“And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem.”
King James Version (KJV)
7:16 And were carried over to Shechem - It seems that St. Stephen, rapidly running over so many circumstances of history, has not leisure (nor was it needful where they were so well known) to recite them all distinctly. Therefore he here contracts into one, two different sepulchres, places, and purchases, so as in the former history, to name the buyer, omitting the seller, in the latter, to name the seller, omitting the buyer. Abraham bought a burying place of the children of Heth, Gen. xxiii. #Gen 23:1 |- 20 There Jacob was buried. Jacob bought a field of the children of Hamor. There Joseph was buried. You see here, how St. Stephen contracts these two purchases into one. This concise manner of speaking, strange as it seems to us, was common among the Hebrews; particularly, when in a case notoriously known, the speaker mentioned but part of the story, and left the rest, which would have interrupted the current of his discourse, to be supplied in the mind of the hearer. And laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought - The first land which these strangers bought was for a sepulchre. They sought for a country in heaven. Perhaps the whole sentence might be rendered thus: So Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over to Shechem, and laid by the sons (that is, decendants) of Hamor, the father of Shechem, in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money.
Ac 7:16 And were carried over into Sychem. Jacob was buried at Hebron in the cave of Machpelah (Ge 50:13), but the "fathers" were buried in Sychem. We are told that Joseph was buried there, and Jewish tradition always affirmed that his brethren were buried there also (Jos 24:32). Jerome, in the fourth century, said that their tombs were still to be seen. He lived in Palestine. That Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Emmor. For an account of this purchase, see Ge 33:19 Jos 24:32. The difficulty arises that it was Jacob that made the purchase instead of Abraham. Some have supposed that Stephen, in the hurry of a rapid speech under exciting circumstances, by an oversight used the name of Abraham for Jacob; others have thought that Abraham did make the purchase first and that it was repeated by Jacob. Neither of these views is probable. Had Stephen made a lapsus, it would have been corrected by Luke, who wrote under Paul's supervision (see Introduction), so as to give Stephen's meaning. It is far more probable that some copyist, by oversight, first wrote "Abraham" for "Jacob", and that the MSS that have come down to us were made from that copy. There can hardly be a doubt that a man so learned in the Scriptures as Stephen, and making an inspired defense, said "Jacob".