Genesis 23:6
My Lord, hear us, thou art a prince of God among us: bury thy dead in our principal sepulchres: and no man shall have power to hinder thee from burying thy dead in his sepulchre.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Audi nos, domine : princeps Dei es apud nos : in electis sepulchris nostris sepeli mortuum tuum, nullusque te prohibere poterit quin in monumento ejus sepelias mortuum tuum.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- Μή, κύριε· ἄκουσον δὲ ἡμῶν. βασιλεὺς παρὰ θεοῦ σὺ εἶ ἐν ἡμῖν· ἐν τοῖς ἐκλεκτοῖς μνημείοις ἡμῶν θάψον τὸν νεκρόν σου· οὐδεὶς γὰρ ἡμῶν τὸ μνημεῖον αὐτοῦ κωλύσει ἀπὸ σοῦ, τοῦ θάψαι τὸν νεκρόν σου ἐκεῖ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- שְׁמָעֵ֣נוּ אֲדֹנִ֗י נְשִׂ֨יא אֱלֹהִ֤ים אַתָּה֙ בְּתוֹכֵ֔נוּ בְּמִבְחַ֣ר קְבָרֵ֔ינוּ קְבֹ֖ר אֶת מֵתֶ֑ךָ אִ֣ישׁ מִמֶּ֔נּוּ אֶת קִבְר֛וֹ לֹֽא יִכְלֶ֥ה מִמְּךָ֖ מִקְּבֹ֥ר מֵתֶֽךָ
Haydock's commentary
Prince of God, powerful and holy, and worthy of respect. (Haydock)
A great prince. See Acts vii. 5, where St. Stephen says, that God did not give Abraham a foot of land, meaning as an inheritance; and that Abraham bought this double cave, for a sepulchre, of the sons of Hemor, the son of Sichem; (Calmet) from which latter he seems to derive the name of the place, which is here called Hebron. (Haydock)
Nothing is more common, than for men and places to have two names; though some think, the name of Abraham has been inserted in the Acts by a mistake of the copyists, when Jacob was meant. See chap. xxxiii. 19. (Calmet)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XIX. The True Gnostic is an Imitator of God, Especially in Beneficence
And this arrangement was prophetical and typical. And that all things belong to the wise, Scripture clearly indicates when it is said, “Because God hath had mercy on me, I have all things.” For it teaches that we are to desire one thing, by which are all things, and what is promised is assigned to the worthy. Accordingly, the good man who has become heir of the kingdom, it registers also as fellow-citizen, through divine wisdom, with the righteous of the olden time, who under the law and before the law lived according to law, whose deeds have become laws to us; and again, teaching that the wise man is king, introduces people of a different race, saying to him, “Thou art a king before God among us;” those who were governed obeying the good man of their own accord, from admiration of his virtue.
St John Chrysostom Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXXV
[10.] By what means then may one find a remedy for this manifold distemper? By bringing forward those that have trodden it under foot, and with an eye to their image so ordering one’s own life. For so the patriarch Abraham. nay, let none accuse me of tautology if I often make mention of him, and on all occasions: this being that which most of all shows him wonderful, and deprives them that refuse to imitate him of all excuse. For, if we exhibit one doing well in this particular, and another in that, some one might say that virtue is hardly to be attained; for that it is scarcely possible to succeed in all those things together, whereof each one of the saints hath performed only a part. …