Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #3 of Genesis, chapter 23, and I will read Genesis 23:1-6:

And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old: these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; 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 buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead.

I will stop reading there. In our last study, we were beginning to look at Kirjatharba. The word “Kirjath” is a Hebrew word that means “city of towns” or “city of forests,” and “Arba” is the name of a man who was of the Anakims, and the Anakims were giants. So it is the city of Arba, possibly a collection of towns or the city of forests of Arba, or something along those lines.

If you remember, we began by going to Joshua 14:13-15:

And Joshua blessed him, and gave unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh Hebron for an inheritance. Hebron therefore became the inheritance of Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite unto this day, because that he wholly followed JEHOVAH God of Israel. And the name of Hebron before was Kirjatharba; which Arba was a great man among the Anakims. And the land had rest from war.

From here, we went to the book of Numbers, and we saw that Caleb and Joshua were among the twelve spies. Those two gave a good report and, basically, their good report was, “Let us go and take the land (of Canaan) for God is with us.” They trusted in the strength and power of God. The other ten spies recognized it was a good land with milk and honey and fruit, but their report was said to be evil because they focused on the power and might of the men of the land. In doing so they, in effect, diminished the power and might of God; they limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not take into proper account that God was with them, and that is why their report was evil. What they hung their evil report on was the fact that the people of the land were of great stature, as it says in Numbers 13:31-33:

But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

We can see that they feared all the people of the land because of their great stature, but they especially feared the sons of Anak. So in that way, the Anakims are a representation of the power and might of man. I think that is why God gave Caleb this piece of land that had to do with the children of Anak, which was Kirjatharba, as it says in Joshua 15-13-15:

And unto Caleb the son of Jephunneh he gave a part among the children of Judah, according to the commandment of JEHOVAH to Joshua, even the city of Arba the father of Anak, which city is Hebron. And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. And he went up thence to the inhabitants of Debir: and the name of Debir before was Kirjathsepher.

I will stop reading there. So Anak was the son of Arba. Arba was really the founder of this city of giants. Again, the way the Israelites reacted by fearing them so much that they wanted to run back to Egypt, and this is the reason God gave Caleb this lot of land, but I also think it is the reason the Bible makes a special point of having the dead elect people of God buried there, as we find in Genesis 23:2:

And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.

From this point and throughout this chapter, God is going to highlight the purchase of a burying place for Sarah. The piece of ground that Abraham will purchase will be the only piece of ground he owned in his lifetime in the land of Canaan, because all the other time he had been sojourning, setting up tents and dwelling in one location for a while and then moving on and dwelling in another location.

But, here, he will purchase the land. Lord willing, as we go through this study, we are going to look at the significance of that purchase. And, yet, it is also significant that the land was purchased in Kirjatharba (Hebron) because of the children of Anak, the son of Arba. It was these giants that had brought fear into the hearts of the children of Israel.

You know, this is a big deal in the Bible. Because of the evil report the spies brought back and because the people believed the ten spies and wanted to go back to Egypt as a result, God judged them for 40 years, a year for each day that the spies searched out the land. They were judged to wander in the wilderness, a year for a day, and they wandered for forty years long. It was the outpouring of the wrath of God, so the fact that they had this reaction to the giants is very important in the Bible. Therefore, it was an appropriate city for God to cause Abraham to buy a piece of land to bury Sarah, who represents the body of elect believers or “Jerusalem above.” This same piece of land would be the burying spot for Abraham, if we go to Genesis 25:7-10:

And these are the days of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived, an hundred threescore and fifteen years. Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years; and was gathered to his people. And his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre; The field which Abraham purchased of the sons of Heth: there was Abraham buried, and Sarah his wife.

Also, in Genesis 35 we read of Isaac, in Genesis 35:27:

And Jacob came unto Isaac his father unto Mamre, unto the city of Arbah, which is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac sojourned. And the days of Isaac were an hundred and fourscore years. And Isaac gave up the ghost, and died, and was gathered unto his people, being old and full of days: and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.

So Jacob also was buried in the city of Arbah in the same piece of ground.

It says in Genesis 49:29-33:

And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, In the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.

It was not just Sarah that was buried there, but Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of Israel. God especially uses those three in the Bible to signify and represent His people. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. They are elect, and they represent all the elect.

In the New Testament, we read in Acts 7:15-16:

So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.

We are not going to take the time to lay all this out because we will get into these things as we continue in the book of Genesis, so the more we get into it the more we can lay it out. But, if you remember, Jacob died in Egypt. Egypt is a figure of the world, especially when we look at the spiritual situation of the famine that was in the land of Canaan and it drove Jacob and his sons out of Canaan and into Egypt, under the care of Joseph. In the same chapter of Acts 7, the Bible called that famine “great tribulation.” It is the same two Greek words, “megas-thlipsis,” that we find in Matthew 24. So Jacob, at the age of 130, came out of Canaan and he went into Egypt, and there would be five more years of famine, and then he would have been 135 when the seven-year famine ended. Then he would die at age 147, so he would live 12 years (pointing to fulness) after the famine or great tribulation period concluded. He would die at age 147 in the land of Egypt, and we saw in Genesis 49 that he gave command that he be buried in the cave of Machpelah that was purchased by Abraham. That is where Abraham and Sarah were buried. That is where Isaac and Rebekah were buried, and that is where Jacob buried Leah.

Jacob wanted to be buried there, but he was in Egypt. I will read it again, in Acts 7:15-16:

So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.

What is remarkable about verse 16 is the Greek word that is translated as “carried over.” It is the same word found in Hebrews 11:5, where it is found twice. I will read the verse, in Hebrews 11:5:

By faith Enoch was translated…

The word “translated” is the same Greek word translated as “carried over.” Again, it says in Hebrews 11:5:

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.

God “translated” him or carried him over. Now we know that Enoch “was not found” because the Lord took him; he was translated and did not die. The translating of Enoch had to do with being taken out of this world and brought into the next world, the heavenly kingdom of God, or we could say he was raptured out of the world. Now it is revealing that God used this same Greek word (Strong’s #3346) in Acts 7:16 to refer to Jacob and our fathers: “…and were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.” And, again, Jacob spent 17 years in the land of Egypt, and after 17 years, he died at the age of 147 and he was “translated” out of Egypt (which typifies the world) into the land of Canaan and, specifically, into this lot of land that was the burying place that Abraham purchased. He was translated over that river Jordan and into he Promised Land, the same land that God referred to as an “everlasting habitation.” I think we can clearly see this, especially since it was 17 years that Jacob lived in Egypt, a number that identifies with heaven. After 17 years, in a figure he goes to heaven, so this land represented the kingdom of God.

We are also seeing this regarding Sarah. Remember that we went back to Galatians 4, where Sarah is identified with “Jerusalem above.” And we discussed how God refers to being married to His people, and in Isaiah 62 He spoke of being “married to the land,” so this land is extremely important as a type and figure of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God.

Also, later on we will see that this land was bought. It was purchased or paid for by Abraham, which is another strong emphasis on the same thing: that God has bought and paid for the kingdom of heaven for Sarah, who represents all the elect, and for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their wives. It represents God’s elect people out of this whole world, and there is this one lot of land that was bought and paid for, and we will spend some time looking at the language of chapter 23. There is much repetitive language in this chapter about the sons of Heth, Ephron the Hittite, the cave of Machpelah and the burying place. It is very much a repetitive chapter, and these things are mentioned again, and again, and again, because God is driving home this very important teaching: God has purchased this land, and it signifies the kingdom of heaven that has been bought and paid for on behalf of all God’s elect people. Eventually, we will get to the book of Jeremiah where the Lord caused Jeremiah to purchase a lot of ground. And what was the purchase price? It was 17 pieces of silver. The number “17” points to heaven.

You know, some people doubt, and they do not understand how we have come to have designations for numbers – that a number has a spiritual meaning. The number “40” means “testing.” They may understand that. The number “10” means “completeness,” and they may even understand that, but the number “17” is often questioned. And, yet, we can see it with Jacob’s 17 years and we will see it with the purchase of land in the book of Jeremiah for 17 pieces of silver – heaven is in view.

I think we will stop here for now. Lord willing, when we get together in our next study, we are going to look at the last part of verse 2 where Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Then we will look at the dialogue that he had with the children of Heth, especially Ephron the Hittite.