The Burial of Sarah
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Genesis 23:19
The passage
And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan.
Genesis 23:19
About this plate
Inside a cave, almost entirely dark. Two labourers with bare backs carry a long stone slab on their shoulders, bent under it, bracing with both arms. Behind them a group of mourners in robes: a bowed woman, a man with his head down, and an old man being held upright by the two beside him. Up a few rough steps the cave mouth is a hole of white daylight with figures standing in it. At the far left, set back in the rock, a wrapped upright shape.
The light is all at the top of the steps and nobody is going toward it. Dore has turned the whole crowd inward and downward, and the only strong bodies in the frame are the two men carrying the lid. Everything in the picture is heading further into the hill.
The verse is almost a deed of property. It names the cave, the field, the place before Mamre, then stops to say the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. That last clause is the point of the whole chapter: the only ground Abraham ever owned in the promised land was a grave.
The slab is being carried in, not out. Dore has chosen the moment before it is set down.
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