²⁰ When Araunah looked and saw the king and his officials coming toward him, he went out and bowed down before the king with his face to the ground.

²¹ Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?”

“To buy your threshing floor,” David answered, “so I can build an altar to the Lord, that the plague on the people may be stopped.”^(A)

²² Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take whatever he wishes and offer it up. Here are oxen^(B) for the burnt offering, and here are threshing sledges and ox yokes for the wood. ²³ Your Majesty, Araunah^[a] gives^(C) all this to the king.” Araunah also said to him, “May the Lord your God accept you.”

²⁴ But the king replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying you for it. I will not sacrifice to the Lord my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing.”^(D)

So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen and paid fifty shekels^[b](E) of silver for them.

³ Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites.^[a](A) He said, ⁴ “I am a foreigner and stranger^(B) among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.^(C)”

⁵ The Hittites replied to Abraham, ⁶ “Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince^(D) among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.”

⁷ Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. ⁸ He said to them, “If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar^(E) on my behalf ⁹ so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah,^(F) which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”

¹⁰ Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites^(G) who had come to the gate^(H) of his city. ¹¹ “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give^[b](I) you the field, and I give^[c] you the cave that is in it. I give^[d] it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.”

¹² Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land ¹³ and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”

¹⁴ Ephron answered Abraham, ¹⁵ “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels^[e] of silver,^(J) but what is that between you and me? Bury your dead.”

¹⁶ Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver,^(K) according to the weight current among the merchants.^(L)