I’ll Buy This Cave Fair And Square So No One Ever Fights Over It

By Abraham

My beloved Sarah has passed on after a hundred -twenty-seven years, and now I turn to the task of acquiring a burial place for her – that is, for us. It is appropriate, then, to integrate the reunion of our material bodies with the dust from which we came, in a way that fulfills the divine promise to make this holy land a place of belonging: we to it, and it to us. What better way to bring that into manifestation than to publicly take on that belonging by means of a binding purchase agreement? I will buy the Machpelah Cave from the Hittite in whose possession it now lies, in a public forum, for a full and fair price, so that none shall ever dispute its Hebrew pedigree, and none shall fight over who “owns” it.

Down through the ages, the echoes of this purchase shall resonate, and none will credibly question that it belongs to my descendants. I paid for it and took possession of it, after all, and am beholden to no one for the rights to it. Here I will inter my wife, the mother of my beloved Isaac, the progenitor of kings, as promised by the LORD. Isaac and his descendants will forever retain those rights, and anyone who claims the site  – and, by extension, the rest of the Promised Land – belongs to someone else can be summarily dismissed as lying, delusional, or mistaken. The idea that anyone might question its chain of succession will be laughable.

As I have foreseen by the grace of the LORD, Isaac, too, will use this as his family plot, and after him, the son who carries on his legacy will in turn be buried there. For thousands of years hence, our cumulative heritage will find expression in the tombs we construct of this cave, the uninterrupted chain of relationship with the Almighty as expressed in embodied life – and death. A place of belonging, of return, and therefore of pilgrimage. A place upon which all of humanity can look and declare, “There is the spot that Abraham purchased and acquired, forever uniting the land with the people he would produce.” The unequivocal purchase will prevent any ambiguities or challenges to my people’s connection to the site, and it would be ridiculous to conceive of any outright violence being used in such a case. It would be absurd.

I shall therefore now approach the Hittites and make my overture. Following this deed, the Cave of Machpelah will never be a source  of strife.

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