gâtions could be established beyond ques tion. Since there were no records, the memory of the witnesses to the transaction was relied upon and, in order to impress the matter indelibly upon their minds, there arose the long and complicated formalities common to all ancient systems of jurispru dence. Some of these formalities were made necessary by the religious element that entered into every transaction. This is nota bly the case with certain symbolic acts at Roman law, and there is ample evidence of such cases in the Bible also; but in the con veyance of the land to Abraham which is under consideration, the formalities seem to have no religious aspect whatever. It was simply an ordinary business transaction, at tended by the proper legal formalities. Abraham, the nomadic Hebrew chieftain, had wandered into the neighborhood of Hebron, a city well known in later times in Jewish history, but at that time belonging to the Hittites, the " sons of Heth." Some famous modern Biblical critics deny that the Hittites were at that time the owners of this territory, but their arguments are not in place here. We shall take the Biblical text as we find it, for it makes little difference to us whether the legal formalities there re corded, were Hittite or Amoritc. With Abraham, were his wife Sarah, his children, his cattle and his slaves, the entire familia of the patriarch. " And Sarah was a hun dred and twenty-seven years old; these were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath Arba, the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan : and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. And Abraham stood up from before his dead," and went down to the gate of the city where the town council of the Hittites was in session. There the elders of the Hittites, the " people of the land " in the most public place, and in the presence of all who came and went through the forum at the city gate, transacted the public busi ness of their community. Abraham was
recognized by them as a distinguished chief tain not of their tribe, temporarily dwelling within their tribal domain, and was accorded the honor of a seat in the midst of their as sembly. A favorable opportunity during the session of the council having presented itself to Abraham, he addressed them " and spoke unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me a possession of a burying-place vith you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight." Abraham being an alien, could not acquire property rights in land without the consent of the people. Land was tribal property, held and used, it is true, in sever ally by the members of the tribe, but in alienable, especially to a stranger, except by common consent given by the tribal coun cil. Our land laws, restricting the right of aliens'to acquire real estate, are survivals of the days when the alien was, ipso facto, an enemy, and could not be permitted to settle permanently, until the people had given their consent. It was to the people, there fore, and not to any individual that Abra ham addressed himself. "And the sons of Heth answered Abra ham, saying unto him, Hearken unto its, my lord : thou art a mighty prince among us; in the choice of our sepulchres burv thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee his sepulchre, so that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham stood up, and bowed himself to the people of the land, to the sons of Heth. And he spoke to them, saying, If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight, hearken unto me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field.'" Abraham had selected the place that he desired to have, and he knew that the owner was there among the members of the council, but the formalities of the occasion prevented him from addressing his request to Ephron personally. It will be noted that
