Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various SourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets: And Other Old Testament Characters from Various Sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends
When she heard this, Sarah laid her head on the bosom of a slave and
fainted. When she came to herself she hurried with her maidens to
the school of Shem and Eber, and inquired after her husband and son,
but they had neither seen nor heard any thing of them. So Sarah was
convinced that what had been told her was true, and there was no spirit
left in her.
Now when Satan knew that Abraham was bringing back his son, and that
God had accepted the will for the deed, he was moved with envy and
spite, and he could not rest to think of the joy that this would cause;
so he went hastily to Sarah, and she was weeping in her tent, and
sorely cast down and broken in spirit. Then he said suddenly to her,
“Thy son liveth and is returning. God hath spared him!”
And she rose up and uttered a cry, and fell, and was dead; for the joy
had killed her.
Abraham and Isaac, in the mean time had returned from Moriah, and they
sought Sarah at Beer-sheba, but she was not there; therefore they went
to Hebron, and there they found her corpse. Isaac fell weeping upon
the face of his mother, and he cried, “Mother, mother! why hast thou
forsaken me? why hast thou gone away?”
Abraham wept aloud, and all the dwellers in Hebron wept and lamented
over Sarah, and ceased from their labors, that they might mourn with
Abraham and Isaac. Sarah’s age was one hundred and seven-and-twenty
years, and she was as fair to look upon when she died as in the bloom
of her youth.
And as Abraham was bowed over the body of his wife, he heard the laugh
of the Angel of Death, and his words, “Wherefore weepest thou? Thou
bearest the blame of her death. Hadst thou not taken her son from her,
she would have been alive now.”
Abraham sought a place where to bury her; and he went to the Hittites
and asked them to suffer him to buy for his possession a parcel of
land, where he might bury one dead body. But they said, “Nay, we will
give thee land;” but he would not. So they said, “Choose now a place
where thou wouldst have thy sepulchre, and we will entreat the owner
for thee.”
Then Abraham said, “I desire the double cave of Ephron the son of
Zohar. _If it be your mind 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 Machpelah, which he hath; for as much money as is
worth he shall give it me, for a possession of a burying-place amongst
you._”
And this was the reason why Abraham desired that cave. When he had
gone after the calf, to slay it for the three angels that came to him
before the destruction of Sodom, the calf had fled from him, and he
had pursued it into this cave; and on entering it, he found that it
was roomy, and in the inner recesses he saw the bodies of Adam and Eve
laid out with burning tapers around them, and the air was fragrant with
incense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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