The City of the Patriarchs - and the Sabbath They Were Murdered

Remembering the 1929 massacre in the light of God’s unfailing covenant.

Folks, this week we remember a dark day in a very holy place.

On the 23rd and 24th of August, 1929- that was the 17th and 18th of Av on the Jewish calendar- a mob rose up in Hebron and murdered sixty-seven Jews. Men. Women. Little children. They were killed in their homes, on the Sabbath, in the city where Abraham bought a burial cave for Sarah.

Now, before we talk about 1929, we need to go back to the Word, because if you don’t know what Hebron is in the Scripture, you won’t understand why this wound goes so deep.

Let’s go back to Genesis

After Abram and Lot separated, the Lord told Abram to lift up his eyes. “All the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever” (Genesis 13:15). And the Bible says Abram moved his tent and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and he built an altar to the LORD.

Then Abram moved his tent, and went and dwelt by the terebinth trees of Mamre, which are in Hebron, and built an altar to the LORD. Genesis 13:18, NKJV

That’s the first thing I want you to see. Hebron is a place of worship. Abraham didn’t just pitch a tent there. He built an altar.

Then Sarah died, and Abraham did something very important. He would not take a grave as a gift, so he bought the field and the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite for four hundred shekels of silver, weighed out in front of everybody at the city gate. The Holy Spirit takes a whole chapter to tell you about that purchase. Why? Because this is the first piece of the Promised Land that Abraham actually owned. It was not conquered but bought and paid for.

So the field of Ephron which was in Machpelah… were deeded to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the sons of Heth, before all who went in at the gate of his city. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan. Genesis 23:17–19, NKJV

Abraham was buried there. Isaac and Rebekah were buried there. Jacob, dying down in Egypt, made his boys swear: “Carry me out of Egypt. Bury me with my fathers in that cave.”

Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah… There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. Genesis 49:29–31, NKJV

Look with me and you will notice, Rachel isn’t there. She was buried on the way to Bethlehem. But six of them are in that cave: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah.

However, later on, Caleb received Hebron because he wholly followed the Lord. It became a city of refuge. And after Saul died, David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I go up?” And the Lord said, “Go up to Hebron.” The men of Judah anointed David king there. He reigned in Hebron seven years and six months before he ever took Jerusalem.

So, when you say Hebron, you’re not talking about some little village, like if you're travelling from Helensburgh to Stirling, like Buchlyvie or Arnprior. You are talking about something bigger and fascinating: the altar of Abraham, the purchased grave of the patriarchs, and the first throne of David. That’s the city.

The people who still lived there

For century after century a Jewish community lived beside that tomb. By 1929, about seven or eight hundred Jews lived in Hebron. Some families had been there for generations. There was a yeshiva, a Bible school, if you will, that had come down from Lithuania. Young men came from Europe and even from America to study the Word of God in the city of the fathers.

They had a bakery. A pharmacy. A little hospital that treated Arab patients as well as Jews. Many of them trusted their neighbours. When some Jewish defence people offered to protect them or to get them out before the trouble started, the local leaders said no. “Our neighbours will look after us.”

That’s a beautiful thing when it’s true. It wasn’t true that weekend.

How the trouble began

It started in Jerusalem, around the Western Wall. There had been a long argument about who could do what at the Wall. Then the rumours started. They said the Jews were going to seize the Muslim holy places. You know how rumours work. They don’t need to be true. They just need to be believed.

On Friday the 23rd of August, the violence broke in Jerusalem. The British commission that looked into it later said it was, from the beginning, an attack by Arabs on Jews. No earlier Jewish murders to excuse it.

That same day the rumours reached Hebron. Stones were thrown. A yeshiva student named Shmuel Rosenholtz was killed. Friday night, some of the police still had rifles. Saturday morning, the Sabbath, a lot of them were sent out with sticks.

The Sabbath morning

About nine o’clock on Saturday morning, the 24th of August, the mob went through the Jewish quarter and into the Jewish houses that stood a little apart from the rest of the town.

The official British report did not mince words. It said the Arabs of Hebron made a most ferocious attack. More than sixty Jews, including many women and children, were murdered. More than fifty were wounded. Synagogues were desecrated. The Jewish hospital, the one that had treated Arabs, was ransacked. The report said no condemnation could be too severe.

We usually say sixty-seven were killed. About twenty-four of them were students or teachers from the yeshiva. Some of those boys were Americans. They had come to the land of the Bible to learn, and they died on the Sabbath in Hebron.

There was a man named Eliezer Dan Slonim. His father was the Ashkenazi rabbi of the town. Eliezer ran the little bank. He was known. People thought his house would be safe. Jews crowded in there. The mob came and said, “Give us the foreigners”, meaning the yeshiva students. He would not give them up. They killed him. They killed his family. They killed many who had run to him for shelter. A baby boy lived because he was lying among the dead.

There was one British officer in the town, a man named Cafferata. He did what he could. It wasn’t enough. Help came hours late. The High Commissioner walked through those houses afterwards and wrote to his son that the horror was beyond words. In one house he saw twenty-five men and women murdered in cold blood.

It lasted about an hour and a half. Then it was over. The survivors were taken to the police station and sent away to Jerusalem.

A word about mercy in the middle of it

Now I don’t want you to think every Arab in Hebron that day was a murderer, that isn’t true. There were families who hid Jews in their homes, they stood in the doorway, they risked their own lives. The lists from that time name them. Hundreds of Jews were saved that way.

That is important, as you read the Bible it never lets us paint a whole people with one brush. There is always a remnant who fear God more than the crowd and we ought to honour that. And we ought to tell the truth about the ones who came with knives.

What happened after

The British held an inquiry. They condemned the massacre. Then, in the years that followed, they tightened the door against Jewish immigration,  just as Europe was getting ready to try to wipe the Jews off the earth. That’s a hard thing to look at. But history is full of hard things.

A few tried to go back to Hebron in the 1930s. It didn’t last. In 1948 Jordan took the city. Jews were not allowed at the tomb. Synagogues were ruined. Gravestones from the Jewish cemetery were used as building blocks. From 1929 until 1967 there was no Jewish community in the city of the patriarchs.

In 1967 the city opened again, the Jews returned to pray at that cave and now a small community lives there once more. Not because someone invented a new claim last Tuesday. Because Abraham bought that field, and Jacob wanted his bones there, and a people was driven out on a Sabbath morning and, in God’s time, came home.

What the Lord would say to us

Now, what do we do with this as believers?

First, we tell the truth. The church has a long, ugly record of forgetting what was done to the Jews, or explaining it away. We must not do that. Sixty-seven image-bearers were murdered beside the grave of Abraham. Say it plainly.

Second, we remember that God is not finished with Israel. Paul said, “Has God cast away His people? Certainly not!” (Romans 11:1). The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. The covenant God cut with Abraham was not cancelled at Calvary. Calvary fulfilled the promise of blessing to all nations. It did not tear up the deed Abraham paid for in Hebron.

Third, we do not worship a cave, as Jesus said God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him. Abraham is alive to God. Isaac is alive to God. Jacob is alive to God. The tomb is a witness, not a shrine. The patriarchs died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off. They confessed they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. And God has prepared a city for them.

Fourth, we pray. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” That prayer takes in Hebron too. We pray for Jewish people to see their Messiah. We pray for Arab people to see the same Jesus. There is only one name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. The gospel is for the Jew first, and also for the Greek. Hatred will not save Hebron. Only the Prince of Peace will.

Fifth, we keep our eyes on the Lord, not on the newspaper, Men fail, Empires fail. British officers arrived too late. Neighbours turned. But the Word of the Lord stands. “I will bless those who bless you.” That has never been repealed.

So take time this week, when you hear the date 1929, don’t just shake your head and move on. Open Genesis 23. Stand with Abraham at the gate while the silver is weighed.

Then remember the Sabbath morning when the children of that same Abraham were cut down beside the cave. And ask the Lord to make you a person who tells the truth, who blesses whom He blesses, and who waits for the day when the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Shall we pray.

Father, we thank You that You are the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You keep covenant. You see every drop of blood. You will make all things right. Comfort those who still mourn. Reveal Yeshua to Your ancient people. Soften hearts that are hard. And teach us to love what You love, and to remember what the world would rather forget. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

A few notes for you guys reading.

The British account is the Shaw Commission Report, 1930. Survivor letters and sworn statements are in the Israel State Archives and the Central Zionist Archives.

Early newspaper reports ran in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The Jewish community of Hebron has published names of the dead and of some who hid the living.

Figures: sixty-seven Jews killed in Hebron is the number most often given. Across the whole country that week the British counted 133 Jewish dead and 116 Arab dead, many of the Arabs killed by British forces.