Chapter 23

Sarah dies, aged 127, in Hebron.  I don't know how far this would be from Beersheba (as I read current maps, Hebron (Kiryat-Arba) and Beersheba are very close together), nor whether she and Abraham were apart for some reason at the time.  Maybe she could get better care in Hebron...we just don't know.  But she was there, and it says Abraham "went in to mourn for Sarah". 

MSB says Sarah died in about 2028 BC, but makes no comment on the place where she died or why she was there. 

Abram purchases a tomb for burial at Machpelah for 400 pieces of silver.  Buys from the Hittites.  There is apparently more than a little significance to how this property was conveyed.  MSB mentions that the Hittites were far from there homeland in Anatolia (Turkey) but were established here at this time.  The business between Abraham and the Hittite Ephron is conducted according to Hittite custom.  The chapter repeats the procedures several times, showing perhaps that Abraham already owned this land before the Jews invaded Canaan after the Egyptian captivity.

2021 - It is noteworthy - in light of the book I'm reading on Bible translations -  that when reading this in ESV, we get a sense of the "foreignness" of the negotiation between Abraham and the Hittites for this piece of land.  All this happened in a very formalized way, in a culture remote in time and procedure from anything in our experience.  The wording, the cadence, the give and take, the indirection of the negotiations rather than flatly bluntly asserting themselves gives us the sense of being there at the time.  New "dynamic equivalence" Bibles are more likely to "update" these negotiations to something more akin to buying a used car.