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No other spot in the Holy Land holds so much precious dust as this; and it is, among
all the so-called "holy places," the only one which to this day can be pointed out with
perfect certainty. Since the Moslem rule, it has not been accessible to either Christian
or Jew. The site over the cave itself is covered by a Mahomedan sanctuary, which
stands enclosed within a quadrangular building, two hundred feet long, one hundred
and fifteen wide, and fifty or sixty high, the walls of which are divided by pilasters,
about five feet apart, and two and a half feet wide. This building, with its immense
stones, one of which is no less than thirty-eight feet long, must date from the time of
David or of Solomon. The mosque within it was probably anciently a church; and in
the cave below its floor are the patriarchal sepulchers.
Three years after the death of Sarah, Abraham resolved to fill the gap in his own
family and in the heart of Isaac, by seeking a wife for his son. To this we shall refer
in connection with the life of Isaac. Nothing else remains to be told of the third-eight
years which followed the death of Sarah. We read, indeed, that Abraham "took a
wife," Keturah, and that she bore him six sons, but we are not sure of the time when
this occurred. At any rate, the history of these sons is in no wise mixed up with that
of the promised seed. They became the ancestors of Arab tribes, which are sometimes
alluded to in Holy Writ. And so, through the impressive silence of so many years as
make up more than a generation, Scripture brings us to the death of Abraham, at the
"good old age" of one hundred and seventy-five, just seventy-five years after the birth
of Isaac. To quote the significant language of the Bible, he" was gathered to his
people," an expression far different from dying or being buried, and which implies
reunion with those who had gone before, and a firm and assured belief in the life to
come. And as his sons Isaac and Ishmael, both aged men, stand by his sepulcher in
the cave of Machpelah, we seem to hear the voice of God speaking it unto all times:
"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar
off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were
strangers and pilgrims on the earth." (Hebrews 11:13)
(^)