After the death of Sarah, his wife, Abraham sought to purchase “the cave of the field of Machpelah, east of Mamre” in order to bury her there. As was customary in those days, Abraham negotiated for the purchase of the land with its owner, Ephron the Hittite, “in the hearing of the Hittites and of all who went in at the gate of his city.” (Gen. 23:10) The dialogue between Ephron and Abraham recorded in Genesis 23 is a model of dignity and good faith.

There is a remarkable building, not far from Tell Rumeida, which marks the traditional site of Machpelah.¹The cave is divided into two chambers connected by a narrow passage. The layout of the caves may be reflected in the name Machpelah, which could be derived from the Hebrew root kaphal which means double. It is generally agreed that the building was constructed by Herod although there is surprisingly no literary references crediting him with its construction.²Some early scholars concluded that the building may have predated Herod (Merrill 1890, 337 ff.). However, this is unlikely. The style of masonry used for the construction of its walls is distinctively Herodian. The excellent preservation of the structure presents a striking contrast with the scanty remains preserved at Ramat el-Khalil (Mamre) despite the two structures having been constructed at around the same time. The walls of the structure, which stand to their original height, are made of giant blocks of precisely cut ashlar limestone (“squared stone”). The quality of the Herodian masonry is unrivalled in the ancient world.

Machpelah is in a politically sensitive area today. For this reason no formal archaeological excavations have been conducted at the site. However, the passages beneath the structure were briefly explored in 1967, following the Six Day War, when the building came under temporary Israeli military control. Keen to learn about the caves beneath the structure, the Israeli general, Moshe Dayan, found a slight girl named Michal, only twelve years of age but courageous, who was willing to be lowered through a small aperture in the floor of the building, into the underground chamber below. This is, at least, how the story is told. Apparently the girl was the daughter of the head of the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security force, and she received some training before she was lowered into the chamber!³Shragai 2021

Source

ARC/Ancient List

The girl reportedly saw a long passageway which led to a stairway. She ascended the stairway but was prevented from going further by a wall blocking her way. Her description generally agrees with what was, until recently, the only other description of the underground passageways available to us, recorded by an anonymous medieval chronicler in 1119 AD. The Crusaders were then in possession of Hebron. On a particularly hot midsummer day, a monk stretched out on a cool stone near the cenotaph of Isaac (see plan below) when he felt a draft of cool air rising from a crack in the floor. Driven by curiosity he and his fellow monks pried loose the floor slab. To their surprise they discovered a vertical shaft, approximately 17 feet deep, that connected to a long corridor. At the end of the corridor they found a “fabulously crafted [room], round like a basilica.”⁴Miller 1985 (This was the same chamber Michal was lowered into in 1967.) Sensing a hollow space beneath the floor of this chamber, the monks pried up another floor stone and discovered a series of caves filled with bones!

The monks constructed a steep set of steps at the place where they had found the vertical shaft near Isaac’s cenotaph (marked “A” on the plan below). This stairway enabled Christian pilgrims to visit the newly discovered underground chamber and caves. The entrance was subsequently blocked up after the area was captured by Arab forces commanded by Saladin.

The medieval chronicle remained the sole testament to the existence of caves beneath Machpelah until one night in September of 1981 a group of local Israelis successfully pried loose the stone blocking entrance “A” without being detected. They followed the passage which led to the chamber beneath the orifice “B” through which Michal had been lowered some years earlier. Feeling around the floor of the chamber, they discovered the paving stone which covered the entrance to the caves below the chamber and thus gained entrance to the caves below. The caves were almost completely filled with silt, with just enough headspace to crawl around on all fours. The only objects visible on the surface were some pottery sherds and bones. The caves were visited several more times in the months that followed by officials from the Israeli Antiquity Authority and members of the Waqf—the Muslim authority in charge of the building. Although no archaeological excavations were conducted, some pottery recovered from the caves has since been published and dated to the Iron Age.⁵Arnon et al. 2020 The real discovery was not the pottery but the caves themselves. Evidently they were understood to be the burial place of the patriarchs at the time when Herod erected a monument over them.

Although we will probably never know for certain whether these are the caves of Machpelah mentioned in Genesis 23, the tradition supporting this identification is certainly very ancient. There is no reason why they could not date to the Early Bronze Age, when cave burials were common. The location of the caves “east of Mamre” and not far from Tell Rumeida, matches the description recorded in the Bible.