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Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am a foreigner and stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” The Hittites replied to Abraham, “Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.” Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. He said to them, “If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”

(Genesis 23: 3-9)

Some experts who have studied death and dying have come up with what are called the five steps of grief. When I talk to people who are going through the loss of a loved one, I usually mention three steps that I believe are biblically identified as part of the natural normal grieving process.

The first thing that happens is denial. If I were to tell you that somebody, we all knew passed away today, the first thing you would probably say is, oh no, I can’t believe it. You may even walk around for a while finding it hard to accept that you will never see them again. Even for people in fairly casual relationships there is a limited form of denial. The closer the relationship, the more intense that feeling usually is. When it someone you love there is often a part of you that just doesn’t want to face it or finds it hard to accept that they have really died, that is a form of denial 

The second phase and this is what I have often seen is an element of guilt. People sometimes feel guilty, when I say they feel guilty what I mean when the person dies, they think I wish I had said these things, or I wish I had done things differently. In my experience observing people going through grief sometimes follow it with a feeling of can be anger. They sometimes get angry sometimes at the person who died, because they left them or even, they can get angry with God for allowing them to die. Then, hopefully there is a point where people can eventually reach acceptance. Eventually they accept that the loved one has gone, and they begin to put your life back together minus that person. The steps differ in order or intensity depending on the individual, but I do know that these steps are natural normal and real. I also know that we need to be prepared for that what happens when we or someone we know loses a loved one. Now when I say there are steps, I don't mean you step on the first one and you step on the second one and forget the first one and then move on from the second to the third. The way it usually happens is it comes in waves. You might go through the first one and the second one then come back to the first then jump to the third one. People who surf say every 7th wave is the big one. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know when it come to grief that the waves of emotion can suddenly hits you. Just when you think you're getting over it you can get swept up by the big emotional seventh wave. However, what is helpful to know I hope is that even Abraham wept and mourned. What was natural for him 1000’s of years ago is still natural for us today. I’m just simply saying, if a great man of faith like Abraham did it then it’s normal it is natural and maybe it’s even a healthy thing to be upset,  cry and to mourn. But we also can see that Abraham eventually reached a point where he addressed some of the practical issues following his wife’s death.

The next thing we see Abraham do is purchase a piece of burial land. It seems strange to some that the next 7 verses are giving over to just buying a burial plot, that is unparalleled to anything in the Bible. Why did the author of Genesis give that much space to the very fact that he simply bought a burial plot? Why are the details important? Well, we shall find out in the next episode.