[Avodah] another sin of Avraham

[Eli Turkel]

In a shiur from last week the rabbi said that another sin of Avraham
was making the
brit with the Phlishtim and so giving them rights to the land that
prevented Joshua
from conquering everything (based on the Rashbam who quotes a medrash Shmuel).

The "fix" for this mistake was the last test of Avraham (according to
some rishonim)
in the burial of Sarah. Looking closely at the pesukim the Hittites
were willing to
give Sarah a burial place among their graves for free. However, Avraham had to
argue that he didn't want presents in their cemetery but rather he
wanted to own the
land. Buying the land was in fact more important than the immediate
burial and was
the teshuva on the original sin. Thus after Efron agreed it had to go
back to the
Hittite council to get permission to sell land to an outsider.
Thus the sequence was Avraham spoke to the Hittites then to Efrom and then to
the Hittites because the deal had changed in the middle,

-- 
Eli Turkel