Kirjath-Arba seems to have been built in the valley, close to the pools which still provide water for its modern inhabitants.  On the eastern side the slope of the hill is honeycombed with tombs cut in the rock, and, if ancient tradition is to be believed, it was in one of these that Abraham desired to lay the body of his wife.  The “double cave” of Machpelah—­for so the Septuagint renders the phrase—­was in the field of Ephron the Hittite, and from Ephron, accordingly, the Hebrew patriarch purchased the land for 400 shekels of silver, or about L47.  The cave, we are told, lay opposite Mamre, which goes to show that the oak under which Abraham once pitched his tent may not have been very far distant from that still pointed out as the oak of Mamre in the grounds of the Russian hospice.  The traditional tomb of Machpelah has been venerated alike by Jew, Christian, and Mohammedan.  The church built over it in Byzantine days and restored by the Crusaders to Christian worship has been transformed into a mosque, but its sanctity has remained unchanged.  It stands in the middle of a court, enclosed by a solid wall of massive stones, the lower courses of which were cut and laid in their places in the age of Herod.  The fanatical Moslem is unwilling that any but himself should enter the sacred precincts, but by climbing the cliff behind the town it is possible to look down upon the mosque and its sacred enclosure, and see the whole building spread out like a map below the feet.

More than one English traveller has been permitted to enter the mosque, and we are now well acquainted with the details of its architecture.  But the rock-cut tomb in which the bodies of the patriarchs are supposed to have lain has never been examined by the explorer.  It is probable, however, that were he to penetrate into it he would find nothing to reward his pains.  During the long period that Hebron was in Christian hands the cave was more than once visited by the pilgrim.  But we look in vain in the records which have come down to us for an account of the relics it has been supposed to contain.  Had the mummified corpses of the patriarchs been preserved in it, the fact would have been known to the travellers of the Crusading age. (See the Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins, 1895.)

Like the other tombs in its neighbourhood, the cave of Machpelah has doubtless been opened and despoiled at an early epoch.  We know that tombs were violated in Egypt long before the days of Abraham, in spite of the penalties with which such acts of sacrilege were visited, and the cupidity of the Canaanite was no less great than that of the Egyptian.  The treasures buried with the dead were too potent an attraction, and the robber of the tomb braved for their sake the terrors of both this world and the next.

Abraham now sent his servant to Mesopotamia, to seek there for a wife for his son Isaac from among his kinsfolk at Harran.  Rebekah, the sister of Laban, accordingly, was brought to Canaan and wedded to her cousin.  Isaac was at the time in the southern desert, encamped at the well of Lahai-roi, near Kadesh.  So “Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”