{"id":69155,"date":"2025-02-02T01:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T06:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=69155"},"modified":"2025-01-13T13:57:33","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T18:57:33","slug":"the-abraham-saga-part-fourteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2025\/02\/02\/the-abraham-saga-part-fourteen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Abraham Saga– Part Fourteen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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What we know for sure about ANE\u2019s culture is there was a concern for proper burials.\u00a0 \u00a0The remaining stories in the Abraham cycle are about burials and finding a proper wife for Isaac, from among Abraham\u2019s kin, and not from among the Canaanites . But the initial story in Gen. 23 brings to our attention the Hittites. You would not know this just from reading the Bible but the Hittites had a huge empire, including most of what is Turkey today, as well as Syria and large parts of Israel.\u00a0 \u00a0Wikipedia summarizes as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hittites formed a series of\u00a0polities<\/a>\u00a0in north-central\u00a0Anatolia<\/a>, including the kingdom of\u00a0Kussara<\/a>\u00a0(before 1750 BC), the\u00a0Kanesh<\/a>\u00a0or Nesha kingdom (c.<\/abbr>\u20091750\u20131650 BC), and an empire centered on\u00a0Hattusa<\/a>\u00a0(around 1650 BC).[<\/span>3]<\/span><\/a><\/sup>[<\/span>4]<\/span><\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Known in modern times as the\u00a0Hittite Empire<\/b>, it reached its peak during the mid-14th century BC under\u00a0\u0160uppiluliuma I<\/a>, when it encompassed most of Anatolia and parts of the northern\u00a0Levant<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Upper Mesopotamia<\/a>, bordering the rival empires of the Hurri-Mitanni and Assyrians.\u00a0 Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC, the Hittites were one of the dominant powers of the Near East<\/a>, coming into conflict with the\u00a0New Kingdom of Egypt<\/a>, the\u00a0Middle Assyrian Empire<\/a>\u00a0and the empire of\u00a0Mitanni<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Only here in Gen. 23 do you get the sense of a large presence of Hittites holding much territory, and again this is a good 700 or more years before King David.\u00a0 There were a few Hittites still around as late as 800 B.C. (remember Uriah, Bathsheba\u2019s husband) though the empire was long gone.\u00a0 \u00a0Hatti in the above map=Hittites.<\/p>\n

The story begins with Sarah passing away in Hebron, and Abraham, who apparently was not with her when she died, came to mourn her, including the usual ritual keening, or wailing.\u00a0 He now needed to find a place for Sarah to be buried, and he negotiated with the Hittites, who clearly enough respected him as \u2018a prince in our midst\u2019.\u00a0 But actually the Hebrew translated sojourner settler means resident alien.\u00a0 Which in turn means he does not have a claim on Hittite land.\u00a0 Bargaining in the ANE then, and now in the Middle East, involves flattery, and the term prince is probably an example of that. as is you may have your pick of the burial sites. What Abraham asks for is the cave of Machpelah which is at the end of the property of\u00a0 Ephron, which is mentioned to make clear Abraham will not encroach on other Hittite property, and he will pay for the cave with \u2018full silver\u2019,\u00a0 400 shekels, and Ephron in essence says, it\u2019s a deal at that price\u2014 \u2018Land for 400 shekels\u2026what does it come to?\u201d\u00a0 As the text intimates we are talking about full silver being weighed for a set price, as this is actually before silver coins were being minted.\u00a0 But in fact this is a great deal to pay for a burial plot.\u00a0 We are told the cave is by Mamre which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan.\u00a0 In due course Abraham will be buried there as well.<\/p>\n

In Gen. 24 we have Abraham\u2019s final major act, of commissioning his head servant who ruled over everything, to go and find Isaac a wife from amongst his own relatives, as he doesn\u2019t want Isaac to marry a Canaanite girl.\u00a0 \u00a0The gesture here is\u2013 put your hand on my genitals, or on the thigh right next to my genitals swear, and this form of serious oath taking is known in several ANE contexts.\u00a0 Alter suggests that here it may be appropriate because Abraham is concerned about continuing his line through Isaac without intermarrying with Canaanites.\u00a0 \u00a0Abraham assures his servant that God will send his own messenger ahead to prepare the way. The servant loads up no less than 10 camels worth of goods and goes to Nahor, and he stops at a well outside of town, and he prays that God will bring the right young woman to the well to draw water whom he will ask for water, and if she complies\u00a0 and even adds I\u2019ll get water for your camels as well that should be the sign that he has found the right girl.\u00a0 Having barely finished this pray he looks up, and here comes a beautiful young woman, and a virgin as well.\u00a0 Her name was Rebekah.\u00a0 Notice that she lowers the water jug down from her head or shoulder so the servant can drink, and after the girl had given water to the camels, the servant gave her a golden nose ring, and two gold arm bracelets, and he asks to spend the night with her family, and she says yes, and the servant is thrilled and does obeisance bowing down to the Lord who was making this possible.\u00a0 Now Laban (of the later story about Jacob) makes a cameo appearance here as Rebekah\u2019s brother.\u00a0 \u00a0The servant then makes clear that his master Abraham is well off, and tells in full what had been his prayer, and how his encounter with Rebekah went.\u00a0 Laban and Rebekah\u2019s mom conclude this has come from God, and the servant then dispenses gifts for the mother and for Laban the brother. They agreed to the betrothal arrangement and to letting Rebekah go, but they next morning they said \u2018let the young woman stay with us for ten days or so, then she may go\u2019. But servant objects\u2014 do not hold me back, then they say lets call in Rebekah and see what she says\u2013 and she said she was willing to go with Abraham\u2019s servant so they sent her off, and with her her nurse,\u00a0 and they part with her with the blessing \u201cOur sister hence become teeming myriads, may your seed take hold of the gates of its foes\u2019.\u00a0 Notice the nearly identical blessing at Gen. 22.17 bestowed on Abraham. The idiom is \u2018be fruitful and multiply and have victory over your enemies.\u00a0 The story ends beautifully by having Isaac come walking through the field and seeing the servant and Rebekah coming, and she asks the servant\u2013 whose that, and the servant tells her, and she puts on a veil over her face, and Isaac brings her into Sarah\u2019s tent and takes her as his wife, and she becomes the matriarch of the family, since Sarah is gone. And we are told Isaac loved her, and in essence this filled the emotional void from having lost his mother.\u00a0 It is odd, that Abraham is not mentioned at this point, but her isn\u2019t and some have conjectured that the beginning of this story is about a deathbed oath involving the dying Abraham, and this may be right.<\/p>\n

However the beginning of Gen. 25 suggests that Abraham remarried, and had a brace of kinsmen by the new wife, and then died at a ripe old age on 175.\u00a0 Gen. 25.9 tells us that both Isaac and Ishmael bury Abraham in the cave of Machpelah.\u00a0 We are finally told that after the burial Isaac settled at Beer-lahai-roi.<\/p>\n

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What we know for sure about ANE\u2019s culture is there was a concern for proper burials.\u00a0 \u00a0The remaining stories in the Abraham cycle are about burials and finding a proper wife for Isaac, from among Abraham\u2019s kin, and not from among the Canaanites . But the initial story in Gen. 23 brings to our attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":68563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15212],"class_list":["post-69155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-so-ends-abrahams-adventure"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Abraham Saga-- Part Fourteen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What we know for sure about ANE's culture is there was a concern for proper burials.\u00a0 \u00a0The remaining stories in the Abraham cycle are about burials and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Abraham Saga-- Part Fourteen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What we 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