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Gen_25:8
By “giving up the ghost,” we now understand giving up his spirit, as by “ghost” we usually suppose “spirit” to be meant. We doubt if the translators intended it to bear this sense; but apprehend, that they rather meant it to express the giving up the breath of life, or breathing out one’s life, which is the true meaning. It is there simply equivalent to the modern and usual phrase, “he expired.” The term is thought by Jewish writers to express death by old age only, without previous sickness or pain. This is the kind of death which results from the natural dissolution of the body, when the radical heat and moisture, by degrees dry up and wear away. Such a kind of death was that Euthanasia, that good and easy departure, which was greatly desired by the ancients, and which was indeed desirable, when old age was really venerated, and treated with solicitude and respect—with far more of both than, we fear, it finds under the influences and activities of modern civilization. This kind of death, this gentle sliding out of life, had been promised to Abraham as a blessing. “Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace. Thou shalt be buried in a good old age,” Gen_15:15. And we are now informed that this took place, to show that there was no point, however comparatively inconsiderable, in which the promises of God were left unfulfilled. The conviction which Abraham, in life and in death, was enabled to realize of the Lord’s faithfulness to his promises, must have been the source of his highest joys and deepest consolations. And it may be so to us. We have still better hopes and promises from God, than those that were given to Abraham; and we shall be happy here, or miserable, in proportion to the intensity with which we are enabled to realize the conviction, that all the promises of God in him (Christ) are yea, and in him amen.”
But Abraham is also said to have “died in a good old age.” Not only in old age, but in a good old age. The old age, which the sacred writer calls good, is very different from the sad, broken, fretful, and weary old age, of which these latter generations seem to furnish more examples than were dreamt of in old time, which invariably speak of old age as a good and a blessing. But this old age is good, because healthful, sound, long in coming, leaving the senses still in perfection, and free from that peevishness and moroseness, which make old age unpleasant in and to so many. We are sorry to record an observation we have made, that age seems to be generally more sound, vigorous, and cheerful in eastern than in western lands, in which old age has almost ceased to be regarded as a blessing. Perhaps, it is not altogether such under the New Testament dispensation, as it was under the Old, which looked far more to this life and its blessings than we are authorized to do. He who is enabled to know that he belongs to Christ, has little inducement to wish for a prolonged stay in this house of his pilgrimage. To depart and to be with Christ—to take possession of the mansion prepared for him in his Father’s house—and to join his kindred in heaven, who, as life advances, become more numerous than those who remain on earth—will seem to be well exchanged for length of days.
He was “an old man.” He was a hundred and seventy-five years of age. His great-grandfather had reached to two hundred and thirty years, and his father to two hundred and eight years: yet so rapidly was life falling, that although Abraham died at a comparatively early age, he was an old man among his contemporaries. Fallen as the duration of life had, his years passed by a hundred, the ordinary limit at which human life has now stood for many ages. He had seen the years which few of our people survive, before he entered the land of Canaan, and one hundred years he had passed in that land. He was, however, not only old; he was “full of years.” The word “years” is not in the original; and the word rendered “full,” is to be satisfied, satiated, or filled, and is often in Scripture applied to a person having had enough of food or of drink. It may, therefore, here well signify, that Abraham had lived as long as he desired; had finished the business of life; and was quite willing to die. He was satisfied with life; he had had enough of it; and stood with girded loins, ready to depart.
Finally, “he was gathered unto his people”—a striking phrase, over which the mind lingers. What, however, does it really mean? It is commonly interpreted to apply to burial—to sleeping in the grave with one’s kindred and friends. But this is not the sense here, it would seem. His people were not here, nor was he here buried with them. Sarah was the only one belonging to him that had died in this land, and with her he was buried. What, then, can this gathering to his people mean, but that his soul was gathered to theirs? The phrase is certainly more appropriate to the soul than to the body; for the body is gathered to corruption, but the soul to glory and blessedness. It is usual to say, that in the Pentateuch there are no indications of a life to come. Is not this one such indication? The usual form of the expression is “to be gathered to one’s fathers;” yet in other instances, as in this, it is applied to those who could not be said to be gathered to their fathers in the grave. It is also spoken of as a blessing to those who were so gathered. It must, therefore, it would seem, imply not only their continued existence, but their existence in a state of blessedness. In other words, those to whom Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, were gathered or assembled at death, must be to some then really existing; for to those that had no form of being, there could be no such gathering. It appears, therefore, that there could hardly be any plain foundation for the phrase, if well examined, but in the belief that the fathers, to whom they were at the death of the body assembled, had then a real existence. It is really of some importance to obtain even this piece of evidence, to the existence of a belief in the immortality, or even in the survival, of the soul, of which, it has been strongly denied by many, that there is any evidence in the books of Moses.
So, then, it is seen, that these patriarchal fathers had the same desire, and the same hope, of being gathered at death to all they had in past times venerated, loved, and lost, that we have. Indeed, it stands to reason that they should have had it. The condition of any people would seem scarcely tolerable without it.
“The seasons as they fly,
Snatch from us in their course, year after year,
Some sweet connection, some endearing tie.
The parent, ever honored, ever dear,
Claims from the filial breast the pious sigh;
A brother’s urn demands the filial tear,
And gentle sorrows gush from friendship’s eye.
Today we frolic in the rosy bloom
Of jocund youth—tomorrow knells us to the tomb.”
These things were the same in old time as now; and is it credible that men who then walked with God, and were honored with direct communications from him, were left in the dark on matters so essential to their comfort? that when they followed their dead ones to the tomb, they could not say that they should ever again behold them; and that in due time—in a time not long to any—they should themselves be gathered to the great assembly of those who died once, and are yet alive for evermore? Did David, when, in a later day, he said of his lost child—“I shall go to him, but he will not return to me,”—speak of the grave only, or of something beyond the grave? Let the heart answer.