BURIAL AND TOMBS. The information in the Bible respecting the rites of burial and places of sepulture of the Hebrews is scanty but curious. In considering it we shall not attempt to systema tize into a single account the various indications of the practices of 2000 years, for the compactness thus gained might sacrifice accuracy, as we do not yet know that there were not great changes.
Of the patriarchal burial-rites and tombs little is said in Scripture. The subject first occurs where Sarah's death is related. We read, And Sarah died in Kirjath-arba ; the same [is] Hebron in the land of Canaan : and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I [am] a stranger and a sojourner with you : give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.' The children of Heth replied, offering Abraham the choicest of their sepulchres. Then Abraham an swered, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hear me, and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he bath, which [is] in the end of his field ; for full money shall he give it me for a possession of a burying-place amongst you.' Then follows the truly Arab speech of Ephron the Hittite, who first gives Abraham the field and the cave that was in it, but when the patriarch offers him money, sets the value at four hundred shekels of silver, adding, what [is] that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead.' Accordingly, Abraham is related to have weighed to Ephron four hundred shekels of silver, current with the merchant.' It is added that the property, which is specified with unusual minuteness, was made sure to Abraham, and that he buried Sarah there (Gen. xxiii.) Thus the first commercial matter recorded in the Bible is the purchase of a burying-place. The minute and particular manner in which the cir cumstances are narrated is noteworthy, and those who hold that the book of Genesis consists of various early inspired documents collected by Moses, may suppose that this detailed account is a kind of legal record of the purchase, an opinion which the con cluding passage, specifying the contents of the field, and twice stating the ownership of Abraham, seems to confirm.
The object of the purchase was to secure a per manent right, and the cost at which this was 'done shews that Abraham attached to it great import ance. Whatever was the conduct of Ephron, his compact seems to have been faithfully kept, cer tainly was so kept for near 200 years. To secure this burial-right may have been commanded, as a sign that Canaan was given to Abraham, who never had any other portion of its land. Remarkably enough, Jacob's parcel of a field,' the only other piece of the Canaanite territory held by Abraham's descendants before the conquest, became the bury Mg-place of Joseph. We have no hint of the burial rites ; we only know that Abraham arose from mourning by his dead, and desired to bury her out of his sight. But in buying not alone a sepulchre, but the land where it was, he skewed his faith in the Divine promise ; how he not only believed that he had chosen a burying-place in his own land, but how wholly lie had left behind the land and the sepulchres of his fathers. And this was no small proof ; for we see in the after-history how this first tomb was the gathering-place of the offspring of Abraham at each great burial there. Abraham, in choosing it, and making so careful a provision that it should be respected, must have been also influenced by that strong affection that is seen in the whole relation. But nothing besides faith vta
natural affection can be traced, and, although the patriarch came from a land, where, probably among the so-called Scythic population, there was an extra ordinary veneration for tombs, we should err in appreciation of his grand and simple character if we thought that anything influenced him but faith in God's promise and love for the dead. Respecting the form of the cave of Machpelah, there can be no doubt that it was a cave : the rendering vault' has, however, been here suggested for the term Elsewhere in the Bible it undoubtedly means a cave.' * We cannot conjecture whether it was natu ral or artificial. The LXX. and Vulg. more clearly define its form by translating Machpelah, reading rb crwOcuop rd Sui-XoCv, and speltutca duplex, but the meaning of that word is doubtful. The Mosque of IIebron, which, like that of Jerusalem, shares with those of Mekkeh and El-Medeeneh the dis tinctive appellation of Haram, though the latter two are especially the two Harams, encloses a cave which has not been doubted to be that of Machpelah, and it seems almost certain that it is the veritable cave. No European traveller has, however, been able to examine it. The masonry of the exterior of the mosque is partly ancient, resem bling the bevelled stone-work below the so-called Mosque of Omar, which is probably of Julian's time. Of Abraham's burial nothing is told us but that his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah' (Gen. xxv. 9). Ishmael's death is as briefly related, and the passage rendered in the A. V., he died in the presence of all his brethren,' should rather be translated, he en camped,' etc., and certainly does not admit of the former meaning. He does not seem to have been buried in the cave of Machpelah. The first indication of customs connected with burial, is where we read that Esau, deprived of Isaac's blessing, said, The days of mourning for my father are at hand ; then will I slay my brother Jacob' (xxvii. 41). The next burial recorded is that of Deborah, Rebekah's nurse, who was buried beneath Bethel, under an oak, thence called Allon-bachuth, the oak of weeping' (xxxv. 8). Soon after, Rachel died near Ephrath, and was buried, like Deborah, where she died, though the cave of Machpelah was not far. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave : that [is] the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day' (ver. 16-20). The plain inference from the passage seems to be that the grave was dug in the earth, and a pillar or similar monument set up to mark its place. The building now pointed out as Rachel's Tomb does not fulfil these conditions, but it is possible that it covers her grave. Of the burial of Isaac, we are told that, his sons Esau and Jacob buried him' (vcr. 29). This was at Hebron, where he evidently had died (ver. 27) ; for Jacob said, when charging his sons to bury him in the cave of Mach pelah, "There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife ; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife ; and there I buried Leah' (xlix. 31). It is remarkable that the less-loved wife should have been buried where Sarah and Rebekah lay, while Rachel, to whose death Jacob dying had recurred (xlviii. 7), was entombed in a solitary grave. Thus far we have the customs of the patriarchal times, and in them we see nothing but the simplest and most natural usages, a desire to secure a perma nent place of burial, in one case protected by a pillar, and only, as far as we can judge, ordinary lamentation.