He was 175. I would say he was a man “full of years.”
I do not know if you are aware of this, but this “gathered to his people” is a Hebraism that came about because of the way they did their burials in that time. You remember that Abraham bought the cave at Machpelah where he buried Sarah and later he was buried. And it happened that Israelites, from that point on, tried to bury those who died among them in the same way, in a cave, or in the rock, hew out a cave or crypt out of the rock. If they could not do that, they would often make a box of stone. Sometimes they did this, as well as burying them in the caves, but each family would have one of these stone boxes called an ossuary, meaning a “bone box.” So they would bury the person in the cave or in the crypt. His body would be displayed on a ledge, and they would allow the body to decay. In the climate, it would decay fairly quickly. It would not be long, within a year or so, and the body would be basically bones. They would then gather the bones and put them in the ossuary. Over time, over generations, there would be a collection of bones in the ossuary, from their fathers, and their father’s fathers, and their father’s fathers. So a person was then “gathered to his people,” to his fathers. So all of the family would be together in death. They would all be buried in the same bone box.
We see throughout great stretches of the Bible it seems to be supported that the definition of one’s dying is breathing one’s last. This only makes sense, because when God breathed the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils, back in Genesis 2:7, he became a living being.
Now, Abraham’s question was: How is this going to be? So, in the midst of it, God makes a prophesy so that Abraham would understand that the prophesy was not to be fulfilled in his life. He was going to go to his grave at a good old age, the first indication that the 400 years are involved here are not going to begin until Abraham passes from the scene by dying.
Abraham was born (I told you before), in 1972 BC. One hundred seventy-five years from that brings one out to 1797 BC. It says in Genesis 15, “that your descendants will be strangers [oppressed and afflicted] in a land that is not theirs.” These two scriptures say Abraham was not afflicted in his own land, and the four hundred years applied to his descendants. The four hundred years cannot begin at least until Abraham died. What we have to find out now is when does it end? We know that it cannot begin until at least 1797 BC, because that is when Abraham died. If we can find out when it ended we can find out for sure when it began.
What we are seeing at the beginning of chapter 25, is the effect of Abraham’s healing by God at the time that Isaac was conceived, that the healing was not just a one shot affair, that Abraham married after Sarah died and continued to produce children well after he was 137 years of age. Now how long after that I do not know. But it does show Abraham’s posterity beginning to multiply toward the end of his life.
What we see here then is a complete rejuvenation of Abraham’s powers. It is quickly stated in verses 5-6 that the bulk of the inheritance went to Isaac, and he died at a good old age, even as God had prophesied back there in Genesis 15:15, where He prophesied to Abraham that he would go to his grave in peace and die in a good old age. One hundred and seventy-five years, and one hundred of them living by faith.
