NOTES for Gen 23:1-20

For many years Abraham was a sojourner and a stranger in the land that God had promised to give to him and his descendants. Judging by the text of Scripture, he was considered a strange man and at the same time a sign of the presence of a great, invisible God unfamiliar to the people of that land. They were afraid to offend him or do him harm, thinking that by doing so they would insult the One who is unknown and incomprehensible. And still he remained a stranger and a sojourner who had no land in which to bury his wife. This is how every person feels in a foreign place: "I will die, and there will be nowhere to bury me." And the loss of his wife and lifelong companion becomes not only Abraham's personal grief, but also an event that secures his rights to the Promised Land. Now he has buried someone close to him here. He remains here to live, and no one can dispute his right to be on the land to which he has given his wife's body.