Genesis 23:1-24:51, Matthew 8:1-17, Psalms 9:13-20, Proverbs 3:1-6
Today is the 10th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian like every day and it’s great to be here with you like every day and got a nice steaming cup of Windfarm coffee to my left, which is pretty normal, very normal. And off we go forward for our next step forward through the Scriptures this year. This is, of course, our 10th step, so only 355 more steps and we’ll be completing the Bible but this is our 10th step. We’re reading from the New International Version this week. Today we’ll read Genesis chapter 23 verse 1 through 24:51.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Genesis we’re saying goodbye now to a very, very important figure, Sarah, the wife of Abraham, who bore the son Isaac to Abraham in his old age. She passes away today. And, so, obviously, Abraham is morning and he goes to the Hittites and he needs a place, he wants to buy a place where, you know, he can have his own kind of a burial site for his family. And we get a little bit of a glimpse into the negotiations of the time, right? You know, Abraham’s like talking to all the leaders of the city in the city gate saying, “ask Ephron to sell me this”, right? Well Ephron’s sitting right there but this is more of a communal negotiation and Ephron’s like, “I’ll just give it to you, you can have it”, you know, and Abrahm’s like, “you know, just…just tell me the price.” And, so, we see this negotiation going on and Abraham buys Ephron’s field and cave, the cave of Machpelah near Mamery in the Valley of Eshkol. I wish that might all just like a bunch of biblical, you know, site names or something that have no relevance but remember this, remember this day, remember that Abraham bought this cave because as the story goes in a couple of months this particular site will become important. And incidentally this particular site, this burial ground is still in existence until today and can be visited in the city of Hebron, which, you know, at times can be a tense place. And this particular burial site for Abraham and his offspring is one of the most holy sites in the world to people who are Muslim, to people who are Jewish, and also to Christians and those groups of people don’t always see eye to eye on things. So, it can be a pretty tense place, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Some of the most holy places in the world are also some of the most contentious places in the world because everybody wants a piece. And as we continue our journey forward we’ll just have to decide whether that’s good, it’s a good thing or whether it’s not, but nevertheless the place actually does exist. The structure that is over the top of the cave was built by King Herod. So it’s very, very old. Of course, when Abraham bought it was much more old, it’s a very ancient place and you can see this place in the Promised Land films. I’ve mentioned the Promised Land films I think once this year. It’s a great resource in the Daily Audio Bible shop. It’s two DVDs and then you can also download all the content digitally. But it’s over four hours of content letting you zoom into these places. And they’re just short films, like two to five-minute films of the location where you can kind of come in, find out what happened there biblically, but also get a good 360° view, like a good understanding of what that place looks like. So, when we went and filmed we had to, you know, we went into the mosque and had to have permission to go in there and film. Then there’s a synagogue on the other side, we had go through some pretty high security to get in there and, you know, there’s lots of soldiers around that place. And as it turns out, we got permission from the military to do some aerial flights over it. And, so, you know, we’re flying a drone and filming and everything but we’ve got guys with machine-guns standing around watching what we’re doing, but we got that footage and it’s some of the only aerial footage from there. So, that’s included in the Promised Land films as well as some of the other places like Gerar, we talked about in the book of Genesis today, we’re, you know, Abraham is again saying that Sarah’s his sister instead of is his wife and stuff. That’s filmed. Like Beersheba is another place where Abraham spent so much of his time and where Ishmael and Hagar were sent away to wander in the wilderness of Beersheba. Like, these are real places. And, so, if you kind of want to…if you’re curious enough to go, “okay, I’m in, I want to know what these places look like”, the Promised Land is a great resource for that. So, you can check that out at the Daily Audio Bible shop.
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And that’s it for today other than other…other than to remind you of two verses that we just read, the last two verses that we just read from the book of Proverbs. Take this into your day. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.” Now that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.