| | Parashat Hayyei Sarah Avraham and Ephron: A Curious Negotiation
IV
CAN THESE BONES LIVE?
One of the fascinating areas of research which has opened up many new doors of Torah understanding and insight is that of archeology. This field, relatively new and, in its finest hours, painstaking and rigorous of method, has found the Near East to be the most bountiful of areas for its own research. The many digs in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and throughout the Middle East have uncovered virtual treasure troves of evidence linking our present to our past. The most notable example, one which deserves far more than the passing mention it will get here, is the momentous find of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 in the series of caves known as Qumran. Our understanding of the religious schisms affecting the Judean community in the last two centuries before the common era has been enhanced hundredsfold as a result of the Scrolls - and countless puzzling passages throughout Rabbinic literature have become clarified as well.
Archeology has been able to take us even further back - and there are even instances where words in T'nakh which were indecipherable to the Rishonim have, as a result of archeological evidence, become clarified. For example, the word *Pim* in Sh'mu'el I 13:21 was rendered by the classical commentators as any one of various types of farm implements. This translation does not fit the verse smoothly - but, since the word is a hapax legomenon (occurs only once in the T'nakh), there was no contextual reference against which to clarify it.
Recent digs in central Israel have brought the Pim to light - it is an ancient coin (weighing roughly 8 grams of silver); this finding has allowed us to go back to our verse and understand that the T'nakh is teaching us how much the B'nei Yisra'el had to pay the P'lish'tim to sharpen their tools, rather than another item in a list of implements. (See the verse in context, the traditional commentaries and Da'at Mikra ad loc. I am indebted to Professor Shnayer Leiman for this reference.)
V
"I AM A STRANGER AND SOJOURNER"
Recent discoveries of Hittite law and other Near Eastern texts have uncovered a basic piece of information which sheds light on our entire Parashah:
In many near eastern societies, foreigners (anyone outside of the tribal family) were not allowed to purchase land. (See, e.g., Lehmann's article in BASOR 129, Skinner in ICC Genesis p. 336 and Pritchard in ANET p. 219 n. 47)
[The interested reader is directed to B'resheet 34:21 - the impact of that arrangement becomes clearer in light of the evidence offered here.]
In last week's essay, I suggested that the reason Avraham delayed acquiring land in Eretz K'na'an for over 60 years from the time of his arrival until the purchase of Makhpelah was due to his not yet having reached "the land that I will show you." There is, however, a more prosaic reason which becomes clear when we view the evidence of local law in K'na'an at the time of the Avot. As a *ger*, Avraham did not have the right to buy land in K'na'an - nor did the local peoples have the right to sell it to him without special dispensation.
Before going further, we can already revisit our first question and answer: Avraham introduces himself as "a stranger and sojourner" because he is explaining why he has no land as of yet - no place to bury Sarah. It also explains why he gathers the Hittites (or their leaders -S'forno at 23:7) to begin the negotiations. After all, why didn't he go directly to Ephron, if it was his field he desired? He congregated the B'nei Het together in order to create the possibility for a communal decision allowing this foreigner to purchase land.
We can now understand their response: "You are a lord and prince among us..."; in other words, with all due honor and respect, Avraham, you are not one of us. We cannot allow you to purchase land, as that will naturalize you here. You are certainly a noble man - but a *N'si Elokim* is hardly a member of the people! We will certainly grant you any place you wish - no one would withhold that from you - but we cannot sell it to you. This answers question #2 above.
Let's recall the rest of the negotiations - and clarify the "between-the-lines" of each side:
And Avraham stood up, and bowed to the people of the land, to the Hittites. And he talked with them, saying:
"If your mind is that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar. That he may give me the cave of Makhpelah, which he has, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me as a possession of a burying place amongst you."
[Avraham is asking the members of the clan to approach Ephron - so that he should be able to sell the land to Avraham in their presence]
And Ephron lived among the Hittites; and Ephron the Hittite answered Avraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city, saying:
"No, my lord, hear me; the field I give to you, and the cave that is in it, I give it to you; in the presence of the sons of my people I give it to you; bury your dead."
[Ephron insists on granting the burial plot. As Professor Yehuda Elitzur points out, he says *Natati, natati, natati* - "what more do you want, I have given it to you!". That is the meaning of the introductory *Lo* - I will not sell it, but I will grant it. Avraham, for his part, will not bury his dead without first gaining ownership rights via a proper sale. We have now answered questions 3-5]
And Avraham bowed down before the people of the land. And he spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying:
"But if you will give it, I beg you, hear me; I will give you money for the field; take it from me, and I will bury my dead there."
[As mentioned above, Avraham is insistent on purchasing land - he wants an *Ahuzah* (holding which he can bequeath to his progeny) as opposed to a *Matanah* (gift)]
And Ephron answered Avraham, saying to him:
"My lord, listen to me; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver. What is that between you and me? Bury therefore your dead."
[Something has shifted in the dialogue here. Explanation below]
VI
EAST MEETS WEST
In 1927, E. Chiera published the findings of a "Joint Expedition with the Iraq Museum at Nuzi". Nuzi is an ancient town in Mesopotamia - a district familiar to Avraham if not to Ephron.
Among the Nuzian legal documents published, we find several examples of a curious form of adoption, known as "sale-adoption". The gist of this relationship was that an outsider (non-family member) could pay to be adopted by a family member, thus circumventing the ban on selling land to outsiders. In other words, the outsider (in our case - Avraham) would pay a sum to the clan member (Ephron) to allow him in to the family - thus allowing him to become a landowner among the clan members.
This legal loophole was likely not known - or utilized - by the Hittites. Avraham, however, being a Mesopotamian by birth, would have been familiar with it; indeed, it may be that his years of "sojourning" were also an attempt to find the most suitable peoples among whom to settle - and with whom to begin his acquisition of the land via this method.
In any case, it is entirely possible that this is what Avraham proposed to Ephron - and that is reflected by Ephron's response: "what is land of four hundred shekel between you and me?" - meaning, instead of the *N'si Elokim* distance implied in the original salutation, our relationship is now one of *beini uveinkha* - "between you and me", as kin. (This would also explain the exorbitant price paid by Avraham)
VII
EPILOGUE
The proposal suggested above is not intended, in any sense, to supplant the insightful and impactful messages gleaned by Hazal and the Rishonim from this significant text. As Rav Kook so eloquently stated - and as is borne out by centuries of commentary by Hakhmei haM'sorah - the essential of Torah is the message; how much our own lives are more firmly guided by the Divine teachings of Torah is immeasurably more significant than our ability to utilize various academic tools to verify historicity or other "p'shat modes". What we have seen is that, in contradistinction to common assumptions, the world of modern research has much to offer us in our own understanding of Torah. Was a Nuzian-type "sale-adoption" the mechanism used by Avraham to "get his foot in the door" of land-purchase in Eretz K'na'an? We can't know for sure - but it is certainly an intriguing possibility.
"If someone tells you that there is Torah among the nations, do not believe him; but if he tells you that there is wisdom among the nations, believe him." (Eikhah Rabbah 2:13)
The glory of Yephet - the achievements of the academic world commonly associated with the western world - indeed have their place in the Beit Midrash. | |
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| Mikra, Copyright © 2011 by Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom and Torah.org. The author is Educational Coordinator of the Jewish Studies Institute of the Yeshiva of Los Angeles. |
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