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The details of the purchase are quite interesting. In the first place it says he stood up from before the people and said, I am a stranger, a visitor among you. Give me property for the burial place that I may bury my dead wife. Here is he states he is a visitor who didn't own any land and he had no place to bury his wife. He goes to the owner of the city and says give me some property so that I can bury this person who has died. What is significance about this is where do you normally bury somebody if you are a visitor.

Normally if you were on a trip and somebody died on that trip would you bury them there , no you would bring them back home, right. By doing this he is saying this is now my family’s home. He's, saying I'm home here in this is the land. The Lord promised me my descendants land and I want to own a piece of property because I am going to stay here.

This is a critical point in this passage we read last time where they say to him “My Lord you are a mighty Prince among us and none of us will withhold from you any burial place so that you can bury your dead”. So, the local resident said to him mighty Prince, now the Hebrew text says a Prince of God. These non-believers recognised that Abraham was a Prince of God, interesting. I also think it's interesting that he saw himself as a foreigner and visitor, yet they saw him as a Prince of God. He saw himself at the bottom of the social ladder they saw him at the top of the spiritual ladder. They recognised who he was in his relationship to God so they said, you can bury her in one of our places, pick the spot. So they give him the Cave of Machpelah which is at the end of his field, and he offers the full price as property.

We need to notice carefully a couple of things that are going on here. Part of the custom in buying land or property would have been to negotiate the price. As a visitor, find a person to go negotiate the price for the cemetery plot. That's part of what's going on, but also notice at verse nine he says, “I want the property at the end of the field so he's not asking for one place he's asking for a substantial piece of the land to bury his dead. He's anticipating other members of his family dying and so he's wanting to buy a piece of property to bury them all.

10 Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people, and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. 11 “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give[b] you the field, and I give[c] you the cave that is in it. I give[d] it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.” 12 Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land 13 and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”

(Gen 23: 10-15)

So, Abraham says, I want a piece at the end of his field and I'm willing to pay full price for it. I want to pay the full price for this piece of ground. Now you need to note the text carefully having said he will give him the field for free Abraham says, no I will pay full price for it. I need to explain they didn't mean they were really going to give it to him but that was the cue for him to say no and start the negotiations  Language experts think they had no intention of giving him this piece of land. So, he is saying I want to pay for it, I don't want you to give it to me as a gift.

“Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants”.

(Genesis 23: 16)

Now let's talk about the 400 shekels, That was considerably more than the property was worth matter fact later, many years later, Jeremiah paid 17 shekels for a whole field David paid 600 gold shekels for the whole temple site of 35 acres, so to ask 400 shekels was really an exorbitant price. One commentator said the average cost of a field at that time was four shekels per acre. I should point out we don't know this for absolutely certain but the best guess is it would usually take less than one acre of land to bury a loved one. As a matter of fact, experts have documents buries site with a large garden area only costing 40 shekels at that time. 400 is  way outside of the norm, so what’s going on here?