Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/261

 hill, near to the remarkable well Ain el Jedid.

Verse 20
The repetition of the statement, that the field with the cave in it was conveyed to Abraham by the Hittites for a burial-place, which gives the result of the negotiation that has been described with, so to speak, legal accuracy, shows the great importance of the event to the patriarch. The fact that Abraham purchased a burying-place in strictly legal form as an hereditary possession in the promised land, was a proof of his strong faith in the promises of God and their eventual fulfilment. In this grave Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, were buried; there Jacob buried Leah; and there Jacob himself requested that he might be buried, thus declaring his faith in the promises, even in the hour of his death. =Chap. 24=

verses 1-4
After the death of Sarah, Abraham had still to arrange for the marriage of Isaac. He was induced to provide for this in a mode in harmony with the promise of God, quite as much by his increasing age as by the blessing of God in everything, which necessarily instilled the wish to transmit that blessing to a distant posterity. He entrusted this commission to his servant, “the eldest of his house,” - i.e., his upper servant, who had the management of all his house (according to general opinion, to Eliezer, whom he had previously thought of as the heir of his property, but who would now, like Abraham, be extremely old, as more than sixty years had passed since the occurrence related in Gen 15:2), - and made him swear that he would not take a wife for his son from the daughters of the Canaanites, but would fetch one from his (Abraham's) native country, and his kindred. Abraham made the servant take an oath in order that his wishes might be inviolably fulfilled, even if he himself should die in the interim. In swearing, the servant put his hand under Abraham's hip. This custom, which is only mentioned here and in Gen 47:29, the so-called bodily oath, was no doubt connected with the significance of the hip as the part from which the posterity issued (Gen 46:26), and the seat of vital power; but the early Jewish commentators supposed it to be especially connected with the rite of circumcision. The oath was by “ Jehovah, God of heaven and earth,” as the God who