Nehar Deah

Chayei Sarah

Buying Portions of Land in the Land of Israel

Parashat Chayei Sarah (the Lives of Sarah) deals extensively with Abraham buying a burial plot in Chevron, the Cave of Machpela, in which he buries his wife, Sarah. Subsequently he too is buried there, along with all the other forefathers and foremothers of the nation. The exception is Rachel, who is buried in Bethlehem.

The story of the buying of the Cave of Machpela has a number of parallels in the Bible, in which the important characters in Jewish history purchase places of importance in the Land of Israel and in its historical heritage: Shechem (Nablus, Bereishit 33:19-20), the threshing floor of Arvana in Jerusalem where the Temple would be built (Shmuel II 24:21-24; Chronicles I 21:22-25) and Shomeron (Kings I 16:24).

These four stories circumnavigate four capital cities of Biblical Israel, two of them capital cities of the kingdom of Judea: Chevron, King David's first capital, when he was still king only over Judea (Shmuel II chapters 2-4), and Jerusalem, which serves also as the capital of the united kingdom and the capital of Judea after the division of the kingdom. The other two cities were capitals of the Northern kingdom: Shechem, the first capital (according to Kings II 12:25) and Shomeron, the capital of the dynasty of Omri, which continued to be the capital of the kingdom up until its fall. From the capitals of Judea, our story of Chevron takes us back to the period of the forefathers - Abraham's purchase of the land and the burial of the forefathers there, and the story of the purchase of the threshing floor of Arvana deals with the founder of the royal dynasty - David. Also too with the Northern Kingdom: the story of Shechem deals with one of the forefathers, Jacob, who buys a portion of land on which Joseph will eventually be buried, and the brief story of Shomeron deals with Omri, father of the most important dynasty that ruled in Israel. Among the four traditions, the only two real stories that appear are about the capital cities of the Kingdom of Judea: Chevron and Jerusalem. Only brief remarks are recorded about the capital cities of the Northern Kingdom. The reason for the difference lies in the central place that the Bible accords the Kingdom of Judea and its history.

For what reason did Biblical scholars present, in the Book of Books, these stories of acquisition of land in the Land of Israel? It seems that these stories have a polemic value, proving to the people of the land that, from their own good will, and with full payment, they sold these lands to the forefathers of the nation and to its kings, and that they were not conquered by force. Since the Bible could not bring such stories about each and every piece of land, we need to be satisfied with stories about the purchase of the most important places in Israel by significant members of the nation, and the rest is left as an exercise to the reader. The reader should understand that these stories contain only some examples of an extensive process that took place over an extended period of time.

And in fact, in our parasha, in the story of the purchase of the Cave of Machpela, we clearly see the bases of the polemic, and here we will bring 5 of them:

1) Abraham admits to being a stranger in the land, but his legal status will alter if they give (=sell) him a burial plot: "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you, give me a possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight" (23:4). The residents of the area, the Hittites, do not accept Abraham's defining himself as a "stranger". They see him as a person of equal rights, or greater: "you are a mighty prince among us" (verse 6).
2) The owner of the land, Ephron son of Tzohar, is prepared to give Abraham the land he requested as a gift (verse 11) - and therefore no claim can be made that the children of Israel, took over and forced it's inhabitants to sell them land - but Abraham asks to buy "for the full price" (verse 9).
3) The sale was made in the presence of witnesses, in order to persuade the people of the land that it is not a mere fiction, but rather a legal action done according to law and custom: "and the field of Ephron… to Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Het, before all that went in at the gate of his city." (Verse 18), and a comparison which is made in the Midrash: "'for the full price he shall give it to me amongst you' (verse 9) - in the presence of all of you, that not one shall come and cast doubt" (Midrash Hagadol L'Bereishit, pg 384).
4) Legal credibility is based on knowing the exact name of the seller - Ephron son of Tzohar the Hittite, and the exact sum of money paid for the cave - "four hundred shekels of silver" (verse 15).
5) In this place, an immovable asset is set up, which bears witness to the owners - the burial place of the forefathers of the nation

Many of these polemic elements have parallels in the other extended story, the story of David and the threshing floor of Arvana the Jebusite: Arvana is prepared to give the threshing floor to David for free, but David refuses to accept it as a gift, and buys it for its full price. We know both the name of the seller and the sum paid for the threshing floor: 50 shekels. The writer of the story in the book of Chronicles, one of the last books of the Bible, seems to have been aware of this similarity, as there the similarity is even stronger (Chronicles I 21). While in the story in Samuel II, David asks to buy the threshing floor for a "price", in Chronicles he asks to do it for "full money", an expression that is found repeatedly in the story of the cave of Machpela (Bereishit 23:9). In general the root word for "to buy" which describes David's actions in Samuel II (24 verses 21 and 24) is exchanged twice with the root word for "to give" in Chronicles (verses 22, 25), similar to the story in the book of Bereishit. In Chronicles, the root word "to buy" is found only once (verse 24), as it is in Bereishit 23:18. In Chronicles it is even explicitly stated that there were witnesses to the sale - the sons of Ornan.

Also in the story of Shechem, we find explicitly stated, the identity of the sellers (the sons of Chamor the father of Shechem), a sum of money (100 kesitahs) and the fact that they built an altar there, similar to the story of the threshing floor of Arvana. Also in the brief report of the purchase of Mount Shomeron, there is a mention of the seller (Shemer) and the sum of money paid for the mountain (two talents). In conclusion, it is worthwhile to note that our sages revealed the polemic trend in these stories of land purchase (excluding the purchase of Shomeron, maybe because in this case it is not stated explicitly that the seller was a non-Jew) and saw them as an rebuttal to those who cast doubt as to the rights of the nation of Israel to the land: "and he bought the piece of land (Bereishit 33:19). R' Yodan son of R' Simon said: This is one of three places that the nations of the world cannot anger Israel in saying, they are stolen property in your hands, and they are the cave of Machpela, the Temple and the burial place of Joseph" (Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 79:6).

Professor Yair Zakovitz
Bible Department

Literature of our Sages - Midrash HaGadol (the Great Midrash)

"Midrash HaGadol" is, according to many opinions, the crowning glory of the legendary works of Yemenite Jewry. It is the most extensive Midrash on the entire Torah, and was probably compiled during the 13th and 14th century by R' David ben Amram from the city of Aden in Yemen. This work was only seen by European Jewry and literary research in the 19th century and has been published in the State of Israel in numerous versions over the past few decades.

R' David divided his Midrash according to the weekly portions, and brought them together as a unit, without any indication of sources and without any external differentiation between them. He combined all of the resources available to him: from the literature of the sages (Mishna, Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, homiletic exegesis, and more), from the literature of the Geonim and even from the writings of Maimonides, who lived in the 12th century. R' David also saw fit to intervene in the traditions he found, shortening and changing them, to combine various traditions and even to add of his own, until he presented us with a completely new work, a impressive mosaic of sources.

The importance of "Midrash HaGadol" lies in the fact that R' David had access to many sources that we no longer have today, which we can reconstruct from his compilation, even if he altered and appended to them, as previously described.

What is special is R' David's custom of opening the Midrash on each weekly portion with a poetic work, a rhyming piyut (liturgical poem, plural piyutim) which he himself wrote, with the last words being the a quotation from the first Midrash he brought on that weekly portion. These piyutim usually contain general praises for God and the Torah and various requests, many of them messianic. The following is an extract from piyut at the beginning of out weekly portion, "Chayei Sarah":

May his name be blessed, Creator of spirit and soul
He gives the weary strength and offers us retreat [=gives him rest]
[…]
Gives him fruit above and from below roots [=descendants]
Because our rock will answer us and not always be silent [=will not ignore our requests]
He will make us stand [=give us life] before him and from his service we shall not move [=turn aside]
May the light of our Messiah shine before the sun comes [=already today]
As it is written "the sun rises and the sun goes [down]" (Kohelet 1:5)

And in fact the first interpretation that R' David brings, deals with this verse from Kohelet. The verse first mentions sunrise and afterwards sunset ("the sun goes"), and the Midrash learns from this that "the Holy One Blessed be He does not transfer [=expel/get rid of] something from this world until he establishes another similar to it", and no great man passes away in this world before an alternative, replacement or successor is found. The example that Midrash brings to prove this claim is taken from the Bible: "before the sun of Moses went down, Joshua's sun had already risen", "on the day that Rabbi Akiva died, our holy rabbi was born" (referring to Rabbi Judah the Prince in the latter half of the 2nd century CE), and lastly: "before the sun of Sarah went down, Rebecca's sun had already risen", since the birth of Rebecca (Bereishit 22:23), is told of even before Sarah's death, the story that open our weekly portion.

History - Who where the Hittites?

After the death of Sara, Abraham wishes to purchase a burial plot in Chevron from "the sons of Chet", and he does in fact buy the cave of Machpela from "Ephron the Hittite" (Bereishit 23). Who were these "sons of Chet" (Hittites)?

It seems that these "sons of Chet" of "Hittites" are mentioned many times in the Bible, and we will discuss a few of these. It is told that Esau married Hittite women - Yehudit daughter of Be'eri and Basemat [or Ada] daughter of Elon (ibid 26:34; 36:2) - despite his mother, Rebecca's opposition. The Hittites are repeatedly mentioned as one of the seven nations dwelling in the land of Canaan, which the children of Israel are commanded to wipe out in the conquest of the land (Devarim 20: 7 and others). It turns out that this command was not carried out, as even after the conquest we hear about Hittites living amongst the children of Israel, and also of marriages between the children of Israel and the Hittites (Shofetim 3:5-6). Among King David's soldiers we find Uriah the Hittite, husband of Bat-Sheva, who was taken by David (Shmuel II 12). Achimelech the Hittite is also mentioned as one of David's inner circle of fighters (Shmuel I 26:6).

According to researchers, these mentions of the Hittites refer to an ancient tribe which dwelt in the mountainous region of Canaan. In certain places (e.g. Yehoshua 12:3), it is even mentioned that the Hittites where mountain people, and the "sons of Chet", from whom Abraham bought the cave, dwelt in Chevron, in the heart of the Judean mountains. There are even those who consider the Jebusites, who lived in Jerusalem before its conquest in David's time, to be of Hittite origin. This theory is strengthened by the prophet Ezekiel's censure of the city of Jerusalem: "Your father was an Amorite, your mother, a Hittite" (16:3), and if in fact this is true, then it is possible that Uriah the Hittite, an inhabitant of Jerusalem, was a remnant of the Jebusites. This remains to be proven.

In the Bible we also find other mentions of the Hittites, but here the reference is not to a Canaanite tribe but rather a large empire, the Kingdom of Hatti, which existed in the north-eastern area of Asia Minor. This empire reached its pinnacle in the 14th - 13th century BCE, and its decline took place through the 12th to the 8th century, when it was conquered by the Kingdom of Assyria. It is probably this kingdom that is mentioned when God promises the land of Canaan to Joshua and declares that "from the wilderness and the Lebanon … up to the Great River, the River Euphrates, all of the land of the Hittites and up to the Great Sea … will be your borders" (1:3). When the Bible tells of Hittite women that Solomon took as wives (Kings I 11:1), it is probably referring to the Hittite Empire. This was a part of Solomon's policy, to encourage his connection with other nations. (He also married Pharaoh's daughter and "many gentile women … Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, Hittites" [ibid]). Another story which also seems to refer to the Hittite Empire is the story of the Canaanite from Beit-El, who betrayed his city to the children of Israel and in doing so was the only one left alive and afterwards he went to "the land of the Hittites and built a city and names it Luz" (1:26).

Behind the name "Chet/Hittite/Hatti", are different politico-cultural entities and differentiating between them is not always simple.