Abraham accepted Ephron’s terms. Abraham paid out to Ephron the money that he had given as a price in front of the Hittites—four hundred shekels of silver at the going merchants’ rate. (Bereishis 23:16)

The Medrash tells us that one of the ways the blessing given to Avraham avinu (that all the nations will be blessed through him: “I will bless those who bless you” Bereishis 12:3), was fulfilled, happened with all those who did business with Avraham, as they were successful well above what was expected! Yet, when Ephron did business with Avraham by selling his field to him, neither the Torah nor Chazal tell us that Ephron had any positive results from this sale.

The Be’er Yoseph (Rabbi Yoseph Tzvi Salant b. 1885) shows that Ephron had the opposite of the typical result of doing business with Avraham. He points to the lack of the letter vav in Ephron’s name in our source verse. This tells us that Ephron gained absolutely nothing at all. In fact, he proved this by pointing out how exorbitant the price Avraham paid for the plot of land was, as compared to the plot of land that Yaakov bought “b’mea kesita” for 100 pieces of silver. This was a mere fraction of the amount that Avraham paid, and Yaakov received a substantially larger piece of land. From this he proves that Avraham Avinu paid Ephron significantly more than the market price. He explains that Ephron wasn’t trying to execute a business deal with Avraham, rather he was trying to extort as much money as he could from Avraham! Therefore, he didn’t receive the blessing that came with dealing with Avraham, even though Avraham wanted this piece of land and was willing to pay the price. Nevertheless, that did not make it a “reasonable” business deal, and therefore Ephron quickly lost the money he received.

We can learn two important lessons from this:

First, when one is under pressure to do something, one need not always decide to do it or not based on whether it is “fair”. Rather one should decide if it makes sense for him to do this thing. If it is good for him, then even though the other party may be gaining way more than they should, we should learn from Avraham to do it anyway.

The second thing we should learn is that those who abuse a righteous person such as Avraham – or potentially any descendant of Avraham – in order to extort money without good reason, though it may look like they made a killing, the end is that they will lose out and not reap the rewards of their business deal. In other words, clearly Hashem runs the world, and those who do the right thing won’t lose, while those who do the wrong thing will be punished. It does not depend upon how it looks on the surface to the people around – it depends on how it is viewed by Hashem. Don’t judge the success and failure of things by the immediate results. Hashem takes care of everything, and the righteous one in His eyes will always be the one to “win”.

May Hashem bless us all to be truly successful in all our endeavors.