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MACHPELAH
Small field of trees and a cave with two chambers near Mamre in the district of Hebron, which was purchased by Abraham as a burial place for Sarah. The seller was Ephron, a Hittite, and the price was 400 shekels of silver (Gn 23:8-19). Later, Abraham (25:9), Isaac and Rebekah (49:30-31), and Jacob (50:13) were buried here.
The details of Abraham’s purchase of Machpelah, if compared with Hittite laws, support the trustworthiness of the story in Genesis 23. Attention is drawn to the number of the trees, the weighing of silver at the current buyer and seller valuation, and the witnesses at the city gate where the transaction was officially made known. All these details are in accordance with Hittite laws, which would have been forgotten after the time of the patriarchs. Coin was not a circulating medium before 700 BC. The implication that the shekel was a weight and not a coin in the time of Abraham also indicates an early date for the story of the purchase.