To Beg, or to Harm?
In Genesis 23:8, we read:
וַיְדַבֵּר אִתָּם, לֵאמֹר: אִם-יֵשׁ אֶת-נַפְשְׁכֶם, לִקְבֹּר אֶת-מֵתִי מִלְּפָנַי--שְׁמָעוּנִי, וּפִגְעוּ-לִי בְּעֶפְרוֹן בֶּן-צֹחַר
"And he spoke with them, saying: 'If it be your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight, y'all hear me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar,"
The piel form of pigah (noted in red) generally means "to inflict harm". Yet in the Torah, it can also mean to ask one to deliver your message to another, to act upon your behalf. The connector (the lamed - ל) after pigah, indicates that difference, while the harming form would take on a different connector (את).
It's a nuance that is often missed, that this active verb can be used two ways (like the verb lsapair can mean to get a haircut, or tell a story, which is also dependent upon the connectors).
So here we have Abraham initiating the request for a family burial cave. The people respect him (calling him "my lord"), and Ephron, the son of Tzochar (some transliterate Tz-Kh-R as Zohar) owns the plot of land.
Was Ephron a bad guy?
If you read the commentaries, Ephron was an opportunist who took advantage of a grieving widower and overcharged him. From the various Midrashim, he was described a bad person.
And if you ask many people who hear sermons about this guy, they will tell you, that he was a jerk.
But if you ignore what people are parroting and simply read the text, you will see that he, like Bilaam and others, wasn't really a bad guy. He offered to give Abraham the property for free!Abraham became belligerent and demanded to pay. And if Abraham has to repeat himself to somebody, well, that somebody must be up to no good!
No. Ephron wasn't a bad guy.
He was just someone trying to be helpful after the townspeople gave him Abraham's emotional request, addressed Abraham as "my lord". Some commentators will tell you that לא אדוני isn't simply "No, my lord", but "You are not my lord!".
Read the plain text for yourself as if you had never heard of this story before. It is sometimes hard not to parrot what you have been told. Don't read it as "How it should be read", but read it as it is written.
Just as the people of Babel did not wrong ("They must have! God didn't like what they were doing!"), neither did Ephron.
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