Of the identity of this spot with the cave of Machpelah there can not be a reasonable doubt. In the days of Josephus it was marked by a memorial erected by Abraham himself, and from his time both Jews, Christians, and Moslems have in turn been the faithful guardians of the patriarchal tomb. Its identity is avouched by the belief of the Jews themselves, and around its venerable walls the despised descendant of the illustrious patriarchs now chants his prayers, and laments the departed glory of the once mighty kingdom of his renowned ancestors. Threatened with instant death should his devotion or temerity lead him to cross the threshold, he is only permitted, on certain occasions, to look through an aperture in the massive wall upon the spot where rest in peace those who were mighty in their day and generation, but who, in the helplessness of death, can bring no relief to a posterity who have abandoned their altars, and rejected the long-promised and now exalted Messiah. There was something touching in the thought that I stood beside the family vault of those who had long lived together in the happy estate of matrimony, and there was even enjoyment in the reflection that God had vindicated the duality and unity of marriage in the grave. Here, side by side, sleep Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah. Hagar and Keturah are not with Sarah, and Rachel is not with her sister Leah. Is this separation in death God’s reproof to Jacob for his dissatisfaction with Leah? Though the reasons that determined him to inter his beautiful Rachel in a common field by the roadside are unknown to us, and though Hebron is less than twenty miles distant from Ephrath, yet it is somewhat remarkable that in after years she was not exhumed and laid in the family tomb of Machpelah. Was Jacob unwilling to divide his grave with the daughters of Laban? or, conscious of the purity and singleness of his affection for Rachel, would he have her alone even in death? By the highway her solitary tomb remains, and, as if impressed with the patriarch’s wish, his descendants have made no interments on the spot.