Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan; and Abraham proceeded to mourn for Sarah and to bewail her.
Genesis 23:2 (The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006
Sarah died within the borders of God’s Promise.
We grieve, but not like those who have no hope.
Sarah died in Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her.
Genesis 23:2 (NASB)
In the Hebrew, it’s וַיָּבֹא֙ (vayavo) which means movement from one place to another. It appears that the text tells us Sarah’s location because Abraham was not there when she died.
So where was he?
Perhaps the Binding of Isaac in the previous chapter isn’t merely a story about a man who is asked to sacrifice his son, but also a story about a man who loses his wife while being obedient to God.
A son loses his mother in the same way.
What is the cost of obedience?
Then Abraham arose from mourning before his dead, and spoke to the sons of Heth, saying, “I am a stranger and a foreign resident among you; give me a burial site among you so that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”
Genesis 23:3-4 (NASB)
There are layers to scripture. Genesis 23 contains a long text about Abraham seeking a burial site for Sarah. It’s not just a story about negotiating over a plot of land.
Heth is the son of Canaan, son of Ham.
Heth means “terror.”
This is a story about dealing with the terror and agony of death.
The question presented in Job is this: Suppose we lose everything. Why does this happen?
Early in the book, a short bit of text is dedicated to the conversation in the heavenly court, where God chats with “Satan,” or “The Adversary.” And while we are given a glimpse into the personification of this Adversary, perhaps the point is this: nothing happens that God does not allow.
In that regard, the writer is not telling us the inner workings of the heavenly court. The writer is simply locking in a presupposition of God’s authority, and prevents anyone from saying “perhaps God did not know,” or “perhaps God is weak against adversity.”
Simply stated, adversity (as personified by Satan) exists. We know this, and we must accept that God knows this. That’s our daily lived experience. But adversity isn’t greater than God. It can’t thwart God or run God out of the court of heaven.
But what if adversity is big? What if it’s monstrous? How big can it get?
So the author presents a story of a man who literally loses everything but his life. This is the greatest adversity imaginable, but we’ve already been told that adversity doesn’t surprise or knock God back. It exists within the framework of God’s authority. How can it not?
The next section of the book is a theological discussion about why. The friends represent different arguments about the causes of adversity, with the most repeated answer centering around a theme of “it’s our own fault.” It must be some hidden sin that Job has committed.
In the end, the writer (via Job, who is innocent) presents an argument that says “perhaps God should not have allowed this.” And it’s at this time that God finally responds, and He says this: “No. You do not, and simply cannot, understand why things happen.”
Then God rebukes Job’s friends. Or rather, God rebukes those arguments, because it was already established from the start that this calamity was not due to anything Job did.
The writer brings us to this conclusion: Terrible things happen. Sometimes, very terrible things happen. And sometimes, it isn’t your fault.
The tension is to continue to hold that God is just, and God is good, and God is sovereign.
And that God will make all things new one day.
And Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for many days.
Genesis 21:34 (NASB)
In Genesis 21, Abraham heeds his wife’s words at the instruction of God: he removes Ishmael from their home. The text says Abraham was deeply troubled.
The chapter ends with this ambiguous phrase: יָמִים רַבִּים (yamim rabbim): “for many days.”
It doesn’t seem like Abraham is too upset, as the text doesn’t seem to say much else about Abraham’s response, other than sending them off with some extra bread and water.
But there may be a clue hidden in here in the words.
You’d think a phrase like “many days” would appear all over the text, but in this exact form יָמִים רַבִּים, the phrase only appears twice in Genesis. Here, and then in Genesis 37. Look closely. It’s the same story.
So Jacob tore his clothes, and put on a sackcloth undergarment over his waist, and mourned for his son many days. Then all his sons and all his daughters got up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, “Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him.
Genesis 37:34-35 (NASB)
Perhaps this teaches us how God felt about Adam when sin entered the world and doomed him to die, too.
And perhaps this teachs us how God views all of us.
But he urged them strongly, so they turned his way and entered his house. He prepared a feast for them and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.
Genesis 19:3 (The Contemporary Torah, JPS, 2006)
There are all sorts of links between the Genesis flood and the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the theme of alcohol afterwords is striking.
The rabbis point out that the word “feast” here in Hebrew means a “drinking feast.” That’s what מִשְׁתֶּה means.
A feast. Literally, “a drinking feast.” Lot offered them wine because he was fond of it himself.
Sforno on Genesis 19:3
The teaching isn’t that alcohol is “bad,” but perhaps it’s one of those things that people turn to after grief of loss, and when they do, it leads to greater grief and shame.
Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside.
Genesis 9:20-22 (NIV)One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
Genesis 19:31-33 (NIV)
This is a kind of idolatry.
Perhaps the angels abstained to give this hint.
The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do…?”
Genesis 18:17 (NIV)
The word “hide” in Genesis 18:17 isn’t the word khabah (חָבָא) that Adam used in Genesis 3:8-10. Khabah means to hide away to avoid being seen. It’s secretive.
God uses the word kasaw (כָּסָה), which is the same word used to describe Japheth and Shem covering Noah, shielding him. They aren’t trying to conceal their father. They are protecting him from shame and grief.
Similarly, God is not musing over obsecuring the truth from Abraham. It’s heavier than that. God is about to break Abraham’s heart by bringing him into the same grief that God experienced back in Genesis 6. It’s a spiritual and emotional burden.
So the Lord was sorry that He had made mankind on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Genesis 6:6 (NIV)
Now, in the prior chapter, the rabbis suggest a special union was made between Abraham and God through Covenant. This brought in the divine Presence and in-dwelling of God into Abraham and changed the relationship. In this new relationship, God says: “You will share in my glory; and you will share in my heartache.”
So when God asks, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do,” this marks the first instance where a man of God is being brought into that heartache on a personal level. Abraham’s response gives us a clearer picture of God’s heart.
When God destroyed the world by flood, the text says that the thoughts and intents of the heart of all man was evil continually, except for Noah. Would God have destroyed the world if there were even more righteous people?
Look at Abraham’s words that reveal God’s heart.
Abraham approached and said, “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous people within the city; will You indeed sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”
Genesis 18:23-25 (NIV)
So when Abraham pleads with God, asking “What if there are 50 righteous people in the city? What if there are 40? 30? What if there are only 10?”, we are shown the kind of consideration God gave back in Genesis 6. God’s own heart broke over the rising wickedness.
Later, fire falls from the night sky to destroy the cities.
We have to picture Abraham watching and weeping, coming to the realization that there weren’t even ten righteous people in the city, just like there weren’t even two righteous people in the world before the flood.
Abraham weeps. God weeps.
“Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”
If you walk with God, you will weep, too.
This is about the grief and suffering of the dying.
We have a vocabulary about death. We say things like “at least it was a quick death,” or “at least they died in their sleep.”
In the sadness of loss, we acknowledge the mercy found in certain kinds of death. This sort of death is… better. Better than suffering.
For the one experiencing the loss of a loved one, these phrases don’t lessen the pain, but it is helpful to know that the words are true, isn’t it? It’s good to know that loved ones who die this way did not experience prolongued agony and pain before they passed.
But it doesn’t lift the grief. It is still sorrowful.
But what about those who do suffer in agony?
I won’t describe any of it, because there are those who know already know people who have died this way, and they don’t want to be reminded. We have witnessed it. We have grieved it. And we have prayed for it to be over. We have prayed for an end of the suffering. For mercy.
And when the end comes, we are left with the most troubling and turmoil-filled spirit. We prayed for the end, but then we grieved the loss. We are relieved that their suffering stopped, but we didn’t want to lose them.
This is sorrow.
In Genesis 6, prior to the flood, the text mentions the “wickedness of man.”
We’ve been taught to read this as written in the English. Humanity is completely wicked, so the Flood waters are a judgement to wipe out the earth in God’s wrath.
But that is not the whole picture.
The word here for “the wickedness” is the noun-form of the word ra’. We translate it as “wickedness” or “evil,” but the word carries the connotation of suffering. So when we read “…and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time,” we are being told something important.
Can you see it?
III. evil, misery, distress, injury
1. evil, misery, distress
2. evil, injury, wrong
3. evil (ethical)
H7451: רַע (raʿ)
The text is not describing a humanity in defiance or disobedience to a holy God who must respond in wrath. That’s not the story. It is describing a humanity that is suffering. They are in misery. And they are dying. The curse of sin (death) has laid hold of all of them.
And when the text says “the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled,” we see it clearly.
This form of “regretted” is compassionate mercy.
1. (Niphal)
1. to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion
2. to be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
3. to comfort oneself, be comforted
4. to comfort oneself, ease oneself
H5162: נָחַם (nāḥam)
And this form of “grieved” is precisely that feeling of troubling and turmoil-filled sorrow. It is the ending that you wish didn’t have to happen, but you understood that it would be worse if it didn’t.
5. (Hithpael) to feel grieved, be vexed
H6087: עָצַב (ʿāṣaḇ)
This is what our God is showing us with this story.
This stems from Adam and Eve’s eating from the tree of the knowledge of Good & Evil. This evil is the source of the suffering of humanity.
The narrative isn’t pointing to a God who is punishing us for doing the wrong thing. It is about a God grieving our suffering from it.
But God does not leave us in our suffering.
In Noah (whose name means “comfort“), we see God pointing to restoration. We see God making a new covenant and promising that this Flood will not happen again. Perhaps it’s because He will one day end all of our suffering.
So the Lord was sorry that He had made mankind on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe out mankind whom I have created from the face of the land; mankind, and animals as well, and crawling things, and the birds of the sky. For I am sorry that I have made them.”
Genesis 6:6-7 (NASB)
Twice in Genesis 6, the text says God was “sorry” He made humanity. The KJV renders this word as “repented.” Both work and are contained in this word “nawkham.”
But something no translation does is point out that this word also carries an implication of “comforting.”
I. to be sorry, console oneself, repent, regret, comfort, be comforted
I. (Niphal)
1. to be sorry, be moved to pity, have compassion
2. to be sorry, rue, suffer grief, repent
3. to comfort oneself, be comforted
4. to comfort oneself, ease oneself
H5162: נָחַם (nāḥam)
It strikes me when a word is use twice in rapid succession in the text, as though the author is drawing our attention to it. This isn’t a grammatical requirement; the text doesn’t have to say “sorry” twice… but it does.
And it’s this idea of “comfort” that seems to ring.
The other time we heard this word “comfort” was in the previous chapter, when we are told about Noah’s birth. Noah’s name is related to “comfort.”
And he named him Noah, saying, “This one will give us comfort from our work and from the hard labor of our hands caused by the ground which the Lord has cursed.”
Genesis 5:29 (NASB)
And what do we see? Comfort from what? From the work and hard labor from the ground God cursed.
If we jump back to Genesis 6, where God said he was sorry he “made them,” we have another fascinating connection to Noah.
While “awsah” does mean “make,” it also means… “to work.”
As in… “to work the man.”
I. (Qal)
1. to do, work, make, produce
2. to do
3. to work
4. to deal (with)
5. to act, act with effect, effect
H6213: עָשָׂה (ʿāśâ)
Consider this tie of Genesis 5 and 6 together:
Humanity cried out for COMFORT from their WORKS. God is “sorry” or “repents” TWICE, meeting their cry for COMFORT. He was grieved because their WORK led to their misery.
When God cursed the ground in Genesis 3, humanity had to toil and work, and this work became a great suffering and misery to humanity. They cried out once… and God responded twice: “nawkham, nawkham.”
Perhaps limiting their lives to 120 years shortens the suffering.
You can relate to Eve, because we’ve all put our trust in something and had it fall apart on us, and perhaps you can relate to Cain, who was under a lot of pressure from his mother.