Debts and Death Dues
Pixabay January is a scary month—if only because the December bills begin to pile up in the mail box. Debt haunts us and then hunts us down. Here's a lesson from Abraham. How odd that the first piece of the promised land that Abraham ever owned was a burial plot for Sarah. The Almighty had promised to give him all of Canaan as an inheritance, but when Sarah died, he was still a pilgrim, a nomad, a tent-dweller without a stake in the ground to mark his turf. Genesis 23 describes the negotiations between Abraham and the owner of the cave in which the patriarch wanted to bury his wife. This is, apparently, the first mention of metal (silver) being exchanged for goods and services, and a reference to the custom of using a go-between or a mediator to negotiate a transaction. Abraham goes to the Hittites and asks, “ …intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave at Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me...