Jacob’s claim to have dug the tomb in which his grandfather Abraham had been interred, has been criticized as a contradiction of facts presented in ch. 23. However, it is not necessary to assume that Jacob here attributed to himself what had really been done by Abraham. Jacob may either have enlarged the original cave at Machpelah to make room for additional bodies or prepared in it the special niche he intended to occupy. Or, the expression may simply be Joseph’s way of informing Pharaoh that the burial would not take place in Egypt, but in Canaan, and that therefore permission was requested to go thither.