What Does Genesis 23:15 Mean?
My lord, hear me. The land is four hundred weights of silver. What is it between me and you? So bury your dead.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury therefore thy dead.THE KEY
Even burial’s final act depends on material ground: the verse places a measured price directly beside the command to bury.
THE MEANING
A death leaves the body with a concrete need: a place, and the cost of that place must be spoken openly. The amount is named plainly, then the words turn toward the dead: “bury therefore thy dead.” Care for the body and the material terms of burial occupy the same sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Burial is untouched by money or property: this verse places a precise price beside the dead body’s burial.
THE ROOT
שֶׁקֶל
sheqel
GROWS FROM
שקל
sh-q-l
To weigh; שֶׁקֶל (sheqel) is a weight or weighed unit of silver.
“weights” in this verse is sheqel. The price is named in shekels, a word rooted in weighing. The amount is not just an abstract value: the silver is measured by weight, and the next verse makes that weighing explicit.
ALSO GROWS
shaqal: to weigh
שָׁקַל
This verb from the same root appears in the next verse when Abraham pays the silver.
mishqal: weight or measure
מִשְׁקָל
This branch makes clear that the shekel belongs to a language of measured weight.
קְבֹר
qevor
GROWS FROM
קבר
q-b-r
To bury or inter.
“bury” in this verse is qevor. The root names the act of burial and the place where the dead are laid. Here, that act is tied directly to acquiring ground, keeping the body’s burial concrete rather than abstract.
ALSO GROWS
qeber: grave or tomb
קֶבֶר
This branch names the place that the act of burial requires.
qevurah: burial or interment
קְבוּרָה
This branch names the act itself, which the verse places at the end of the exchange.
THE PATTERN
Care for the dead takes concrete form when a body is carried or laid in a place of burial.
For his sons lifted him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a holding of a grave of Ephron the Hittite, facing Mamre.And reverent men carried Stephen to his burial, and beat their breasts over him in great mourning.So there they laid Jesus, because of the Jews' day of preparation, for the tomb was near at hand.THE THREAD
And Abraham heard and responded to Ephron, and Abraham weighed out to Ephron the silver, which he had spoken in the ears of the sons of Heth, four hundred weights of silver, passing from hand to hand with the merchant.The four hundred shekels named here become weighed silver in the next verse. שֶׁקֶל (sheqel, a weight of silver) and שָׁקַל (shaqal, to weigh) share the root שקל (sh-q-l, to weigh), making the cost of the burial ground measurable in literal weight.
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