And he bought a parcel of a field
Not the whole, but a part of it; this he did, though he was heir
of the whole country, because, as yet, the time was not come for
him or his to take possession of it: where he had spread
his tent;
the ground that it stood upon, and what was adjoining to it, for
the use of his cattle: this he bought at the hand of the
children of Hamor;
of some one of them, in whose possession it was, and perhaps with
the consent of the rest, and before them, as witnesses: for
an hundred pieces of money;
Onkelos, the Septuagint, Vulgate Latin, Samaritan, Syriac, and
Arabic versions render it a hundred lambs or sheep, cattle being
used to be given in exchange for things in trade and commerce;
but as money was in use before the times of Jacob, and Stephen
expresses it as a "sum of money", ( Acts 7:16 ) ; and this
best agrees with the use of the word in ( Job 42:11 ) , the only
place besides this, excepting ( Joshua 24:32
) , in which it is used, it seems best so to interpret it here;
and the pieces of money might be such as were of the value of a
lamb or sheep, or rather had the figure of one impressed upon
them. Laban, from whom Jacob might have them, or his neighbours,
and also Jacob himself, being shepherds, might choose thus to
impress their money; but the exact value of these pieces cannot
be ascertained: the Jewish writers generally interpret them of a
"meah", which was the value of one penny of our money, and twenty
of them went to a shekel; so that a hundred of these must make a
very small and contemptible sum to purchase a piece of ground
with.