and the preposition: "if there is with your soul."

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "intreat for me to Ephron" (KJV) / "entreat for me Ephron" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    פָּגַע is to come upon, to encounter: Jacob "lit upon the place" (28:11), the messengers of Elohim "encountered him" (32:2). With a person and the preposition בְּ it is to press upon him with a request: "do not press me to leave you" (Ruth 1:16); "do not intercede with me" (Jer 7:16); and the servant "intercedes for the revolters" (Isa 53:12, hiphil). In attack it is to fall upon (Judg 8:21). "Encounter… for me" keeps the meeting and the pressing. The first fix is "encounter."

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 18, 74

    הַמַּכְפֵּלָה has the article, "the Machpelah," and is a place name everywhere it occurs (23:9, 17, 19; 25:9; 49:30; 50:13). It is heard with כָּפַל "double": the LXX has "the double cave" (τὸ σπήλαιον τὸ διπλοῦν), the Vulgate speluncam duplicem. b. Eruvin 53a gives two accounts, a cave of two chambers one inside the other, or a house with an upper storey; Genesis Rabbah 58:4 and Rashi, "doubled with couples." The familiar name is printed with the article the Hebrew gives it. Names table.

    See the table

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 39

    בְּכֶסֶף מָלֵא "for full silver," the whole price, weighed out. The phrase recurs once, in the same scene told again: David buys Ornan's threshing floor, Ornan offers to give it, and David answers "I will buy it for full silver" (1 Chr 21:22, 24; 2 Sam 24:24). The threshing floor is where Solomon builds the house on "Mount Moriah" (2 Chr 3:1), so the purchase of Abraham's grave and the purchase of the temple site are told in the same words. "Silver" is kept, not "money" (39).

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 20, 74

    יֹשֵׁב "sitting," of posture, at the gate where the elders sit (19:1; Ruth 4:1–2); the split by construction gives "sit" (20). The form is written without the vav of the participle, and Rashi reads it as a perfect, "he sat": that day the people made him an officer, to sit at the gate, out of respect for Abraham's business.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    בְּאָזְנֵי "in the ears of" is kept as an idiom of the body (guide §4.12), here and at vv. 13 and 16. The deal is made aloud, at the gate, before witnesses, and the phrase is the legal publicity of the act (Ruth 4:4, 9–11; Jer 32:10–12). "To all who came in at the gate" names the witnesses as the citizens with the right of entry and voice.

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 15, 74

    נָתַתִּי, three times, is a perfect of declaration: the gift is made by the words that announce it, as in a deed, "I give" (KJV "give I thee"; compare 1:29 and 15:18, "to your seed I have given"). Abraham answers with the same form at v. 13: "I give the silver." The offer of a gift is the opening of a sale, and the courtesy names a price in the next breath (v. 15). b. Bava Metzia 87a: "the just say little and do much; the guilty say much and do not do even a little. From whom? From Ephron."

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    Abraham begins one construction and breaks into another: אַךְ אִם־אַתָּה לוּ שְׁמָעֵנִי, "only, if you—if only you would hear me." The broken syntax is kept; it is the speech of a man pressing his point without giving offence. לוּ is "if only" (H3863), a wish.

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 5, 91, 39

    שֶׁקֶל is a loanword already in English (5), and the noun of the verb שָׁקַל "weigh" (v. 16): a unit of weight, not a coin, about eleven grams; coined money comes much later. Four hundred shekels is between four and five kilograms of silver. The noun stays singular after the number, as the Hebrew has it (91). Compare the prices of other plots: Jeremiah's field at Anathoth, seventeen shekels (Jer 32:9); David's threshing floor, fifty shekels of silver (2 Sam 24:24) or six hundred of gold (1 Chr 21:25). "Between me and between you" repeats the preposition as the Hebrew does (6).

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 5

    וַיִּשְׁקֹל … שֶׁקֶל: Abraham "weighed" the "shekel," the verb and its noun side by side. English has no pair that keeps the loanword (5) and the verb, so the play stays here (17). Silver was weighed out in the balance (Jer 32:9–10; Isa 46:6).

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 79

    In v. 16 the name is written twice: עֶפְרוֹן with the vav, and then לְעֶפְרֹן without it. The spelling is translated as the name (79). Genesis Rabbah 58:7 and Rashi read the missing letter: once he took the silver he was diminished, for he said much and did not do even a little. The name is heard with עָפָר "dust," and with עֹפֶר "young deer." Names table.

    See the table

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    עֹבֵר לַסֹּחֵר "passing over to the merchant": silver of a standard that passes in trade, accepted by any merchant. 2 Kgs 12:5 has "silver that passes" (כֶּסֶף עוֹבֵר), and Onkelos renders "accepted in every transaction." The home gloss of עָבַר holds. סֹחֵר is the participle of סָחַר "go about, trade," the travelling merchant (37:28; Ezek 27:12–21); "merchant" is the first fix.

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "were made sure" (KJV) / "passed to" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 122, 40

    וַיָּקָם is the qal of קוּם, whose home gloss is "rise" (122d). Here it is the qal of state, the legal idiom of a property's passing to an owner: "the house shall rise in perpetuity to the one who acquired it" (Lev 25:30); "it shall rise to him" (Lev 27:19; also 27:14, 17). Ruling 122(d) leaves the qal of state to be fixed here, and gives "stand" to עָמַד, so "stood" cannot be printed. "Rose" keeps the home gloss and the chain: Abraham "rose" from his dead (v. 3) and "rose" to bow to the people of the land (v. 7), and now the field "rises" to him. The verb opens v. 17 and its indirect object "to Abraham" opens v. 18; the order is kept, with the long description of the field between. The fix is raised in the report.

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    Verses 17–18 are drawn up like a deed of sale: the seller, the place, the bounds, what is included (the cave, every tree, all the border around), the buyer, the title, and the witnesses at the gate. Jer 32:9–12 records another such deed. Genesis Rabbah 79:7 counts three places that the nations cannot say Israel stole, because the text records the price: the cave of the Machpelah (23:16), the temple site (1 Chr 21:25), and Joseph's tomb at Shechem (33:19).