Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight will be study #11 of Genesis, chapter 23, and we are going to read Genesis 23:12-20:

And Abraham bowed down himself before the people of the land. And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray thee, hear me: I will give thee money for the field; take it of me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham, saying unto him, My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth.

I will stop reading there. We have been spending some time seeing how the Lord has placed in the Bible a few different accounts of the purchase of a field and He has done this in order to teach us of the purchase that the Lord Jesus Christ bought when He died His people and paid for the sins of His people. Through the shedding of His blood, that was the purchase price, ultimately. Remember in Matthew 27 it was called “the field of blood,” which was purchased with thirty pieces of silver. It was the blood money that Judas received for betraying the Lord Jesus Christ, so there is a definite connection or tie-in between the field that was purchased in Zechariah 11, a Messianic passage that referred to the same thing. The field that was purchased and the purchase money is tied with the blood of Christ, the life He gave for the sins of His people.

So that is the deeper spiritual meaning that is running through these accounts, including our account in Genesis 23 where Abraham purchased the field in order to bury his dead. It is significant that he did not bury the dead, and then purchase the field, but he purchased the field first, and then Sarah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (representing all of God’s people) were buried therein. The field was purchased before any body was buried in it, and I think we can relate that to the Biblical fact that Christ died at the foundation of the world when He was the Lamb slain and, for all intents and purposes, that was when He purchased this world and the world to come. Once purchased, they were owned by God, and He had the legitimate right to all that were buried therein, as the parable in Matthew 13 illustrates. The “man” found the treasure and went and sold all that he had to purchase the field.

We have been going through this chapter and taking away the key points. Overall, I think that in looking at Matthew 27, Zechariah 11 and Jeremiah 32, it has helped us to understand Genesis 23 and the historical parable concerning the purchase of a field. I think it has given us a very good overall picture of this, especially where it says in Genesis 23:16:

And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.

The price was set by Ephron at four hundred shekels of silver, and Abraham hearkened to him in a very nice way, in that when Ephron stated the price, Abraham paid it, even though Ephron had used language as though it was a gift: “I will give you the land.” Then Abraham asked what it was worth, and Ephron named the price, but he maintained a sort of “gentle posture” in offering it as a gift to someone that had just lost a loved one.

And, yet, it was very much a business deal, and Abraham heard the price he wanted for the field and he hearkened; that is, he paid the price. Abraham was going to use his money that way.

By the way, what does money or silver represent? Money comes from work. When men do work, they earn money. Abraham’s work was a shepherd and he would have sold the milk of his flock and animals he had raised, and people would have paid him silver for the work that he had done.

So Abraham paid money he had earned through working for money. Again, that is related to the Lord Jesus Christ and His work of faith in paying for the sins of His people. Their sins were laid upon Him at the foundation of the world, and He was then struck dead by the wrath of God. He was smitten and afflicted, and He died. That was the work He did in dying the death that His people deserved. And then He rose from the dead. It was a tremendous work of faith.

How does the Bible define “work”? A good work is active obedience to the command of God. When God says, “Thou shalt not kill,” or when He says that we must observe Sunday as His Holy day, when God’s people respond in obedience to the commands of God it is a good work. The Father sent the Son. The Father is part of that glorious triune nature of God, and the Father sent the Son: “You will be the Saviour. You will bear the sins of certain, blessed individuals that are predestinated before foundation of the world. Then at the point of the foundation of the world, their sins will be laid upon you. You will die for them. And I will raise you up.” And the Son obeyed, thus performing the good work of obedience to the Father, and through that work He purchased these people and the world itself, where these people would be born and where most of them would die. Or, perhaps I should not say “most” because of the overall number God saved during the Great Tribulation, and it is very possible that the majority will not physically die, but certainly scores of millions of the elect have died and were buried in the field of this earth that Christ purchased with that precious price of shedding His own blood.

This is what the thirty shekels or pieces of silver represent in Matthew 27. It is what the seventeen shekels of silver represent in Jeremiah 32. The latter also identifies with heaven, but what is heaven? It is that which Christ has purchased for His people by the excellent work of faith He did on our behalf.

Here, Abraham paid 400 shekels of silver. We could see that number in a couple of different ways. In the number “4,” we see “4 x 10 x 10,” with the number “4” representing universality, and the number “10” representing completeness. After all, this field is representing this earth, and all that is within, especially relating to all the elect that are buried in this field of the world, no matter where they are or which nation they died in. There may be nations that no longer exist, like some we read about in the Bible, and they are “long gone.” There could have been elect in those nations, but wherever they are in this world and whatever condition their bodies are now in, it does not matter. Someone may have died thousands of years ago, and the body went into the ground. Maybe they died before the flood, and then the flood changed the landscape of the whole earth.

In that excellent example that Mr. Camping often used, someone died at sea and perished in the depths of the sea as the ship sank on a voyage, and then the body was eaten by fish and scattered across the ocean floor. Those fish could have been eaten by bigger fish that traveled and moved around, but then those fish, too, have died. It is an impossible dilemma for man to even imagine how you could resurrect someone’s body that is little, tiny pieces inside this animal and then a larger animal, and so forth, over the course of generations. It is incredible to think about and, yet, it is no problem for God. It is all within the “field” that He owns, and He will bring them forth. He will raise the dead, His elect people, unto justification of life, and they will rise up in new spiritual bodies that are joined together with that the new resurrected souls in heaven, and they will be one whole personality again, and for evermore. This is what the 400 shekels could point to, which is the universal nature of the purchase and the completeness of the purchase throughout the geographical area of the earth, the land and the sea. God has purchased it all, no matter where the bodies were left. God will certainly resurrect them.

Or, we could look at this number as “40 x 10.” We know that “40” is the number of testing and judgment, and “10” is the number of completeness. Therefore, it would point to the complete testing program or the complete judgment of the whole earth, and for everyone related to this field, for those purchasing it and for those buried in it. So we can look at this either way and still learn some important spiritual truth from it.

Again, this money was weighed. Abraham weighed it to Ephron the 400 shekels of silver. We saw the word “weighed” back in Zechariah 11:12:

And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.

So, again, we can see the relationship of silver weighed to the price or valuation of Christ. The money represented the work He performed – His atoning, redemptive work for His people.

It is also found in Jeremiah 32:9-10:

And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle’s son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances.

There was a balance or scale they used to weigh out the amount to make sure it was the proper amount and a just balance. That has everything to do with the Law of God and the righteousness of God as the Just Judge. Everything is done properly and rightly. Everything is done with perfect justice concerning the redemption and purchase of the field and the purchase of the people of God. Everything was done correctly.

This same Hebrew word translated as “weighed” is Strong’s #8254 in the concordance, and it is used in an interesting way in the book of Job, chapter 6. Now Job is a type and a figure. He was an historical man that lived long ago and, yet, he is also a type and figure of the Lord Jesus Christ, especially a figure of Christ while He suffered under the wrath of God. The early chapters of Job are heart-wrenching. I do not see how anyone could read about what happened to that man and not immediately feel such empathy toward him and to feel his pain as it “leaps off the pages” of the Bible. He lost his livestock and his riches, yes, but then we see that he lost all his children. He was afflicted from head to toe with sore boils, but certainly the most grievous thing was the loss of all his children and all these things happened at once, as it were. And we think we have a bad day if one thing goes wrong, like the plumbing breaking or when we have to call an electrician, or if our car breaks down. We are almost at the point of “overload” sometimes, because of our weakness. We would think it was catastrophic if the plumbing, the electrical panel and the car broke down, all in one day. And, yet, that is nothing in the overall scheme of things. Those things are as nothing compared to losing your loved ones and your physical health. All this was afflicted (upon him) as God allowed these things to happen to Job to picture the tremendous affliction, pain and agony of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the language the Bible used of Jesus, starting in the Garden of Gethsemane and going to the cross to demonstrate the things He had done at the foundation of the world. It was a demonstration because He was not actively bearing the sins or paying the price of the sins of His people. Nonetheless, He was under the genuine and real wrath of God. There was genuine suffering and real agony and that is what we can see with Job.

While Job was under this tremendous “weight” in which it seemed God had forsaken him…and God did temporarily forsake Job in a real way, in order to paint this picture of the time when God forsook God or when God the Father forsook God the Son. So, here it says in Job 6:1-3:

But Job answered and said, Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up.

Again, once we see Job as a type of Christ, then these verses make perfect sense, and they really stand out by revealing to us what happened to the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, it says, “Oh that my grief were throughly weighed,” and the Hebrew word translated as “grief” is Strong’s #3708, and it is translated as “wrath” several times. I will just go to one place, in Proverbs 27:3:

A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool’s wrath is heavier than them both.

It is a “fool’s wrath” or a fool’s grief, and this is why we can understand that Job as the Lord Jesus is saying this: “Oh that my grief or the wrath that is upon me for the fool’s sakes.” And who is the fool? It is the sinner that has offended God, transgressed His Law and rebelled against God; that is, it was our sins and our foolishness that were laid upon Him. “Oh that my grief (or my wrath) were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! For now it (this wrath that is upon me) would be heavier than the sand of the sea.” Where have we heard “sand of the sea” before? It was the promise to Abraham that his seed would be as the sand of the sea and the stars of the heaven for multitude. You see, it was for the sake of the seed of Abraham or the seed chosen in Christ, the elect people for whom Christ suffered. And this is what is being weighed. It is His calamity and His terrible affliction on one side of the scales, and on the other side is the “sand of the sea,” the elect people, as it is balanced out. This was the payment being made on our behalf. It is the shekels of silver. It is the atoning work done by Christ for those souls, as He purchased them or bought them.