Have you built a resting place for God? Lessons from Abraham’s and David’s approaches

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This is part 1 of a study comparing Abraham with David and Rivkah (Rebecca), Ruth and Photini (Samaritan woman at the well). See part 2.

The Torah reading חיי שרה Chayei Sarah (“Sarah’s life,” Gen. 23:1–25:18) starts with the story of Abraham’s search for a final resting place for his dearly departed wife, Sarah. He reaches out to Ephron the Hittite and offers to buy a cave on his land and some surrounding property to bury Sarah.

There are several parts of the story that pique the interest of Torah scholars, but one part of the story that interests me the most today is Abraham’s emphatic refusal to accept Sarah’s burial cave as a gift. Abraham insists on buying the cave and the land for Sarah’s sake.

In the haftarah (parallel reading) for Chayei Sarah (1Chronicles 21:7-22:1), we see that Abraham’s much later descendant David HaMelech who also refuses to accept the location of the future temple as a gift, insisting on paying full price for the land that it would be built upon in the future.

Here are some of the many parallels between the two men:

Abraham	David
Sarah died	Subjects died
Purchased land	Purchased land
Paid full price	Paid full price
Haggling with a Gentile over payment	Haggling with a Gentile over payment
Permanent resting place for Sarah	Permanent resting place for God
Mourning and sadness	Mourning, sadness and fear
Guilt over the death of a spouse	Guilt over the death of his innocent subjects

Both Abraham and King David refused to “give” something to their spouse or to God that cost them nothing.

Abraham and David had slightly different goals in mind. Abraham’s goal was a permanent resting place for Sarah and later himself and his son Isaac. David’s goal was to save his subjects from death. Even though David’s objective was different from Abraham’s, the results were the same: a permanent resting place for someone they loved.

What is a permanent resting place? We see the phrase “rest in peace” on tombstones so for us, a permanent resting place is synonymous with a grave, with death itself but God is immortal, so how does God have a permanent resting place on earth when He can not die?

The truth is that death, for those who believe in God is not permanent. Abraham bought a permanent resting place for Sarah’s fleshly body, but David bought a resting place for God’s spirit. 

God’s plan for mankind is not eternal death, but eternal life. 

Tradition says that Sarah died at the time of the sacrifice of Isaac, which took place at the same location that David performed the sacrifice that put a stop to the plague that God unleashed about David’s illegal census.

If this is the case, that Abraham’s choice to sacrifice Isaac broke Sarah’s heart to the point of death, how do you think Abraham felt about this? I would think he felt a lot of guilt over her death. This fits in with the emphasis the Torah portion later places on how Rivkah’s arrival brought Isaac great comfort in the death of his mother.

We feel guilt for one of two reasons. Either when we do something wrong or when we fail to do something right. We don’t feel guilt when someone else commits a sin, we feel guilt when we do something that is wrong that causes either our own suffering or someone else’s.

Guilt is a very intense emotion and people are willing to do a lot to assuage it when it pops up. We want to feel that we have done something concrete to somehow rectify our wrongdoing.

Abraham and David, paid full price for their guilt, no discounts. They both paid retail prices for the land they needed, not wholesale.

The full price for guilt of sin is death, and both Abraham and David were given an opportunity to get something for nothing and both emphatically refused.

This is very profound because the offers of discounts in both cases were offered by Gentiles. In both cases, the offers of a discount was a lie, or at best, an offer that was ephemeral and could be withdrawn by either the original gifted or one of their descendants.

By paying full price, or even more than full price, they made the transaction solid and permanent. By refusing the gift and insisting on paying the gentile for the land, they refused to the gentile’s offer to become a middleman in the transaction.

Both Abraham and David lived with profound guilt for their mistakes and misunderstandings, they were living with the fact that their actions caused the death of someone else. Both men performed an act of mercy and kindness for the dead. Abraham did this by making sure Sarah had a final resting place and David did this by repenting of his sin and making a sacrifice to God to stop the plague from killing even more people. David saved many lives that day.

The truth of the matter is that all of us will die and end up in a grave somewhere, but if we are on God’s side, then death is not the end of our life. The death of the fleshly body is a temporary inconvenience.

It’s because of Yeshua (Jesus) that Abraham, David, and all those who love God will receive the reward of living with God in a regenerated body, in the future place of rest. Yeshua’s death doesn’t prevent us from suffering from the first death. We will all experience that, unless we are fortunate enough to be alive when He returns. Yeshua’s death for us is a gift that makes us fit to avoid the second death and to live in God’s kingdom and rest in His place.

Summary: Tammy