V. 1-20. Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old, as long as she lived, and died in the capital city, which is called Hebron, 1) in the land of Canaan. Then Abraham came to lament and weep over her. Afterward he stood up from his dead body, and spake unto the children of Heth, saying: I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me an inheritance burying place with you, that I may bury my dead man that is before me. Then the children of Heth answered Abraham, and said unto him, Hear us, 2) O Lord, thou art a prince of God among us, bury thy dead in our pleasant sepulchres; let no man among us hinder thee, that thou bury not in his sepulchre thy 3) dead. Then Abraham arose, and bowed himself before the people of the land, that is, before the children of Heth; and he spake unto them, saying: If it be your mind that I bury my dead before me, hear me, and pray for me against Ephron the son of Zoar, that he give me his twofold cave, which he hath at the end of his field. For the same money he will give it to me among you for an inheritance burial; for Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth. Then Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham, that the children of Heth heard him before all that came in and out of the gates of his city, and said, Nay, my lord, but hear me. I give thee the field, and the cave that is therein, and give it thee in the sight of the children of my people, to bury thy dead. Then Abraham bowed down before the people of the land, and spake unto Ephron, that the people of the land might hear, saying, If thou wilt obey me, I pray thee, 4) Take of me the money of the field, which I give thee, and I will bury my dead man there. Ephron answered Abraham, and said unto him, My lord,
1) Marginal gloss: Hebron. Hebron is Kiriath-Arba, says Moses, that is, the four city. For the high capitals of old were all Arba, that is, divided into four parts, like Rome, Jerusalem and Babylon. Gen. 10:10.
2) "us" is missing in the Wittenberg and the Erlanger.
3) Wittenberg and Erlangen: den.
4) "please I" is missing in the Erlanger.
5) Hear me, the field is worth four hundred shekels of silver; but what is that between me and you? Just bury your dead. Abraham obeyed Ephron, and weighed to him the money which he had said that the children of Heth heard, namely, four hundred shekels of silver, which was common in the purchase. So Ephron's field, wherein is the twofold cave over against Mamre, was confirmed unto Abraham for his own possession, with the cave therein, and with all the trees of the field round about, that the children of Heth looked on, and all that went in and out of the gates of his city. Then Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field, which is twofold, over against Mamre, which is Hebron, in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave therein were confirmed to Abraham for the inheritance burial of the children of Heth.
This is a foolish chapter to look at. What has he to make so many words about such a small thing, as Abraham buys a pit, because he puts in a dead man? Above [Cap. 22, § 30 ff/ we have heard that he sums up the whole kingdom of Christ in three or four words, since it would be necessary for him to make a hundred thousand words, and makes so little that he cannot make less, sums it all up in one word: blessing. Here he washes away a whole chapter of that, since nothing is needed. It is a foolish thing in the sight of reason, and useless talk. What shall we make of it? According to history, I know nothing to make of it, because it is written contrary to the superstitious and hopeful saints, who like to tighten their consciences, and think that he who serves God does not have to deal with such worldly things, so that one learns from it to be in the manner of the people with whom one deals.
5) "doch" is missing in the Erlanger.
6) Marginal gloss: Seckel. Seckel is a weight on the coin, a place of a guilder, because before times one weighed the money thus, as one does now with gold.
7) "man" taken by us from Walch's old edition; in the other editions: he.
That it may be an example of love. When one comes so far that the faith and the gospel remain, one should not turn to how people live, what laws they have, but should always be according to their nature; and that it is not a sin for a Christian to act and deal with people, to become a merchant, to keep the way as the others do, and especially to express the giving of money, 1) which is common and customary.
üominibus, "Let your gentleness be known to all men," that is, that you keep it so in your nature that no one may complain about you; so also 1 Cor. 10:33: Do as I do; "I make myself pleasing to everyone," that is, I yield and give way to everyone, letting go of my right and mind, where I see that another is opposed to me ever coming to him, so that he may have pleasure in me.
(3) It is a fine rule: He that will please any man, let him please every man; and again, He that will please no man's way, shall please no man. So shall a Christian do. They do not. If one laughs a little too much, and runs over the string, they purr and purring; everyone says that his sense is the best, that everything else is good for nothing. So everyone who walks in his own way always makes himself believe that the other is not as pure as his, no one pleases him well; and yet he wants his way to please everyone. These are false gleaming works, which do not walk in love.
Therefore, the work of Abraham must be praised, even if it does not seem worth writing. Could he find no other love.
1) Jenaer: and.
according to the high example of faith? Yes, it is certainly the greatest, highest work that is indicated in this according to history. He who has love must not do much more.
5. that Abraham buys the field around four hundred Seckel, one must know that sielus is two kinds, gülden and silbern. The silver one is almost as much in coinage as a local florin, so four sovereigns make a florin. So the four hundred coins make a hundred florins; that is how much he bought the field with trees and everything on it; that was his treasure. Thereby the cross is indicated, as he was a sojourner, and did not have a foot wide in the land, which God had promised him, as Stephen says in Acts 7, 5J.
6th The grave in the cave was over against Mamre, which is Hebron (says the text); fdas] was its old name, perhaps from a great man who lived there, as is said above in the fourteenth chapter, v. 24, from the three men, Aner, Escol and Mamre. The text also calls this city KiriathArba, that is, a four-city, from Greek
that is, one of the great capitals that were commonly divided into four parts, like Jerusalem and Babylon, as stated above in the tenth 2) chapter.
(7) Now here, among other things, it is also indicated how one should behave Christianly toward the dead, that it is a good work. It is a good work to bury the dead, otherwise he would not have said so much about where and how Sarah was buried.
8 Item, that Abraham lamented and wept over them, is also written for this reason, that it is not evil to grieve, to mourn, and to suffer for the sake of the people who die to us. Although we must all die, yet we are so constituted by love that each one should grant life to the other, just as we are all united in being poor and living in sweat: nor should love have anything to do there, and be concerned about 3) the neighbor's poverty and other hardships. According to faith we may neither live nor die, but according to love we must take care of our neighbor; as this life bears,
2) In the editions: "eleventh". Luther Werst hiedurch auf, was in? 9 of the tenth chapter.
3) "um" is missing in the Erlanger.
it is good that we rejoice with him, and again, as Paul teaches Rom. 12:15: "Rejoice with the glad, and weep with those who weep."
(9) Let every man therefore take care of his neighbor, even of the need of the body, as it may be; lest the trusting saints come, and think to cast it to the winds, that a Christian may be of good cheer, and live as he will. Let no one be such a great saint who does not let himself be struck by and accept the needs of his neighbor. Christ also had enough before him; and although among all the miracles he did, the greatest was that he preached the gospel, nevertheless he helped all the sick, as Matthew writes: "He took our infirmities upon himself, and our sicknesses he bore.
(10) You must not judge a Christian otherwise than according to faith and love. According to faith he takes care of no thing on earth; according to love he takes care of all things. God does not want to uproot nature through the gospel, but lets remain what is natural, but directs it to the right path. It is natural for a father to love his child, for a wife to love her husband, and to be happy when he is well, and again. A Christian does not accept this in the sight of God according to faith, even if everything goes to ruin, but according to love we should accept it as our own need and judge it according to love. Otherwise, he would not have written that the great patriarch wept for his wife when she was not supposed to serve him. So God sends us that such movements of the heart remain, and still wants us to overcome them with faith, and therefore not to despair, nor to fall from God. So you are a truly Christian person, who obeys God in all things, and yet 2) worries when adversity befalls another. Therefore you see that it is nothing that some spirits pretend that one should be so completely free of creatures that one does not care at all about how others are.
11 Now this is from the love of Abraham
1) Erlanger: with.
2) "itself" is missing in the Erlanger.
He said that he would take such great care that he would have a property for the dead. Before the world it is done that everyone thinks where he wants to stay and what he wants to have in life, before death. Here it is the other way around. Throughout his life he was a stranger, so that he did not have a foot wide for his and his wife's body; now, because she is dead and never enjoys it, he first wants to have his own property; so that one might think him a fool, that he now wants to provide, and did not do so before. Everything came from faith, as also this burial.
(12) Which I believe came from the holy Scriptures. For the heathen, especially the Romans, burned their dead; but the Scripture calls it burial, and flows, I think, from the third chapter of this book, where God [Cap. 3, 19.] says to Adam, "Until thou return to the ground from whence thou wast taken, for thou art dust, and shalt return to dust." There is the little word s^] Aphar, that is, such earth as is loose, as if it were crushed, as the moles throw up, or as one throws out of the grave, which is crushed. Now if one buries the man under the earth, earth becomes again from it; so it goes all from God's words, as he had heard from his fathers.
(13) Now he has a certain promise that the land he held would be given to his heirs. He relied on that word, not caring if he did not have it while he was alive, knowing that they would take it after his death. Thus he looked to the resurrection of the dead, thinking that it would be another life and land that God would give him, as the epistle to the Hebrews [Cap. 11:10] indicates. This is what he meant by despising this life, and he respects the dead as much as he looks to another life. God also indicates how he takes the dead into his care and guard, that is, that this Sarah is better provided for now than when she was alive. As if he should say: Because you live, you always care; so you must leave the care when you die, 3) and let me care for you. So Sarah is now lying on her own property and land, which is theirs.
3) In the old editions: gesterbet.
372 Erl. 34, 37-39. sermon on Gen. 23, 1-20. 24, 1-67. w. m, 554-359. z7z.
God had promised, which had nothing of its own before. God comforts us all with this, and secretly points to the resurrection of the flesh, because he cares more for the dead than for the living; he would never do this if he did not have in mind to raise the dead. This was the comfort of the holy fathers when they died, that they now lie and rest in the bosom of God.
Now, to touch the spiritual interpretation of what the burial means, we have from St. Paul, Rom. 6, 3. f.: "Know ye not that all we which are baptized into Jesus Christ are baptized into his death? So we are ever buried with him through baptism into death. "2c. Item, v. 5: "But if we have been planted together with him unto like death, we shall also be like unto the resurrection." When one baptizes a Christian, one baptizes
him to death, that he should die. Just as a grain is thrown into the ground when it is sown; it is buried, so that it must die in the ground, and again a new grain grows up. Thus we are planted with the Lord Christ in baptism, pass through and in baptism into his death and grave, and through death into a new and eternal life. This is the sum of it: He who is baptized has no more to do than to be buried. For even though I am in the body, I deal with it by always closing it up, creeping deeper and deeper into the grave, until I rot; so that I daily break off desire, dampen and strangle lust, and die to the world, until I decompose under the earth; so I must be buried to the world, if I am to live with God. This is the mystery.