¹ The length of Sarah's life was a hundred and twenty-seven years.

² She died at Kiriath-Arba -- now Hebron -- in the land of Canaan, and Abraham proceeded to mourn and bewail her.

³ Then rising from beside his dead, Abraham spoke to the Hittites,

⁴ 'I am a stranger resident here,' he said. 'Let me have a burial site of my own here, so that I can remove my dead for burial.'

⁵ The Hittites replied to Abraham,

⁶ 'Please listen to us, my lord, we regard you as a prince of God; bury your dead in the best of our tombs; not one of us would refuse you his tomb for you to bury your dead.'

⁷ At this, Abraham rose and bowed low to the local people, the Hittites,

⁸ and pleaded with them as follows, 'If you consent to my removing my dead for burial, you must agree to intercede for me with Ephron son of Zohar,

⁹ for him to let me have the cave he owns at Machpelah, which is on the edge of his field. Let him sell it to me in your presence at its full price, for a burial site of my own.'

¹⁰ Now Ephron was sitting among the Hittites, and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all the inhabitants of his town.

¹¹ 'No, my lord, listen to me,' he said. 'I give you the field and the cave in it; I make this gift in the presence of my kinsmen. Bury your dead.'

¹² Abraham bowed low to the local people

¹³ and, in the hearing of the local people, replied to Ephron as follows, 'Be good enough to listen to me. I shall pay the price of the field; accept it from me and I shall bury my dead there.'

¹⁴ Ephron replied to Abraham,

¹⁵ 'Please listen to me, my lord. What is a plot of land for four hundred shekels of silver between me and you? Bury your dead.'

¹⁶ Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms, and Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver he had stipulated in the hearing of the Hittites, namely four hundred shekels of silver, according to the current commercial rate.

¹⁷ Thus Ephron's field at Machpelah, facing Mamre -- the field and the cave in it and all the trees anywhere within the boundaries of the field -- passed

¹⁸ into Abraham's possession in the sight of the Hittites, of all the inhabitants of his town.

¹⁹ And after this, Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing Mamre -- now Hebron -- in the land of Canaan.

²⁰ And so the field and the cave in it passed from the Hittites into Abraham's possession as a burial site of his own.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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