A.
As our parasha opens, Avraham returns to Chevron from Mt. Moriya to find that his wife, Sara, has died at the age of 127 years. So, Avraham enters into negotiations with Efron, a member of the locally dominant Chitti tribe, for a burial place. After Avraham concludes the transaction, the Torah describes the field he has bought: ויקם שדה עפרון אשר במכפלה אשר לפני ממרא השדה והמערה אשר בו וכל העץ אשר בשדה אשר בכל גבלו סביב (“And Efron’s field which was in Machpela which was before Mamré consisted of the field and the cave which was in it and all the trees which were in the field, which were within all its border around;” XXIII, 17).
In the Talmud we find: המוכר את השדה מכר בו' ואת החרוב אשר אינו מורכב ואת בתולת השקמה, אבל לא מכר כו' את החרוב המורכב ןאת סדן השקמה (“One who sells a field has sold... ungrafted carob trees and virgin sycamores, but has not sold... grafted carob trees and sycamore trunks;” בבא בתרא ס"ח: במשנה). The Rashbam ad loc. explains that an ungrafted carob tree is still young and has not yet begun to bear fruit, whilst once it reaches maturity and begins to bear, it is grafted. Similarly, the mature sycamore tree produces numerous slender branches which have commercial uses and so are stripped from the tree, which then proceeds to bear more; hence, a “sycamore trunk” is a mature, branch-bearing tree.
In the course of its discussion of this concept, the gmara asks מנא הני מילי?, (“Whence [do we learn] these words?”) and finds the source in our verse.
The Rashbam explains that, by simply acquiring the field, Avraham had also acquired all the “trees.” The Hebrew words êtz and illan are a bit broader in meaning than the contemporary sense of the English word “tree,” and encompass any plant with a woody stem (remember that the blessing one makes when eating grapes is boré pri ha-êtz, “Who creates the fruit of the tree”). Accordingly, some “trees” are more important than others, כגון אילנות דקין שאין להם שם, והדבר שכוח מי נטעם, לפיכך צריך לעשות להם גבול סביב, אבל חרוב המורכב וסדן השקמה גדולים וחשובים כו' וידוע של מי הן ובקרקע מי הן נטועין ואין צריכין גבול, הלכך אינן בכלל השדה מסביב (“for example ‘thin trees’ which have no separate identity, and it is forgotten who planted them; therefore, it is necessary to make a boundary around them [to define whose property they are]. But a grafted carob and a sycamore trunk are mature and important...and it is known whose they are and on whose property they are planted, and have no need of a boundary; therefore they are not automatically ‘thrown in’ with the field;” רשב"ם, ס"ט:ד"ה מי שצריך גבול).
In other words, when Avraham bought Machpela, he did not buy such large, commercially important trees as fruit-bearing, grafted carob trees or branch-bearing sycamores; why not?
B.
Our question becomes even sharper when we remember that Avraham kept all of the Torah’s mitzvoth voluntarily, before they had been “officially” commanded to Israel at Sinai (יומא כ"ח:).
That said, we turn to Leviticus XIX, 23 and read: וכי תבאו אל הארץ ונטעתם כל עץ מאכל וגו' (“And when you come to the land you will plant every [sort of] food tree....”), which prompts the midrash to note that the care and preservation of fruit trees is an integral part of mitzvath yishuv ha-aretz, the mitzva to settle the Holy Land (עיי' תנחומא קדושים ח'). Indeed, the Talmud points out that it is forbidden to use the wood of fruit-bearing trees to fuel the altar fire in the Béyth ha-Miqdash because of yishuv ha-aretz (תמיד פ"ב מ"ג).
Armed with this information, we can see why Avraham. unconcerned with the commer-cial aspects of the transaction, might not have bothered about acquiring the sycamores, which are, after all, not fruit-bearing trees. The carob, however, is a fruit-tree, and, as we have established, the care and preservation of fruit-trees is part of yishuv ha-aretz.
Why, then, would Avraham not have purchased the carob trees to fulfill the mitzva?
C.
Elsewhere, the Talmud records a ruling concerning a pressing question dating from Israel’s conquest of the Holy Land: הנכרים העובדים את ההרים ואת הגבעות, הן מותרין ומה שעליהן אסורין כו' ר' יוסי הגלילי אומר "אלהיהם על ההרים" ולא ההרים אלהיהם, "אלהיהם על הגבעות" ולא הגבעות אלהיהם כו' אר"ע אני אובין ואדון לפניך, כל מקום שאתה מוצא הר גבוה וגבעה נשאה ועץ רענן, דע שיש שם עבודה זרה (“The foreigners who worship the mountains and the hills, [the mountains and hills] are permitted, and what is on them is forbidden.... Rabbi Yossi ha-Galili says, ‘Their gods are on the mountains’, and the mountains are not their gods, ‘their gods are on the hills’, and the hills are not their gods [Deuteronomy XII, 2].... Said Rabbi Aqiva, I shall explain and discuss [this] before you: Every place where you find a high mountain or a prominent hill and a shade tree, know that there is a place of idolatry;” עבודה זרה מ"ה. במשנה).
The licentious Canaanite rites involved the use of ashéroth, trees devoted to idolatrous purposes. An ashéra is not a specific species of tree, but any tree dedicated to idolatrous service.
Now, Rashi notes in a comment on Genesis XXXVII, 14 what any modern-day traveler in Eretz Yisra’él can confirm, namely that the central and oldest part of Chevron, the part which incorporates the cave of Machpela, is situated on a prominent hill. It would thus appear that Avraham had reason to suspect the non-commercial uses to which Efron’s trees might have been put. Standard-bearer of pure monotheism that he was, Avraham wanted no part of them.
A bit later in the same masechta, the interesting argument is made that Eretz Yisra’él and everything in it, to include the ashéroth, is ירושה היא להם מאבותיהם, ואין אדם אוסר דבר שאינו שלו (“an inheritance of [Israel] from their forefathers, and nobody can forbid something which is not his;” שם, נ"ג:). In short (as Rashi ad loc. clarifies), ever since G-d told Avraham כי לך אתננה (“for to you shall I give [the land];” Genesis XIII, 17), the land and everything in it had technically belonged to Avraham, and through him to his heirs, the bnei Yisra’él. How, then, were the Canaanite squatters able to do anything to render the trees on the hilltops forbidden because of ifdolatry? The trees were not theirs!
Alas, continues the gmara, מדפלח ישראל לעגל גלו אדעתייהו דניחא להו בעבודת כוכבים וכי אתו עובדי כוכבים שליחותייהו עבדי (“ever since Israel had worshipped the [golden] calf, they had revealed that they were comfortable in their minds with idolatry, snd when idolators came [to worship], they were acting on [Israel’s] behalf”).
It would therefore seem from the above passage that any idolatrous installations made in the Holy Land from the time of the Golden Calf onward were made, as it were, with Israel’s tacit approval, since they had made it uncomfortably clear that such installations might not be repellent to them. If Rashi’s point is valid, though, any such installations made from Avraham’s arrival in the Holy Land up to that point should have been invalid, null and void, since idolatry was most emphatically not all right with Avraham.
Avraham had been seventy-five years old on his arrival in Canaan (ibid., XII, 4). Sara was ten years younger than her husband, and had just died at the age of 127. Hence, sixty-two years had elapsed since that pronouncement, during which any new idolatrous installation would have been nullified ab initio.
However, the Talmud informs us: חרוב זה משעת נטיעתו עד שנת גמר פירותיו שבעים שנה (“A carob tree, from the time it is planted until its [first] fruits are fully formed, [takes] seventy years”; בכורות ח., וע"ע תענית כ"ב.).
The carob trees which Avraham declined to purchase were those which had already been grafted, and hence were mature, fruit-bearing trees. This means that they had to have been planted at least seventy years before, and therefore pre-dated the Divine proclamation of Avraham’s ownership of the Holy Land. Hence, they would have been Efron’s property in every sense, and for that reason suspect ashéroth.
That, I believe, is why Avraham did not want them.
D.
If Avraham really held title to the Holy Land since shortly after his arrival there, why was it necessary for him to purchase Sara’s burial plot?
The simple answer, of course, would seem to be that the “title deed” was filed, as it were, in the Béyth Din shel Ma’âla, the Heavenly Sanhedrin, and nobody had informed the Canaanites (who at the time were in process of conquering the territory from the bnei Shém; cf. Rashi to Genesis XII, 6) that they were squatters, until Avraham’s descendants issued their “eviction notice” some 465 years later. The very name Kna’ân is derived from the verbal root כנ"ע, and can be understood to mean “subjugated.” For this reason alone, he would undoubtedly have wanted to secure Sara’s gravesite in such a way that the entire Chitti tribe would acknowledge his ownership.
However, the fact is that the field was already hallowed ground, in that the cave of Mach-pela was also the final resting place of the first man and first woman (ב"ר פנ"ח סי' ד'). It is not clear from our sources whether or not the Chittim, relative newcomers, were aware of this, but surely the prophet Avraham, concerning whom G-d had asked the rhetorical question: המכסה אני מאברהם אשר אני עשה (“Do I hide from Avraham what I do?” XVIII, 17), knew it.
This place, at least, should be free of the Canaanites’ loathsome rites, for their sake, as well as Sara’s. By purchasing the land (and paying an exorbitant price for it), Avraham was able to allow Efron to continue to enjoy the commercial value of the sycamores and carobs (since, after all, he had faithfully cared for them all those years), avoiding ownership of them himself because of their past history, whilst restricting any other, non-commercial uses of the land under the spreading canopies of those trees.
And that, I believe, was at least one of the reasons why he purchased the field.
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