Genesis 23

“Abraham bowed down to the people of the land and said to Ephron in the presence of the people of the land, ‘Please listen to me. Let me pay the price of the field. Accept it from me, and let me bury my dead there.’  Ephron answered Abraham and said to him, ‘My lord, listen to me. Land worth 400 shekels of silver – what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.’  Abraham agreed with Ephron, and Abraham weighed out to Ephron the silver that he had agreed to in the hearing of the Hittites: 400 shekels of silver at the current commercial rate.” Genesis 23:12-16 (HCSB)

Once, I heard a rabbi say that this was the first recorded real estate deal in Jewish history! The land of Canaan was Abraham’s by promise, but the time to possess it had not yet come. Nevertheless, Abraham had the opportunity to buy a piece of it. This was not land for living on, which could be sold or taken away. It was land for burial…a FINAL resting place. Now, that is faith! Abraham said he believed God’s promises to the extent that he was willing to buy real estate and be buried in a land that would eventually become filled with a nation full of his offspring. Abraham wasn’t the only one to believe God’s promise on that same level.  

“So Jacob’s sons did for him what he had commanded them. They carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave at Machpelah in the field near Mamre, which Abraham had purchased as a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.” Genesis 50:12-13 (HCSB)

“And Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our ancestors died there, were carried back to Shechem, and were placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem. As the time was drawing near to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt.” Acts 7:15-17 (HCSB)

“Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die, but God will certainly come to your aid and bring you up from this land to the land He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ So Joseph made the sons of Israel take an oath: ‘When God comes to your aid, you are to carry my bones up from here.’”  Genesis 50:24-25 (HCSB)

“Now they buried the bones of Joseph, which the sons of Israel brought up from Egypt, at Shechem, in the plot of land which Jacob had bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money; and they became the inheritance of Joseph’s sons.”  Joshua 24:32 (NASB)

The writer of Hebrews melds the Patriarchal hope of Canaan with the believers in Jesus’ “hope for eternity” with the Lord in Heaven.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:13-16 (NKJV)