The document provides a commentary on the burial of Jacob, emphasizing the profound grief of his son Joseph and the importance of expressing emotions during mourning. It discusses the cultural practices of embalming in Egypt, the emotional responses of Joseph, and suggests that grief is an appropriate response to loss. The author highlights the relationship between faith and sorrow, asserting that while grief is natural, it should be followed by moving forward in life with hope.

1. GEESIS 50 COMMETARY
Written and edited by Glenn Pease
PREFACE
I quote many authors both old and new, and if any I quote do not want their
wisdom shared in this way they can let me know and I will remove it. My e-mail is
glenn_p86@yahoo.com
ITRODUCTIO
H C Leupold The story of Jacob’s burial is told in a rather detailed fashion, more
so than is any other burial except Sarah’s in the book of Genesis (chapter 23),
because it gives a fine example of faith on the part of the patriarchs. Jacob desired
burial in the land of promise, thereby testifying to his faith in the promise. His sons
did not treat the father’s request as an unimportant whim but executed it with fine
conscientiousness. Besides, the entire material of the chapter is an excellent
preparation for the book of Exodus. The sons of Israel had come down into Egypt at
the behest of divine providence. They purposed to stay no longer than that same
providence ordained. Jacob’s burial testifies that their thoughts and their hopes lay
in Canaan. Joseph’s dying injunction points in the same direction.
1. Joseph threw himself upon his father and wept
over him and kissed him.
1. This radical action reveals the deep emotions of Joseph, and though they are
radical emotions they are not unusual for those who have lost a loved one. The
whole scene is deeply emotional, and it would be an unusual man who would not
weep in such a situation. There is a finality in death that brings tears even to the Son
of Man who knows he will conquer it and render it harmless. Jesus wept in the face
of death, for he saw the sorrow it brought to others. He knew it was temporary, but
even this temporary loss is painful for those who have assurance of eternal life.

2. There is sorrow in separation even when there is hope of reunion. The Old
Testament saints did not have the clear revelation of eternity that we have as
Christians, and so there sorrow had to be more intense.
2. Here we see a kissing of the dead as an expression of deep love. Kissing the corpse
seems excessive to us today, but those who do not grieve and express their emotions
have problems because they stifle their emotions. Joseph had become an Egyptian
and not just a Jew, and so he was a part of a different culture, and they did things
different than the Jews.
3. KRELL, What a beautiful response by Joseph. The only tears recorded in
Joseph’s life were not for himself but for the plight of his brothers and now the loss
of his father. The suffering that Joseph had endured had turned him into a man of
love. Suffering can push us in one of two directions: it can create bitterness in us or
it can soften us. Joseph was a man of tenderness and loving graciousness to others.
He was very affectionate to his father and wept over him when he died.6 When
somebody we love dies, God expects us to weep. That’s why He gave us the ability to
shed tears. ormal tears are a part of the healing process (Ps 30:5), while abnormal
grief only keeps the wounds open and prolongs the pain. In my pastoral ministry,
I’ve learned that people who suppress their grief are in danger of developing
emotional or physical problems that are difficult to heal. Don’t be afraid to express
yourself when you grieve or experience loss.
Reflecting on death, it is important to be sure that you have harmonious
relationships. Right relationships in life ease the sting of grief in death. Today, if
things are not right between you and your dad, mom, siblings, or children, do all
that you can to make sure that there is peace (Rom 12:18).
4. Barnes, “After the natural outburst of sorrow for his deceased parent, Joseph
gave orders to embalm the body, according to the custom of Egypt. “His servants,
the physicians.” As the grand vizier of Egypt, he has physicians in his retinue. The
classes and functions of the physicians in Egypt may be learned from Herodotus (ii.
81-86). There were special physicians for each disease; and the embalmers formed a
class by themselves. “Forty days” were employed in the process of embalming;
“seventy days,” including the forty, were devoted to mourning for the dead.
Herodotus mentions this number as the period of embalming. Diodorus (i. 91)
assigns upwards of thirty days to the process. It is probable that the actual process
was continued for forty days, and that the body lay in natron for the remaining
thirty days of mourning. See Hengstenberg’s B. B. Mos. u. Aeg., and Rawlinson’s
Herodotus.
5. Gill, “ And Joseph fell upon his father's face,.... Laid his own face to the cold face
and pale cheeks of his dead father, out of his tender affection for him, and grief at
parting with him; this shows that Joseph had been present from the time his father

3. sent for him, and all the while he had been blessing the tribes, and giving orders
about his funeral:
and wept upon him; which to do for and over the dead is neither unlawful nor
unbecoming, provided it is not carried to excess, as the instances of David, Christ,
and others show:
and kissed him; taking his farewell of him, as friends used to do, when parting and
going a long journey, as death is. This was practised by Heathens, who had a notion
that the soul went out of the body by the mouth, and they in this way received it into
themselves: so Augustus Caesar died in the kisses of Livia, and Drusius in the
embraces and kisses of Caesar (w). Joseph no doubt at this time closed the eyes of
his father also, as it is said he should, and as was usual; see Gen_46:4.
6. Henry, “Joseph is here paying his last respects to his deceased father. 1. With
tears and kisses, and all the tender expressions of a filial affection, he takes leave of
the deserted body, Gen_50:1. Though Jacob was old and decrepit, and must needs
die in the course of nature - though he was poor comparatively, and a constant
charge to his son Joseph, yet such an affection he had for a loving father, and so
sensible was he of the loss of a prudent, pious, praying father, that he could not part
with him without floods of tears. ote, As it is an honour to die lamented, so it is the
duty of survivors to lament the death of those who have been useful in their day,
though for some time they may have survived their usefulness. The departed soul is
out of the reach of our tears and kisses, but with them it is proper to show our
respect to the poor body, of which we look for a glorious and joyful resurrection.
Thus Joseph showed his faith in God, and love to his father, by kissing his pale and
cold lips, and so giving an affectionate farewell. Probably the rest of Jacob's sons
did the same, much moved, no doubt, with his dying words
7. KD 1-3, “Burial of Jacob. - Gen_50:1-3. When Jacob died, Joseph fell upon the
face of his beloved father, wept over him, and kissed him. He then gave the body to
the physicians to be embalmed, according to the usual custom in Egypt. The
physicians are called his servants, because the reference is to the regular physicians
in the service of Joseph, the eminent minister of state; and according to Herod. 2,
84, there were special physicians in Egypt for every description of disease, among
whom the Taricheuta, who superintended the embalming, were included, as a
special but subordinate class. The process of embalming lasted 40 days, and the
solemn mourning 70 (Gen_50:3). This is in harmony with the statements of
Herodotus and Diodorus when rightly understood (see Hengstenberg, Egypt and the
Books of Moses, p. 67ff.).
8. TEARS, “Sadly, our tradition is replete with the theme of tears; we devote this
edition of JHOM, which is published in the sorrowful month of Av, to TEARS.

4. People cry, angels cry, even God Himself cries. The first tear was given by God as a
gift to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; God arms the two with a powerful
therapeutic tool — a good cry - as they set out to face the tribulations of the real
world. In various midrashic interpretations of the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac)
story, Abraham weeps as he takes the knife into his hand, and then the angels weep,
their tears blunting his knife and his eyes. An echo of this story is found in a story
from the Zohar (a mystical work composed in the 13th cent.), in which God is
moved by the tears of a child weeping over his dead father.
9. Avivah Zornberg Gottlieb's looks closely at the tears of Joseph, who weeps three
times in the course of his masquerade with his brothers.
The destruction of the Temples and the exile of the Jews from their land bring on
bitter weeping. Writes the author of Lamentations: [Jerusalem] weeps in the night,
and her tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her. In
commemoration of the inth of Av which marks the destruction of the Temples, we
include an early dirge, Zion Weeps, which is traditionally read on the synagogue
on the eve of the fast day.
This is the first of three occasions on which Joseph weeps. Each time he does so,
something opens up in him, an unplanned response, which is at first a mere
parenthesis, as he turns away and then turns back to his tyrannical role. In the
course of that parenthesis he knows himself lost and remembered by his brothers.
As they speak of what was not in the past, a new relationship is suggested, woven of
regret, empathy, loss. Listening to them, Joseph begins to be; his real life takes on
imagined luster in their words, in their contrition.
He weeps again, when Benjamin appears in front of him. Again, spontaneously,
anarchically, tears force him away from his brothers: even more emphatically, the
narrative stresses this withdrawal.
The effect is of a kind of slow-motion lingering on the experience of weeping —
before, during, and after. This is time out of time, after which Joseph returns to the
routines of his host role (Serve the meal). Again, a profound, repressed
consciousness breaks through the tears. evertheless, he controls himself.
Repressed memories of Joseph's brothers' cruelty to him rise to the surface, as their
responsibility to Rachel's other son, Benjamin, is tested. Will they abandon him, as
they abandoned Joseph in the past? This question — of abandonment, of alienation,
rather than of active cruelty — is the essence of Joseph's plot, in its final stage.
When Judah offers himself in place of Benjamin, simply because it is unbearable to
him to witness his father's anguish, if he should return without him[1], Joseph again
bursts out weeping. This time, however, he cannot restrain himself.
As on previous occasions of weeping, Joseph has time, before his tears overwhelm
him, to make preparations. Before he breaks down, instead of withdrawing, this
time he sends away all onlookers. And the passion of his tears is almost orgiastic. A
whole verse is given to the description of the weeping, as it echoes through the
palace. His weeping is an eruption of the pain of his loss, intensified to a point that
compels him to give up the masquerade. As Judah recalls the rememberings of his

5. father, Joseph is overwhelmed by the reality of his own absence; he weeps for the
third time and reveals himself.
Joseph's tears are perhaps those of which the Psalmist sings: Though he goes
alongweeping, carrying the seed bag, he shall come back with songs of joy, carrying
his sheaves[2]. André eher[3] writes of these tears:
What is to weep? To weep is to sow. What is to laugh? To laugh is to reap. Look at
this man weeping as he goes. Why is he weeping? Because he is bearing in his arms
the burden of the grain he is about to sow. And now, see him coming back in joy.
Why is he laughing? Because he bears in his arms the sheaves of the harvest.
Laughter is the tangible harvest, plenitude. Tears are sowing; they are effort, risk,
the seed exposed to drought and to rot, the ear of corn threatened by hail and by
storms. Laughter is words, tears are silence....It is not the harvest that is important:
what is important is the sowing, the risk, the tears. Hope is not in laughter and
plentitude. Hope is in tears, in the risk and in its silence.”
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg was recently invited to be a Jewish Bible scholar in a PBS
special on Genesis. She has gained great acclaim through her weekly lectures in
Jerusalem, in which she ranges across literature, cultures and time to delve into the
Bible's lessons on life.
10. STEVE ZEISLER, “This is not a faithless act. We have all felt the loss of a
loved one through death. Some would hold that if we really believe, then we will not
experience sorrow. But I don't subscribe to that. Joseph was a true believer, yet he
experienced extreme sorrow over his father's death. The apostle Paul wrote to the
Thessalonians, We would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who
are asleep, that you may not grieve as those who have no hope. Grief over death is
entirely appropriate. It is grief that is without hope that is less than Christian. When
we lose someone we love, it is all right to grieve, but then we must do as Joseph did-get
on with life and allow the Lord to transform our feelings of grief to confidence in
him.
ow we come to the question of why Jacob was so detailed in his instructions
regarding the location of his tomb. He left no doubt where he wanted to be buried.
Joseph clearly had no doubt about his father's instructions. He responded by
organizing a massive funeral cortege that traveled from Egypt to Canaan. Because
of Joseph's stature as prime minister of Egypt, his father Jacob also had come to be
regarded as great in that kingdom. Thus, the great entourage was organized, with
elders of Pharaoh's household and elders of Egypt, horsemen, etc., accompanying
the enbalmed body of Jacob. The Canaanites were so impressed with the grief they
saw expressed that they renamed a local region where the party paused to mourn.”
11. H C Leupold, “o doubt the other sons were also present at their father’s death,
not only Joseph. The closing verses of the last chapter indicate this. They, too,

6. grieved greatly to lose their father; but Joseph’s grief is especially mentioned,
because he had all his days stood closer to his father than the other sons,
Consequently his pain was greater. We must remember, too, that the very close
relationship existing between Joseph and his father has stood in the forefront of the
narrative especially since Jacob’s coming to Egypt. For that matter, there was also
the promise of Ge 46:4 that Joseph would be at hand to close his father’s eyes in
death. The fulfilment of that promise deserved to be recorded. First of all Joseph
fell upon his father’s face, ’al peney ‘abhîw, a phrase reminding us of Ge 23:3,
where Abraham is said to have arisen after Sarah’s death from ’al peney Sarah.
atural grief usually finds an outlet in tears; so he wept over him. A last token of
the close affection that existed between the two was the parting kiss bestowed upon
the dead lips. Enough is reported to indicate the depth and the sincerity of Joseph’s
grief. But the manly grief of God’s saints has a certain restraint, for even in the Old
Testament there was the sure hope of life eternal.
2.Then Joseph directed the physicians in his
service to embalm his father Israel. So the
physicians embalmed him,
1. This was a first, for no other in all the Old Testament had ever been embalmed as
far as we know. This process involved the removal of all moisture by means of spices
to close up the pores, and by wrapping so that the skin would be preserved from all
wetness. This was the Egyptian idea of immortality by making the body to defy
decay and thus last forever. In Appendix A there is a long description of the whole
Egyptian experience of embalming and mourning. It is from the commentary by
Adam Clarke. It is both educational and gross, and so some may want to pass on
reading it. That is why it is in the Appendix.
2. Joseph was a part of the Egyptian culture, and so he did what any Egyptian
would do for his father by having him embalmed. It was a part of that culture where
he lived and served, and he conformed to it. Believers all over the world and all
through history have lived in different cultures and they do conform to many
customs that others do not have, and so there is a great variety in the way believers
deal with many issues, such as the care and burial of the dead.
3. Jamison, “In ancient Egypt the embalmers were a class by themselves. The
process of embalmment consisted in infusing a great quantity of resinous substances
into the cavities of the body, after the intestines had been removed, and then a
regulated degree of heat was applied to dry up the humors, as well as decompose the

7. tarry materials which had been previously introduced. Thirty days were alloted for
the completion of this process; forty more were spent in anointing it with spices; the
body, tanned from this operation, being then washed, was wrapped in numerous
folds of linen cloth--the joinings of which were fastened with gum, and then it was
deposited in a wooden chest made in the form of a human figure.
4. Embalming was the customary Egyptian preparation of dignitaries for burial.
For Jacob’s burial this was especially helpful for it was a long way back to Canaan
to the cave where Jacob was to be laid to rest. Perhaps it was due to the same
logistical problem (without the availability of embalmers) that forced Jacob to bury
Rachel along the way rather than to transport her body to the cave of Machpelah
(cf. Genesis 35:16-20).
5. Clarke, “The physicians - רפאים ropheim, the healers, those whose business it was
to heal or restore the body from sickness by the administration of proper medicines;
and when death took place, to heal or preserve it from dissolution by embalming,
and thus give it a sort of immortality or everlasting duration. The original word חנט
chanat, which we translate to embalm, has undoubtedly the same meaning with the
Arabic hanata, which also signifies to embalm, or to preserve from putrefaction by
the application of spices, etc., and hence hantat, an embalmer. The word is used to
express the reddening of leather; and probably the ideal meaning may be something
analogous to our tanning, which consists in removing the moisture, and closing up
the pores so as to render them impervious to wet. This probably is the grand
principle in embalming; and whatever effects this, will preserve flesh as perfectly as
skin. Who can doubt that a human muscle, undergoing the same process of tanning
as the hide of an ox, would not become equally incorruptible? I have seen a part of
the muscle of a human thigh, that, having come into contact with some tanning
matter, either in the coffin or in the grave, was in a state of perfect soundness, when
the rest of the body had been long reduced to earth; and it exhibited the appearance
of a thick piece of well tanned leather.
In the art of embalming, the Egyptians excelled all nations in the world; with
them it was a common practice. Instances of the perfection to which they carried
this art may be seen in the numerous mummies, as they are called, which are found
in different European cabinets, and which have been all brought from Egypt. This
people not only embalmed men and women, and thus kept the bodies of their
beloved relatives from the empire of corruption, but they embalmed useful animals
also. I have seen the body of the Ibris thus preserved; and though the work had been
done for some thousands of years, the very feathers were in complete preservation,
and the color of the plumage discernible. The account of this curious process, the
articles used, and the manner of applying them, I subjoin from Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus, as also the manner of their mournings and funeral solemnities,
which are highly illustrative of the subjects in this chapter.
“When any man of quality dies,” says Herodotus, “all the women of that family
besmear their heads and faces with dirt; then, leaving the body at home, they go

8. lamenting up and down the city with all their relations; their apparel being girt
about them, and their breasts left naked. On the other hand the men, having
likewise their clothes girt about them, beat themselves. These things being done,
they carry the dead body to be embalmed; for which there are certain persons
appointed who profess this art. These, when the body is brought to them, show to
those that bring it certain models of dead persons in wood, according to any of
which the deceased may be painted. One of these they say is accurately made like to
one whom, in such a matter, I do not think lawful to name; του ουκ ὁσιον ποιουμαι
το ουνομα επι τοιουτῳ πρηγματι ονομαζειν; (probably Osiris, one of the principal
gods of Egypt, is here intended); then they show a second inferior to it, and of an
easier price; and next a third, cheaper than the former, and of a very small value;
which being seen, they ask them after which model the deceased shall be
represented. When they have agreed upon the price they depart; and those with
whom the dead corpse is left proceed to embalm it after the following manner: First
of all, they with a crooked iron draw the brain out of the head through the nostrils;
next, with a sharp Ethiopic stone they cut up that part of the abdomen called the
ilia, and that way draw out all the bowels, which, having cleansed and washed with
palm wine, they again rinse and wash with wine perfumed with pounded odors:
then filling up the belly with pure myrrh and cassia grossly powdered, and all other
odors except frankincense, they sew it up again. Having so done, they salt it up close
with nitre seventy days, for longer they may not salt it. After this number of days
are over they wash the corpse again, and then roll it up with fine linen, all
besmeared with a sort of gum, commonly used by the Egyptians instead of glue.
Then is the body restored to its relations, who prepare a wooden coffin for it in the
shape and likeness of a man, and then put the embalmed body into it, and thus
enclosed, place it in a repository in the house, setting it upright against the wall.
After this manner they, with great expense, preserve their dead; whereas those who
to avoid too great a charge desire a mediocrity, thus embalm them: they neither cut
the belly nor pluck out the entrails, but fill it with clysters of oil of cedar injected up
the anus, and then salt it the aforesaid number of days. On the last of these they
press out the cedar clyster by the same way they had injected it, which has such
virtue and efficacy that it brings out along with it the bowels wasted, and the nitre
consumes the flesh, leaving only the skin and bones: having thus done, they restore
the dead body to the relations, doing nothing more. The third way of embalming is
for those of yet meaner circumstances; they with lotions wash the belly, then dry it
up with salt for seventy days, and afterwards deliver it to be carried away.
evertheless, beautiful women and ladles of quality were not delivered to be
embalmed till three or four days after they had been dead;” for which Herodotus
assigns a sufficient reason, however degrading to human nature: Τουτο δε ποιεουσι
οὑτω τουδε εἱνεκα, ἱνα μη σφι οἱ ταριχευται μισγωνται τῃσι γυναιξι· λαμφθηναι γαρ
τινα φασι μισγομενον νεκρῳ προσφατῳ γυναικος· κατειπαι δε τον ὁμοτεχνον. [The
original should not be put into a plainer language; the abomination to which it
refers being too gross]. “But if any stranger or Egyptian was either killed by a
crocodile or drowned in the river, the city where he was cast up was to embalm and
bury him honorably in the sacred monuments, whom no one, no, not a relation or
friend, but the priests of the ile only, might touch; because they buried one who

9. was something more than a dead man.” - Herod. Euterpe, p. 120, ed. Gale.
Diodorus Siculus relates the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians more distinctly
and clearly, and with some very remarkable additional circumstances. “When any
one among the Egyptians dies,” says he, “all his relations and friends, putting dirt
upon their heads, go lamenting about the city, till such time as the body shall be
buried: in the meantime, they abstain from baths and wine, and all kinds of delicate
meats; neither do they, during that time, wear any costly apparel. The manner of
their burials is threefold: one very costly, a second sort less chargeable, and a third
very mean. In the first, they say, there is spent a talent of silver; in the second,
twenty minae; but in the last there is very little expense. ‘Those who have the care of
ordering the body are such as have been taught that art by their ancestors. These,
showing each kind of burial, ask them after what manner they will have the body
prepared. When they have agreed upon the manner, they deliver the body to such as
are usually appointed for this office. First, he who has the name of scribe, laying it
upon the ground, marks about the flank on the left side how much is to be cut away;
then he who is called παρασχιστης, paraschistes, the cutter or dissector, with an
Ethiopic stone, cuts away as much of the flesh as the law commands, and presently
runs away as fast as he can; those who are present, pursuing him, cast stones at him,
and curse him, hereby turning all the execrations which they imagine due to his
office upon him. For whosoever offers violence, wounds, or does any kind of injury
to a body of the same nature with himself, they think him worthy of hatred: but
those who are ταριχευται, taricheutae, the embalmers, they esteem worthy of honor
and respect; for they are familiar with their priests, and go into the temples as holy
men, without any prohibition. As soon as they come to embalm the dissected body,
one of them thrusts his hand through the wound into the abdomen, and draws forth
all the bowels but the heart and kidneys, which another washes and cleanses with
wine made of palms and aromatic odors. Lastly, having washed the body, they
anoint it with oil of cedar and other things for about thirty days, and afterwards
with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters, which have not only a power to
preserve it a long time, but also give it a sweet smell; after which they deliver it to
the kindred in such manner that every member remains whole and entire, and no
part of it changed, but the beauty and shape of the face seem just as they were
before; and the person may be known, even the eyebrows and eyelids remaining as
they were at first. By this means many of the Egyptians, keeping the dead bodies of
their ancestors in magnificent houses, so perfectly see the true visage and
countenance of those that died many ages before they themselves were born, that in
viewing the proportions of every one of them, and the lineaments of their faces, they
take as much delight as if they were still living among them. Moreover, the friends
and nearest relations of the deceased, for the greater pomp of the solemnity,
acquaint the judges and the rest of their friends with the time prefixed for the
funeral or day of sepulture, declaring that such a one (calling the dead by his name)
is such a day to pass the lake; at which time above forty judges appear, and sit
together in a semicircle, in a place prepared on the hither side of the lake, where a
ship, provided beforehand by such as have the care of the business, is haled up to
the shore, and steered by a pilot whom the Egyptians in their language called
Charon. Hence they say Orpheus, upon seeing this ceremony while he was in Egypt,

10. invented the fable of hell, partly imitating therein the people of Egypt, and partly
adding somewhat of his own. The ship being thus brought to the lake side, before
the coffin is put on board every one is at liberty by the law to accuse the dead of
what he thinks him guilty. If any one proves he was a bad man, the judges give
sentence that the body shall be deprived of sepulture; but in case the informer be
convicted of false accusation, then he is severely punished. If no accuser appear, or
the information prove false, then all the kindred of the deceased leave off mourning,
and begin to set forth his praises, yet say nothing of his birth, (as the custom is
among the Greeks), because the Egyptians all think themselves equally noble; but
they recount how the deceased was educated from his youth and brought up to
man’s estate, exalting his piety towards the gods, and justice towards men, his
chastity, and other virtues wherein he excelled; and lastly pray and call upon the
infernal deities (τους κατω θεους, the gods below) to receive him into the societies of
the just. The common people take this from the others, and consequently all is said
in his praise by a loud shout, setting forth likewise his virtues in the highest strains
of commendation, as one that is to live for ever with the infernal gods. Then those
that have tombs of their own inter the corpse in places appointed for that purpose;
and they that have none rear up the body in its coffin against some strong wall of
their house. But such as are denied sepulture on account of some crime or debt, are
laid up at home without coffins; yet when it shall afterwards happen that any of
their posterity grows rich, he commonly pays off the deceased person’s debts, and
gets his crimes absolved, and so buries him honorably; for the Egyptians are wont to
boast of their parents and ancestors that were honorably buried. It is a custom
likewise among them to pawn the dead bodies of their parents to their creditors; but
then those that do not redeem them fall under the greatest disgrace imaginable, and
are denied burial themselves at their deaths.” - Diod. Sic. Biblioth., lib. i., cap. 91-93,
edit. Bipont. See also the ecrokedia, or Art of Embalming, by Greenhill, 4th., p.
241, who endeavored in vain to recommend and restore the art But he could not give
his countrymen Egyptian manners; for a dead carcass is to the British an object of
horror, and scarcely any, except a surgeon or an undertaker, cares to touch it.”
6. Gill, “ And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his
father,.... Which he did, not merely because it was the custom of the Egyptians, but
because it was necessary, his father's corpse being to be carried into Canaan to be
interred there, which would require time; and therefore it was proper to make use
of some means for the preservation of it, and these men were expert in this business,
which was a branch of the medicinal art, as Pliny (x) and Mela (y) suggest; and of
these Joseph had more than one, as great personages have their physicians ready to
attend them on any occasion, as kings and princes, and such was Joseph, being
viceroy of Egypt. Herodotus (z) says the Egyptians had physicians peculiar to every
disease, one for one disease, and another for another; and Homer (a) speaks of them
as the most skilful of all men; though the Septuagint render the word by
ενταφιασται, the buriers, such who took care of the burial of persons, to provide
for it, and among the rest to embalm, dry, and roll up the bodies in linen:
and the physicians embalmed him; the manner of embalming, as Herodotus (b)

11. relates, was this,first with a crooked iron instrument they extracted the brain
through the nostrils, which they got out partly by this means, and partly by the
infusion of medicines; then with a sharp Ethiopian stone they cut about the flank,
and from thence took out all the bowels, which, when they had cleansed, they
washed with palm wine (or wine of dates), and after that again with odours,
bruised; then they filled the bowels (or hollow place out of which they were taken)
with pure myrrh beaten, and with cassia and other odours, frankincense excepted,
and sewed them up; after which they seasoned (the corpse) with nitre, hiding (or
covering it therewith) seventy days, and more than that they might not season it; the
seventy days being ended, they washed the corpse, and wrapped the whole body in
bands of fine linen, besmearing it with gum, which gum the Egyptians use generally
instead of glue.''And Diodorus Siculus (c), who gives much the same account, says,
that every part was retained so perfectly, that the very hairs of the eyebrows, and
the whole form of the body, were invariable, and the features might be known; and
the same writer tells us, that the expense of embalming was different; the highest
price was a talent of silver, about one hundred and eighty seven pounds and ten
shillings of our money, the middlemost twenty pounds, and the last and lowest were
very small. The embalmers he calls ταριχευται, and says they were in great esteem,
and reckoned worthy of much honour, and were very familiar with the priests, and
might go into holy places when they pleased, as the priests themselves.
7. Henry, “He ordered the body to be embalmed (Gen_50:2), not only because he
died in Egypt, and that was the manner of the Egyptians, but because he was to be
carried to Canaan, which would be a work of time, and therefore it was necessary
the body should be preserved as well as it might be from putrefaction. See how vile
our bodies are, when the soul has forsaken them; without a great deal of art, and
pains, and care, they will, in a very little time, become noisome. If the body have
been dead four days, by that time it is offensive.
8. S. Lewis Johnson, “ow that's a rather interesting thing because usually in
mummification, there were certain pagan religious rites involved in it. We have no
indication that that was true here. In fact, Joseph is the one who commands the
physicians to embalm his father. Usually the physicians did not do it, but they did it
in this case and it may have been because Joseph oversaw this. ow it might be
since embalming has been thought at times to be a means of preserving the body so
that the resurrection would be more easily accomplished by God since he could
more easily resurrect a body that had been embalmed and one that had not, it might
have seemed a rather pagan kind of ceremony and you will notice that Jacob is
embalmed and then later Joseph himself is embalmed. Well, after the message this
morning one of the doctors in the congregation came to me and said I think I know
exactly why Jacob was embalmed and particularly why Joseph was embalmed
because after all, they wanted to go back to the land of Canaan and if Joseph had
been buried in the land after several hundred years, his bones could never have
been taken back into the land and so the embalming, the use of this pagan
procedure, the mummification, served the purpose of God in accomplishing

12. Joseph’s burial in the land, so that later on as they made their way out in the
Exodus, they carried that old mummy case with Joseph’s bones in it back into the
land and buried Joseph there. So even the pagan embalming procedure is used by
the Lord God.
9. Leupold, “It might have been misunderstood if we had translated literally, he
gave a charge to his servants, the physicians, as though all his servants were
physicians. So we have rendered: to servants of his who were physicians. o
doubt, the eminence of Joseph’s position called for a very great retinue. Even a
special group of physicians was detailed to watch over his health. These seem to
have been particularly adapted to such a task as embalming the dead, perhaps even
more so than the professional embalmers. The process of embalming, described
already in some detail by Herodotus, involved the removal of the brain through the
nose by a hooked instrument as well as the removal of the entrails through an
incision in the side made with a sharp stone knife. The entrails were placed in a jar.
The cranial cavity was filled with spices, likewise the abdominal cavity; but it as well
as the entire body were thoroughly treated with saltpetre for seven days. Afterward
the whole body was washed with a palm wine. Then it was daubed with pitch or
gums, swathed in many folds of white cloth and laid away in its mummy case. Jacob
and Joseph are the only two Israelites of whom the Scriptures tell that they were
embalmed, chanat, a verb having close Arabic and Ethiopic parallels and
meaning first to ripen then to embalm. In the case of these two Israelites this
distinctly Egyptian type of preparation for burial was resorted to in order to make it
feasible to transport the mummified remains to Canaan.
3. taking a full forty days, for that was the time
required for embalming. And the Egyptians
mourned for him seventy days.
1. From the point of view of the ew Testament this was an excessive amount of
time devoted to preserving the body, and an excessive amount of time devoted to
mourning. ew Testament believers need to mourn, but not as those who have no
hope, said Paul. It would not be a good testimony for a Christian to stay in
mourning for this long, for it would be a sort of denial of our hope in Christ.
2. Calvin wrote, “That Joseph falls upon his father’s face and sheds tears, flows
from true and pure affection; that the Egyptians mourn for him seventy days, since

13. it is done for the sake of honor, and in compliance with custom, is more from
ostentation and vain pomp, than from true grief: and yet the dead are generally
mourned over in this manner, that the last debt due to them may be discharged.
Whence also the proverb has originated, that the mourning of the heir is laughter
under a mask. And although sometimes minds are penetrated with real grief; yet
something is added to it, by the affectation of making a show of pious sorrow, so
that they indulge largely in tears in the presence of others, who would weep more
sparingly if there were no witnesses of their grief Hence those friends who meet
together, under the pretext of administering consolation, often pursue a course so
different, that they call forth more abundant weeping. And although the ceremony
of mourning over the dead arose from a good principle; namely, that the living
should meditate on the curse entailed by sin upon the human race, yet it has always
been tarnished by many evils; because it has been neither directed to its true end,
nor regulated by due moderation. With respect to the genuine grief which is not
unnaturally elicited, but which breaks forth from the depth of our hearts, it is not,
in itself, to be censured, if it be kept within due bounds. For Joseph is not here
reproved because he manifests his grief by weeping; but his filial piety is rather
commended. We have, however, need of the rein, and of self-government, lest,
through intemperate grief, we are hurried, by a blind impulse, to murmur against
God: for excessive grief always precipitates us into rebellion. Moreover, the
mitigation of sorrow is chiefly to be sought for, in the hope of a future life, according
to the doctrine of Paul.” “It is probable that Joseph, in conforming himself to the
Egyptians, whose superfluous care was not free from absurdity; acted rather from
fear than from judgment, or from approval of their method. Perhaps he improperly
imitated the Egyptians, lest the condition of his father might be worse than that of
other men. But it would have been better, had he confined himself to the frugal
practice of his fathers. evertheless though he might be excusable, the same practice
is not now lawful for us. For unless we wish to subvert the glory of Christ, we must
cultivate greater sobriety.”
3. Clarke, “Forty days - The body it appears required this number of days to
complete the process of embalming; afterwards it lay in natron thirty days more,
making in the whole seventy days, according to the preceding accounts, during
which the mourning was continued.
4. Gill, “Forty days were fulfilled for him,.... Were spent in embalming him:
for so are fulfilled the days of those that are embalmed; so long the body lay in the
pickle, in ointment of cedar, myrrh and cinnamon, and other things, that it might
soak and penetrate thoroughly into it: and so Diodorus Siculus (d) says, that having
laid more than thirty days in such a state, it was delivered to the kindred of the
deceased:
and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days; during the time of their
embalming him; for longer than seventy days the body might not lie in the pickle, as

14. before observed, from Herodotus. According to Diodorus Siculus (e), the Egyptians
used to mourn for their kings seventy two days: the account he gives is, thatupon
the death of a king, all Egypt went into a common mourning, tore their garments,
shut up their temples, forbid sacrifices, kept not the feasts for seventy two days, put
clay upon their heads (f), girt linen clothes under their breasts; men and women,
two or three hundred together, went about twice a day, singing in mournful verses
the praises of the deceased; they abstained from animal food, and from wine, and all
dainty things; nor did they use baths, nor ointments, nor lie in soft beds, nor dared
to use venery, but, as if it was for the death of a beloved child, spent the said days in
sorrow and mourning.''ow these seventy days here are either a round number for
seventy two, or two are taken from them, as Quistorpius suggests, to make a
difference between Jacob, and a king of theirs, who yet being the father of their
viceroy, they honoured in such a manner. Jarchi accounts for the number thus,
forty for embalming, and thirty for mourning; which latter was the usual time for
mourning with the Jews for principal men, and which the Egyptians added to their
forty of embalming; see um_20:29.
5. Henry, “He observed the ceremony of solemn mourning for him, Gen_50:3. Forty
days were taken up in embalming the body, which the Egyptians (they say) had an
art of doing so curiously as to preserve the very features of the face unchanged; all
this time, and thirty days more, seventy in all, they either confined themselves and
sat solitary, or, when they went out, appeared in the habit of close mourners,
according to the decent custom of the country. Even the Egyptians, many of them,
out of the great respect they had for Joseph (whose good offices done for the king
and country were now fresh in remembrance), put themselves into mourning for his
father: as with us, when the court goes into mourning, those of the best quality do so
too. About ten weeks was the court of Egypt in mourning for Jacob. ote, What
they did in state, we should do in sincerity, weep with those that weep, and mourn
with those that mourn, as being ourselves also in the body. 4. He asked and obtained
6. Leupold, “By way of explanation for later generations Moses relates how much
time the entire process entailed. First he tells of their being occupied with the task
a full forty days. The Hebrew idiom is a bit different. It says: And they made full
for him forty days, for thus they fulfil the days of embalming. But the entire
mourning extended over a period of seventy days, including, of course, the forty
days during which the embalming took place. Other writers of antiquity assign a
period of seventy-two days to the entire process, though that may have been a
custom prevalent in another place. The two statements can for all practical purposes
be said to agree. But if Egyptians (Hebrew: mitsrßyim —Egypt) mourn, that is
an indication in what high esteem he was held, both as a prince in his own right as
well as the father of Joseph. Luther remarks that there is no burial recorded in the
Scriptures quite as honourable as this or with such wealth of detail. The imperfect
yimle’û expresses the thing that is customary.

15. 4. When the days of mourning had passed, Joseph
said to Pharaoh's court, If I have found favor in
your eyes, speak to Pharaoh for me. Tell him,
1. Calvin just does not like it that Joseph had to get the permission of the Pharaoh to
bury his father. He feels that Joseph has conformed too much to the way of the
Egyptians. He wrote, “ow, seeing that Joseph did not dare to move his foot, except
by permission of the king, we infer hence, that he was bound by his splendid
fortune, as by golden fetters. And truly, such is the condition of all who are
advanced to honor and favor in royal courts; so that there is nothing better for men
of sane mind, than to be content with a private condition.” Calvin is being forgetful
of the fact that Joseph was being used of God in this position to save his people, and
many others besides. He is speaking against holding a high office in the government
of a pagan people, but fortunately for all concerned, it was God who was directing
the whole thing and not Calvin.
2. DEFFIBAUGH Joseph is said to have asked other Egyptian officials to petition
Pharaoh to leave the land temporarily. This may be due to some kind of ceremonial
defilement that would make Joseph’s personal appearance and appeal offensive to
Pharaoh. A report of Jacob’s instructions that were sworn as an oath was included
in the petition. Joseph reminded Pharaoh that this was Jacob’s strong desire and
that he was sworn to carry through with it. This was to assure that Pharaoh would
not take offense to Jacob’s burial in Canaan rather than Egypt. Without
reservation, Joseph’s request was granted.
3. Clarke, “Speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh - But why did not Joseph apply
himself? Because he was now in his mourning habits, and in such none must appear
in the presence of the eastern monarchs. See Est_4:2.
4. Gill, “And when the days of his mourning were past,.... The forty days before
mentioned, in which both the Egyptians and Jacob's family mourned for him. An
Arabic writer (g) says, the Egyptians mourned for Jacob forty days, which was the
time of embalming; but the text is express for sventy days:
Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh; to the court of Pharaoh, the principal men

16. there; so the Targum of Jonathan and the Septuagint version, to the great men or
princes of the house of Pharaoh: it may seem strange that Joseph, being next to
Pharaoh in the administration of the government, should make use of any to speak
for him to Pharaoh on the following account. It may be, that Joseph was not in so
high an office, and in so much power and authority, as in the seven years of plenty
and the seven years of famine; and it is certain that that branch of his office,
respecting the corn, must have ceased; or this might have been a piece of policy in
Joseph to make these men his friends by such obliging treatment, and by this means
prevent their making objections to his suit, or plotting against him in his absence; or
if it was the custom in Egypt, as it afterwards was in Persia, that no man might
appear before the king in a mourning habit, Est_4:2 this might be the reason of his
not making application in person: moreover, it might not seem so decent for him to
come to court, and leave the dead, and his father's family, in such circumstances as
they were: besides, he might speak to them not in person, but by a messenger, since
it is highly probable he was now in Goshen, at a distance from Pharaoh's court;
unless it can be supposed that these were some of Pharaoh's courtiers who were
come to him in Goshen, to condole his father's death:
saying, if now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of
Pharaoh; however, as these men had the ear of Pharaoh, and an interest in him,
Joseph entreats the favour of them to move it to him:
saying, as follows, in his name.
5. Henry, “He asked and obtained leave of Pharaoh to go to Canaan, thither to
attend the funeral of his father, Gen_50:4-6. (1.) It was a piece of necessary respect
to Pharaoh that he would not go without leave; for we may suppose that, though his
charge about the corn was long since over, yet he continued a prime-minister of
state, and therefore would not be so long absent from his business without licence.
(2.) He observed a decorum, in employing some of the royal family, or some of the
officers of the household, to intercede for this licence, either because it was not
proper for him in the days of his mourning to come into the presence-chamber, or
because he would not presume too much upon his own interest. ote, Modesty is a
great ornament to dignity.
6. KD 4-5, “At the end of this period of mourning, Joseph requested “the house of
Pharaoh,” i.e., the attendants upon the king, to obtain Pharaoh's permission for him
to go to Canaan and bury his father, according to his last will, in the cave prepared
by him there. כָּרָה (Gen_50:5) signifies “to dig” (used, as in 2Ch_16:14, for the
preparation of a tomb), not “to buy,” In the expression לִ י כָּרִיתִי Jacob attributes to
himself as patriarch what had really been done by Abraham (Gen 24). Joseph
required the royal permission, because he wished to go beyond the border with his
family and a large procession. But he did not apply directly to Pharaoh, because his
deep mourning (unshaven and unadorned) prevented him from appearing in the
presence of the king.

17. 7. Leupold, “Joseph asks the household (literally—house, bßyith) to present his
request to Pharaoh. The reason for this roundabout mode of procedure is not the
fact that Joseph was not presentable at court as a mourner, unwashed and
unshaven. For we note that he preferred his request to Pharaoh’s household when
the days of weeping for him (Jacob) were passed. It would have been a simple
matter to wash and to shave and then to go to Pharaoh. Perhaps, then, some
defilement according to the Egyptian conception of death and of mourners may
have stood in the way. But more suggestive is the explanation which says that this
was a wise tactical move on Joseph’s part to allay suspicion as to Joseph’s perhaps
trying to leave Egypt now that his father was dead. In any case, they who had
sponsored such a request at court could hardly be the authors of some suspicion
concerning Joseph’s purpose. If this explanation be correct, Joseph would have
given just one more proof of unusual wisdom in dealing with men. Less to the point
is the explanation which works on the supposition that Joseph must have been in
disfavour at court just at this time. We also reject the opinion which says that
Joseph was careful not to prefer any request in matters pertaining to himself. For he
should hardly have hesitated to ask a favour that pertained more to his father than
to himself. If now I have found favour is an expression of fine courtesy commonly
met with in Genesis and not the property of the author of some one source.
5. My father made me swear an oath and said, I
am about to die; bury me in the tomb I dug for
myself in the land of Canaan. ow let me go up
and bury my father; then I will return.'
1. Gill, “My father made me swear, saying, lo, I die,.... Having reason to believe he
should not live long, he sent for Joseph, and took an oath of him to do as follows;
this Joseph would have observed to Pharaoh, to show the necessity of his application
to him, and the reasonableness of his request. The words of dying men are always to
be regarded; their dying charge is always attended to by those who have a regard to
duty and honour; but much more when an oath is annexed to them, which among
all nations was reckoned sacred:
in the grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury
me; it was usual with persons in their lifetime to prepare graves or sepulchres for
themselves, as appears from the instances of Shebna, Joseph of Arimathea, and
others, and so Jacob provided one for himself; and when he is said to dig it, it is
not to be supposed that he dug it himself, but ordered it to be dug by his servants,
and very probably this was done at the time he buried Leah. Onkelos renders it,

18. which I have bought, possessed or obtained by purchase; and so the word is used
in Hos_3:2 but the cave of Machpelah, in which Jacob's grave was, was not bought
by him, but by Abraham; for to say, as some Jewish writers (h) suggest, that he
bought Esau's part in it with a mess of pottage, is without foundation; it is better to
take the words in the first sense. And now, since it was Jacob's desire, yea, his dying
charge, to be buried in the grave he had provided for himself, the mention of this to
an Egyptian king could not fail of having its desired effect; since the Egyptians, as
the historian (i) says, were more careful about their graves than about their houses:
now therefore let me go up, I pray thee; to the land of Canaan, which lay higher
than Egypt:
and bury my father; there, in the grave he has provided for himself:
and I will come again: to the land of Egypt; this he would have said, lest it should be
thought he only contrived this to get an opportunity of going away to Canaan with
all his wealth and riches.
2. Henry, “He pleaded the obligation his father had laid upon him, by an oath, to
bury him in Canaan, Gen_50:5. It was not from pride or humour, but from his
regard to an indispensable duty, that he desired it. All nations reckon that oaths
must be performed, and the will of the dead must be observed. (4.) He promised to
return: I will come again. When we return to our own houses from burying the
bodies of our relations, we say, “We have left them behind;” but, if their souls have
gone to our heavenly Father's house, we may say with more reason, “They have left
us behind.”
3. Leupold, “The preference of the Hebrew for direct quotation appears in this verse
—a quotation within a quotation within a quotation. A strong point to win his
request for him is that the dying man had exacted an oath of him (Hebrew: he
caused me to swear). or was this oath a rash one, for the man Jacob had made
preparations for burial during his lifetime, for he had digged his grave in the land of
Canaan. It is unwarranted to claim about v. 5 that on any view, the contradiction
to Ge 47:30 remains. What if it was the burying place of the fathers? If they did
acquire it, did they dig out of its sides as many separate tombs as the next
generations needed? Most probably each man during his lifetime made provisions
for himself and his family. So Abraham bought the cave and digged his grave and
Sarah’s. Isaac digged his and Rebekah’s. Jacob digged his and Leah’s. So the
statements of Scripture are in perfect harmony. It is a reprehensible thing
continually to speak of contradictions in Sacred Writ, where a bit of patience could
soon have discerned the underlying harmony. Karîthî means digged and not
bought. The request is to be presented last, Let me go up, pray, and let me bury
my father. Hardly anybody could deny so proper a request. To set all minds at ease
about his purpose Joseph adds the promise, thereafter I shall return. All the three
imperfects used here have the ah hortative added (jaqtul elevatum), a common

19. form with the first person imperfect. The words of the oath are here not introduced
by the customary ’im or îm lo’ but by le’mor saying (K. S. 391 f).
6. Pharaoh said, Go up and bury your father, as
he made you swear to do.
1. Pharaoh was a sensitive guy who gladly cooperated and let Joseph fulfill his
father’s last wish. It is obvious that Joseph was a friend with this Pharaoh, and he
showed that friendship. We have a picture of how a believer and an unbeliever can
work together on a friendly basis. We do not know for sure what this Pharaoh
believed, and possibly he had come to believe in the God of Joseph, but we do know
he cared about God’s people.
2. GILL To Joseph, by the courtiers that waited upon him at Joseph's request, who
having delivered it to him had this answer: go up, and bury thy father, as he made
thee swear; the oath seems to be the principal thing that influenced Pharaoh to
grant the request, it being a sacred thing, and not to be violated; otherwise, perhaps,
he would not have chosen that Joseph should have been so long absent from him,
and might have thought a grave in Egypt, and an honourable interment there,
which he would have spared no cost to have given, might have done as well, or
better.
3. Henry, “He obtained leave (Gen_50:6): Go and bury thy father. Pharaoh was willing his
business should stand still so long; but the service of Christ is more needful, and therefore
he would not allow one that had work to do for him to go first and bury his father; no, Let
the dead bury their dead, Mat_8:22.
4. KD 6-9, “After the king's permission had been obtained, the corpse was carried to
Canaan, attended by a large company. With Joseph there went up “all the servants of
Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt,” i.e., the leading
officers of the court and state, “and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's
house,” i.e., all the members of the families of Joseph, of his brethren, and of is deceased
father, “excepting only their children and flocks; also chariots and horsemen,” as an escort
for the journey through the desert, “a very large army.” The splendid retinue of Egyptian
officers may be explained, in part from the esteem in which Joseph was held in Egypt, and
in part from the fondness of the Egyptians for such funeral processions (cf. Hengst. pp. 70,
71).
5. Leupold, “Pharaoh graciously gives his royal permission. Go up (’alah) here as
in v. 5 is naturally used because the mountains of Palestine lie higher than the land

20. of Egypt. On the whole question of Joseph’s asking permission to go and bury his
father there is one more consideration that carries weight. So important a man as
Joseph, ranking second only to the reigning Pharaoh, had to guard himself lest he
create the impression that he no longer needed to consult his king. All important
steps that could be construed as undue self-assertion had to be covered by a very
clear, royal pronouncement. Joseph knew his place also in this respect.
7. So Joseph went up to bury his father. All
Pharaoh's officials accompanied him--the
dignitaries of his court and all the dignitaries of
Egypt—
1. Barnes 7-14, “The funeral procession is now described. “All the servants of
Pharaoh.” The highest honor is conferred on Jacob for Joseph’s sake. “The elders of
Pharaoh, and all the elders of the land of Mizraim.” The court and state officials are
here separately specified. “All the house.” ot only the heads, but all the sons and
servants that are able to go. Chariots and horsemen accompany them as a guard on
the way. “The threshing-floor of Atari, or of the buck-thorn.” This is said to be
beyond Jordan. Deterred, probably, by some difficulty in the direct route, they seem
to have gone round by the east side of the Salt Sea. “A mourning of seven days.”
This is a last sad farewell to the departed patriarch. Abel-Mizraim. This name, like
many in the East, has a double meaning. The word Abel no doubt at first meant
mourning, though the name would be used by many, ignorant of its origin, in the
sense of a meadow. “His sons carried him.” The main body of the procession seems
to have halted beyond the Jordan, and awaited the return of the immediate
relatives, who conveyed the body to its last resting-place. The whole company then
returned together to Egypt.
2. Clarke, “The elders of his house - Persons who, by reason of their age, had
acquired much experience; and who on this account were deemed the best qualified
to conduct the affairs of the king’s household. Similar to these were the Eldermen,
or Aldermen, among our Saxon ancestors, who were senators and peers of the
realm. The funeral procession of Jacob must have been truly grand. Joseph, his
brethren and their descendants, the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house,
and all the elders - all the principal men, of the land of Egypt, with chariots and
horsemen, must have appeared a very great company indeed. We have seen Lords,
for their greater honor, buried at the public expense; and all the male branches of
the royal family, as well as the most eminent men of the nation, join in the funeral
procession, as in the case of the late Lord elson; but what was all this in
comparison of the funeral solemnity now before us? Here was no conqueror, no
mighty man of valor, no person of proud descent; here was only a plain man, who

21. had dwelt almost all his life long in tents, without any other subjects than his cattle,
and whose kingdom was not of this world. Behold this man honored by a national
mourning, and by a national funeral! It may be said indeed that “all this was done
out of respect to Joseph.” Be it so; why was Joseph thus respected? Was it because
he had conquered nations, had made his sword drunk with blood, had triumphed
over the enemies of Egypt? o! But because he had saved men alive; because he was
the king’s faithful servant, the rich man’s counsellor, and the poor man’s friend. He
was a national blessing; and the nation mourns in his affliction, and unites to do him
honor.
3. Gill, “And Joseph went up to bury his father,.... According to his request; having
obtained leave of Pharaoh, and being desirous of paying his last respects, and doing
his last office to so dear a parent, with all the honour and decency this service could
be done with:
and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh; a great number of them, some
must be left to wait upon him; who these were the next words explain:
the elders of his house: his senators and counsellors, his courtiers and principal
officers of state:
and all the elders of the land of Egypt; governors of provinces and cities, the chief
officers, civil and military; all which was done by the orders of Pharaoh, out of
respect to Joseph and his family, and to make the funeral procession grand and
honourable.
4. Henry 7-14, “We have here an account of Jacob's funeral. Of the funerals of the
kings of Judah, usually, no more is said than this, They were buried with their fathers
in the city of David: but the funeral of the patriarch Jacob is more largely and fully
described, to show how much better God was to him than he expected (he had
spoken more than once of dying for grief, and going to the grave bereaved of his
children, but, behold, he dies in honour, and is followed to the grave by all his
children), and also because his orders concerning his burial were given and
observed in faith, and in expectation both of the earthly and of the heavenly
Canaan. ow, 1. It was a stately funeral. He was attended to the grave, not only by
his own family, but by the courtiers, and all the great men of the kingdom, who, in
token of their gratitude to Joseph, showed this respect to his father for his sake, and
did him honour at his death. Though the Egyptians had had an antipathy to the
Hebrews, and had looked upon them with disdain (Gen_43:32), yet now, that they
were better acquainted with them, they began to have a respect for them. Good old
Jacob had conducted himself so well among them as to gain universal esteem. ote,
Professors of religion should endeavour, by wisdom and love, to remove the
prejudices which many may have conceived against them because they do not know
them. There went abundance of chariots and horsemen, not only to attend them a
little way, but to go through with them. ote, The decent solemnities of funerals,

22. according to a man's situation, are very commendable; and we must not say of
them, To what purpose is this waste? See Act_8:2; Luk_7:12. 2. It was a sorrowful
funeral (Gen_50:10, Gen_50:11); standers-by took notice of it as a grievous
mourning. ote, The death of good men is a great loss to any place, and ought to be
greatly lamented. Stephen dies a martyr, and yet devout men make great
lamentations for him. The solemn mourning for Jacob gave a name to the place,
Abel-Mizraim, the mourning of the Egyptians, which served for a testimony against
the next generation of the Egyptians, who oppressed the posterity of this Jacob to
whom their ancestors showed such respect.
5. Calvin, “And Joseph went up. Moses gives a full account of the burial. What he
relates concerning the renewed mourning of Joseph and his brethren, as well as of
the Egyptians, ought by no means to be established as a rule among ourselves. For
we know, that since our flesh has no self government, men commonly exceed bounds
both in sorrowing and in rejoicing. The tumultuous glamour, which the inhabitants
of the place admired, cannot be excused. And although Joseph had a right end in
view, when he fixed the mourning to last through seven successive days, yet this
excess was not free from blame. evertheless, it was not without reason that the
Lord caused this funeral to be thus honorably celebrated: for it was of great
consequence that a kind of sublime trophy should be raised, which might transmit
to posterity the memory of Jacob’s faith. If he had been buried privately, and in a
common manner, his fame would soon have been extinguished; but now, unless men
willfully blind themselves, they have continually before their eyes a noble example,
which may cherish the hope of the promised inheritance: they perceive, as it were,
the standard of that deliverance erected, Which shall take place in the fullness of
time. Wherefore, we are not here to consider the honor of the deceased so much as
the benefit of the living. Even the Egyptians, not knowing what they do, bear a torch
before the Israelites, to teach them to keep the course of their divine calling: the
Canaanites do the same, when they distinguish the place by a new name; for hence it
came to pass that the knowledge of the covenant of the Lord flourished afresh.
GILL his senators and counsellors, his courtiers and principal officers of state: and
all the elders of the land of Egypt;
governors of provinces and cities, the chief officers, civil and military; all which was
done by the orders of Pharaoh, out of respect to Joseph and his family, and to make
the funeral procession grand and honourable.
6. Steven Zeisler, “Could it be that nostalgia was the reason Jacob wanted to be
buried in that cave? I doubt it. Many are influenced by nostalgia as they face their
final days. Perhaps they left home as young people and went to work in a city. ow
their approaching death reawakens dreams of returning home. While there may be
some of that sentiment involved in Jacob's decision to return home, I am convinced
that his reason was much more than nostalgia. Jacob had already made Joseph take
a solemn vow to return his remains to Canaan following his death. Here in Gen.
50:5 we discover that Jacob had himself even dug the hole in the cave in which he
wanted to be buried. There in an intensity about his directions that sentiment would

23. not demand.
What were the Egyptians of that era noted for, as indeed they are today?
Monuments to the dead, of course. Just think of the pyramids, which were built to
honor dead leaders. The great pyramids were hundreds of years old by the time of
Joseph's arrival in Egypt. The Egyptian mummification process is marveled at even
today. If you wanted to be remembered after your death, Egypt was the place to die.
Through a promise made to Abraham (Gen.15:13,14), Jacob knew that his family
would remain on in Egypt for hundreds of years. Thus, he could have chosen to
have his remains rest in Egypt, perhaps even to have a monument erected to his
memory. But, as the text illustrates, he was quite explicit in his choosing his own
grave site.
Again, we must ask, why? The reason is that when God promised Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob and their families a particular land, that promise was only one element of a
bigger promise, which was God's commitment to save the human race; to do
something about the thrall and power of sin and death. God had a plan to defeat
what Paul calls the final enemy. Death itself would be dealt a death-blow by God.
The promise of Canaan was part of that greater promise. Jacob's clear directions
for his burial were saying, in effect, my burial in Canaan is a statement that I
believe in the whole promise of God to me and my ancestors; that God is going to
win us back to himself. Death will be defeated. Jacob was declaring his preference
to be buried in a hole in the ground in a cave in Canaan, which he himself had dug,
than to be remembered by means of an Egyptian monument. He was stating his
belief in the promises of God.
Hebrews 11 is a commentary on much of Genesis. What insight the writer had into
the story of the life and death of the patriarchs! Listen to these words:
All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and
welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and
exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking
a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from
which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they
desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be
called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. (Heb.11:13-16)
The writer is pointing out that the history of the wanderings of the Jews, the
promise that one day they would inherit a land, communicated to the patriarchs
that they were not citizens of this earth, but rather that their destination was
heaven. The source of their hope was God who would receive them to himself. They
came to that realization precisely because of their own history of wanderings. Thus,
we find Jacob on his deathbed saying, Yes! Amen. I trust the God who has made

24. those promises to my ancestors and to me.
7. Leupold, “One would hardly have expected so numerous a funeral cortege.
Several classes felt it incumbent upon them to grace the occasion. The monuments
indicate that the Egyptians dearly loved imposing and elaborate funeral processions.
Joseph’s position in itself was so influential that these persons who attended were in
duty and in courtesy bound to do so. They comprised the following classes: All the
servants of Pharaoh (’abhadhim here cannot mean slaves; all chief courtiers
must be meant); the elders of his household — a staff of officers who were
Pharaoh’s personal attendants; all the elders of the land of Egypt —all who held
positions of any consequence as leaders. Besides there was Joseph’s own
household — a considerable number apparently—also his brethren and lastly
his father’s household. One can only venture to suppose how many hundreds
made up this entire retinue. The only ones of Israel left behind were those that were
unable to bear the rigors of such a trip —their little children, flocks and herds.
Since Goshen was practically their own, they could with safety leave these behind in
that land.
8. besides all the members of Joseph's household
and his brothers and those belonging to his
father's household. Only their children and their
flocks and herds were left in Goshen.
1. Gill, “And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house,....
Joseph and his two sons, and his servants, and his eleven brethren and their sons
that were grown up, and as many of his father's domestics as could be spared
attended the funeral:
only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of
Goshen; there must be some servants left, though they are not mentioned, to take
care of the little ones, and of the flocks and herds; and these being left behind,
plainly show they intended to return again, and did not make this an excuse to get
out of the land.
9. Chariots and horsemen also went up with him.
It was a very large company.

25. 1. Here we have a funeral procession that would take first place in Guinness Book of
Records. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the Bible. Officials and dignitaries
galore and all the adults of Jacobs large family marched in order to this most
famous grave site, and chariots and horsemen accompanied them. It was an
enormous event. We would expect such an event for a king or famous warrior, but
who was all this for? It was for Jacob, and who was this Jacob? Adam Clarke
writes, “Here was no conqueror, no mighty man of valor, no person of proud
descent; here was only a plain man, who had dwelt almost all his life long in tents,
without any other subjects than his cattle, and whose kingdom was not of this world.
Behold this man honored by a national mourning, and by a national funeral! It may
be said indeed that all this was done out of respect to Joseph. Be it so; why was
Joseph thus respected? Was it because he had conquered nations, had made his
sword drunk with blood, had triumphed over the enemies of Egypt? O! But
because he had saved men alive; because he was the king's faithful servant, the rich
man's counselor, and the poor man's friend. He was a national blessing; and the
nation mourns in his affliction, and unites to do him honor.”
2. Luther remarks that there is no burial recorded in the Scriptures quite as
honorable as this or with such wealth of detail. (Leupold)
3. Gill, “ And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen,.... Which was
done both for the sake of honour and grandeur, and for safety and defence, should
they be attacked by robbers in the deserts, or opposed by the Canaanites, and be
refused the use of the cave of Machpelah, and the right to it disputed:
and it was a very great company; both for quantity and quality; the attendants at
this funeral were very numerous, and many of them great personages, and upon the
whole was a very honourable company, as the word (k) signifies, and made a very
great figure and grand appearance:
or a very great army (l), consisting of chariots and horsemen fit for war; if there
should be any occasion for it: and the Jews (m) pretend that Esau came out with a
large army, and met Joseph at the cave of Machpelah, and endeavoured to hinder
the burial of Jacob there, where he lost his life, having his head struck off with the
sword of Chushim, the son of Dan: some say it was Zepho, the grandson of Esau,
with the sons of Esau, that made the disturbance there, on which a battle ensued, in
which Joseph was the conqueror, and Zepho was taken captive; see Gill on
Gen_36:11, the Jews (n) give us the order and manner of the above procession thus;
first Joseph, next the servants of Pharaoh, or the princes, then the elders of the
court of Pharaoh, then all the elders of the land of Egypt, then the whole house of
Joseph, next to them the brethren of Joseph, who were followed by their eldest sons,
and after them were the chariots, and last of all the horses.

26. 4. Leupold, “Such a caravan required food and protection. So there went along with
it chariots and horsemen. Somehow the noun rékhebh is usually a collective
singular, whereas parashim (with long a in the antepenult) is not governed by
such usage. Perhaps wagons for rékhebh would be the better rendering. Then
wagons would have carried the provisions, and the horsemen would have
constituted the military protection. With good reason the narrator summarizes,
their company machaneh —originally camp, then also army or company
was a very considerable one. The correlative of v. 9 a is the more uncommon gam
—gam for both—and,
10.When they reached the threshing floor of Atad,
near the Jordan, they lamented loudly and
bitterly; and there Joseph observed a seven-day
period of mourning for his father.
1. Clarke, “The threshing-floor of Atad - As אטד atad signifies a bramble or thorn,
it has been understood by the Arabic, not as a man’s name, but as the name of a
place; but all the other versions and the Targums consider it as the name of a man.
Threshing-floors were always in a field, in the open air; and Atad was probably
what we would call a great farmer or chief of some clan or tribe in that place.
Jerome supposed the place to have been about two leagues from Jericho; but we
have no certain information on this point. The funeral procession stopped here,
probably as affording pasturage to their cattle while they observed the seven days’
mourning which terminated the funeral solemnities, after which nothing remained
but the interment of the corpse. The mourning of the ancient Hebrews was usually
of seven days’ continuance, um_19:19; 1Sa_31:13; though on certain occasions it
was extended to thirty days, um_20:29; Deu_21:13; Deu_34:8, but never longer.
The seventy days’ mourning mentioned above was that of the Egyptians, and was
rendered necessary by the long process of embalming, which obliged them to keep
the body out of the grave for seventy days, as we learn both from Herodotus and
Diodorus. Seven days by the order of God a man was to mourn for his dead, because
during that time he was considered as unclean; but when those were finished he was
to purify himself, and consider the mourning as ended; um_19:11, um_19:19.
Thus God gave seven days, in some cases thirty, to mourn in: man, ever in his own
estimation wiser than the word of God, has added eleven whole months to the term,
which nature itself pronounces to be absurd, because it is incapable of supporting
grief for such a time; and thus mourning is now, except in the first seven or thirty
days, a mere solemn ill-conducted Farce, a grave mimicry, a vain show, that

27. convicts itself of its own hypocrisy. Who will rise up on the side of God and common
sense, and restore becoming sorrow on the death of a relative to decency of garb and
moderation in its continuance? Suppose the near relatives of the deceased were to be
allowed seven days of seclusion from society, for the purpose of meditating on death
and eternity, and after this to appear in a mourning habit for thirty days; every
important end would be accomplished, and hypocrisy, the too common attendant of
man, be banished, especially from that part of his life in which deep sincerity is not
less becoming than in the most solemn act of his religious intercourse with God.
In a kind of politico-religious institution formed by his late majesty Ferdinand
IV., king of aples and the Sicilies, I find the following rational institute relative to
this point: “There shall be no mourning among you but only on the death of a
father, mother, husband, or wife. To render to these the last duties of affection,
children, wives, and husbands only shall be permitted to wear a sign or emblem of
grief: a man may wear a crape tied round his right arm; a woman, a black
handkerchief around her neck; and this in both cases for only two months at the
most.” Is there a purpose which religion, reason, or decency can demand that would
not be answered by such external mourning as this? Only such relatives as the
above, brothers and sisters being included, can mourn; all others make only a part
of the dumb hypocritical show.
2. Gill, “And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad,.... Which was either the name
of a man the owner of it, or of a place so called from the thorns and brambles which
grew here, and with which the threshingfloor was surrounded, as Jarchi says, see
Jdg_9:14 and it was usual to make a hedge of thorns round about a threshingfloor
(o), that it might be preserved; mention is made in the Talmud (p) of the wilderness
of Atad, perhaps so called from the thorns and brambles in it: Jerom says (q) it was
three miles from Jericho and two from Jordan, and was in his time called Bethagla,
the place of a circuit, because there they went about after the manner of mourners
at the funeral of Jacob. This, according to some (r), was two hundred and forty
miles from On, where Joseph was supposed to live, sixteen from Jerusalem, and
forty from Hebron, where Jacob was buried: nay, Austin (s) says it was above fifty
miles from that place, as affirmed by those who well knew those parts:
which is beyond Jordan; as it was to those that came out of Egypt:
and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation; being now entered
into the country where the corpse was to be interred; and perhaps they might
choose to stop here and express tokens of mourning, that the inhabitants might be
apprised of their design in coming, which was not to invade them and make war
upon them, only to bury their dead: this mourning seems to be made chiefly by the
Egyptians, which was done in an external way, and it may be by persons brought
with them for that purpose; since both the name of the place after given was from
their mourning there, and the mourning of Joseph is next observed as distinct from
theirs:

28. and he made a mourning for his father seven days; which was the time of mourning,
afterwards observed by the Jews, see 1Sa_31:13, this Joseph ordered and observed
after he had buried his father, as Aben Ezra says, is affirmed by their ancient
Rabbins, and perhaps might be at this same place upon their return.
3. Jamison, “they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, etc. — “Atad” may be taken
as a common noun, signifying “the plain of the thorn bushes.” It was on the border
between Egypt and Canaan; and as the last opportunity of indulging grief was
always the most violent, the Egyptians made a prolonged halt at this spot, while the
family of Jacob probably proceeded by themselves to the place of sepulture.
4. Leupold, “The place where this funeral train came to a standstill was Goren
Atad. ow góren is a threshing floor, and ’atadh signifies bramble or
buckthorn. Yet the latter may also have come to be the name of a person. In case it
is not, then the bramble will have to be regarded as the type of hedge that
perhaps enclosed the threshing floor. For the threshing floors were level spaces
preferably on hilltops and situated outside of villages, and naturally were not roofed
over. This one is located as across the Jordan. Because of v. Ge 50:13, which
asserts that Jacob’s sons carried their father into the land of Canaan, we are
practically compelled to place Goren Atad on the east bank of the Jordan. For the
expression be’ébher hayyarden, across the Jordan, may signify either side
depending on the speaker’s standpoint. Here, however, it cannot be urged that the
writer must have resided or written in Canaan, because the writer, Moses, may just
as well have written this in the land of Egypt, or, what is equally valid, his mental
point of view may have been Egypt, the starting point of the caravan. Then the
course taken by this long funeral train would have been more to the south than the
usual route along the Mediterranean, then past the land of Philistaea, then over
toward Hebron. Yet this would not have necessitated a route as far south as that
taken later by the Israelites of the Exodus. The reason for this more southerly
course may have been the antagonism of certain nations or groups along the
northern route. Then, of course, the route will have curved around the southern end
of the Dead Sea up to a place like the Plains of Moab (u 22:1). A few writers from
Jerome to this day contend that across the Jordan must mean the west side,
assuming that Moses wrote Genesis while Israel was encamped in the plains of
Moab, or else supporting what seems the wrong location of Goren Atad. The
Egyptian custom of those days apparently required an additional seven days’
lamentation near or at the point of burial. Oriental custom required to make such a
lamentation quite demonstrative—very heavy. Apparently, Joseph himself made
the arrangements required. The Israelites are never known to have indulged their
grief so profusely. For Moses they mourned but thirty days (De 34:8); also for
Aaron (u 20:29).
5. KD 10-11, “Thus they came to Goren Atad beyond the Jordan, as the procession
did not take the shortest route by Gaza through the country of the Philistines,

29. probably because so large a procession with a military escort was likely to meet with
difficulties there, but went round by the Dead Sea. There, on the border of Canaan,
a great mourning and funeral ceremony was kept up for seven days, from which the
Canaanites, who watched it from Canaan, gave the place the name of Abel-mizraim,
i.e., meadow ( אָבֵ ל with a play upon אֵבֶ ל mourning) of the Egyptians. The situation of
Goren Atad (the buck-thorn floor), or Abel-mizraim, has not been discovered.
According to Gen_50:11, it was on the other side, i.e., the eastern side, of the
Jordan. This is put beyond all doubt by Gen_50:12, where the sons of Jacob are said
to have carried the corpse into the land of Canaan (the land on this side) after the
mourning at Goren Atad.
(ote: Consequently the statement of Jerome in the Onam. s. v. Area Atad -
“locus trans Jordanem, in quo planxerunt quondam Jacob, tertio ab Jerico lapide,
duobus millibus ab Jordane, qui nunc vocatur Bethagla, quod interpretatur locus
gyri, eo quod ibi more plangentium circumierint in funere Jacob” - is wrong. Beth
Agla cannot be the same as Goren Atad, if only because of the distances given by
Jerome from Jericho and the Jordan. They do not harmonize at all with his trans
Jordanem, which is probably taken from this passage, but point to a place on this
side of the Jordan; but still more, because Beth Hagla was on the frontier of
Benjamin towards Judah (Jos_15:6; Jos_18:19), and its name has been retained
in the fountain and tower of Hajla, an hour and a quarter to the S.E. of Riha
(Jericho), and three-quarters of an hour from the Jordan, by which the site of
the ancient Beth Hagla is certainly determined. (Vid., Robinson, Pal., ii. p.
268ff.))
11. When the Canaanites who lived there saw the
mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said,
The Egyptians are holding a solemn ceremony of
mourning. That is why that place near the
Jordan is called Abel Mizraim.
1. Gill, “And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites,.... Who were at this
time in the possession of the country where the threshingfloor of Atad was: when
they
saw the mourning in the floor of Atad; for so large a company of people, and such a
grand funeral procession, brought multitudes from all the neighbouring parts to see
the sight; and when they observed the lamentation that was made, saw their
mournful gestures and actions, and heard their doleful moan:

30. they said, this is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians; they concluded they must
have lost some great man, to make such a lamentation for him:
wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan; they
changed the name of the place, and gave it another upon this occasion, which
signifies the mourning of Egypt or of the Egyptians, they being the principal persons
that used the outward and more affecting tokens of mourning; though the whole
company might be taken for Egyptians by the Canaanites, because they came out of
Egypt.
2. Leupold, “So unusual was the display of mourning on the part of an assembly
largely Egyptian, perhaps by this time entirely Egyptian as to appearance, that the
natives who witnessed it, called the inhabitants (yoshebh —singular collective) of
the land and the Canaanites, the general name for all who dwelt in those parts,
remarked about it, calling it a heavy mourning. ’Ebhel signifies mourning;
mispedh signifies lamentation, the public and usually vocal display of the inner
mourning, assuming rather extravagant forms in oriental countries, at least if
judged by our standards. Therefore the thing that the Canaanites noticed was that
the inner grief really appeared to be heavy. As a result of this observation they gave
a name to the meadow on which this Egyptian assembly encamped for at least a
week, calling it the meadow of the Egyptians. This name involved a slight play on
words that we cannot reproduce but which made this new name suggestive.
Mourning is ’ébhel; meadow is ’abhel. aturally the latter term suggested the
former. This explanation follows the pointing of the Hebrew text which appears to
us to follow a very reliable tradition. Because even though the two words have the
same consonants in the unprinted original text, it is yet far more likely that a place
will be called a meadow rather than a mourning, even though some renderings
obliterate this distinction. The Septuagint renders ’abhel as penuov — ’ébhel;
Luther says der Aegypter Klage.
12. 12. So Jacob's sons did as he had commanded
them:
1. Clarke, “And his sons did unto him - This and the thirteenth verse have been
supposed by Mr. Locke and others to belong to the conclusion of the preceding
chapter, in which connection they certainly read more consistently than they do
here.
2. Gill, “And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them. ot only
Joseph, but all the sons of Jacob were concerned in the burial of him, being all

31. charged by him with it, and who were obedient to his commands as follows; see
Gen_49:29.
3. KD 12-13, “There the Egyptian procession probably stopped short; for in
Gen_50:12 the sons of Jacob only are mentioned as having carried their father to
Canaan according to his last request, and buried him in the cave of Machpelah.
4. Leupold, “After this notable display was ended, Jacob’s sons become the chief
actors in the scene. They take in hand very properly the more intimate part of the
burial service, the actual laying of the patriarch in his last resting place. Whether
the Egyptians stayed behind or followed along as persons of secondary importance
is of so little moment to the writer that he says nothing about them. The part of the
sons must be mentioned because their father had laid a strict charge upon them and
the author wishes to describe them as dutiful sons. They personally bore him to the
land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Macpelah. Then follows a
description of the field and an account of the manner of its purchase agreeing
almost verbatim with the charge given by the dying Jacob (Ge 49:29,30). That, then,
is another way of stating the fact that his behest was carried out to the very letter.
Critics cannot believe Moses capable of using such flexibility of style, involving a
formal repetition, so they assign these two verses (Ge 50:12,13) to P, who is
supposed to have written all things that savour of formal statement. Then to bolster
up their contention more firmly they claim that these two verses also fail to agree
with the rest of the account, for the preceding verses, it is claimed, make the
Egyptians the chief actors, whereas these two put Jacob’s sons in the forefront, as if
both could not be true and in perfect harmony with one another. J is said to have
written the rest of v. Ge 50:1-14.
13. They carried him to the land of Canaan and
buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah,
near Mamre, which Abraham had bought as a
burial place from Ephron the Hittite, along with
the field.
1. Gill, “For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan,.... That is, they took care
that he was carried there, as he desired to be; for it cannot be thought that they
carried him on their shoulders thither, in like manner as the devout men carried
Stephen to his burial, Act_8:2.

32. and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, c. the very place where he
chose to be buried, Gen_47:29.
2. ROBERT BROW, “ote: The great importance given to a burial place in the
ancient world contrasts with the quite different view of death in the ew Testament
after the resurrection. When Joseph of Arimathea and icodemus took the corpse
down and put it into the tomb (Matthew 27:57-60, Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-53),
Jesus’ resurrection body was already in Paradise with the penitent thief (Mark16:6;
Luke 23:39-43). When Jesus died the first thing he did in his resurrection body was
to empty sheol, the abode of the dead, of its contents (clearly taught in Matthew
27:52-53; John 5:28; 11:25-26; 1 Peter 3:18-19). This means that like him, instead
of lying in the grave awaiting a future resurrection (as in Judaism and Islam), the
Lord comes for us when we die, and we immediately receive our resurrection body
and go to be with him in heaven (1 Corinthians 15:15- 18, 20-23; 2 Corinthians 5:1-
4, 8; Philippians 1:21-23).
This explains why there is no emphasis in the ew Testament on maintaining the
tombs of those who die, as if the persons were still lying inside. People were buried
and people grieved for their loved ones (as with Stephen, Acts 8:2) but there is no
record of Stephen or James, the Apostle, being buried in an elaborate tomb (Acts
12:2). We do not know where any of the other apostles were buried. Paul knew of
Christians who had died (1 Corinthians 15:6, 18; 2 Peter 3:4) but there is no record
of their tombs being reverenced.
The early Christians did not even mark the place where Jesus’ body lay in the tomb
of Joseph of Arimathea. The location of Jesus’ tomb was of no relevance to
Christians for the first three hundred years of the early church. The present
location of the Holy Sepulcher was “discovered” by the Empress Helena, and a
building over it was erected 326-335 AD. It was destroyed by the Persians in 614,
rebuilt, and again destroyed in 1009 AD by the Caliph El Hakim. The present
building goes back to 1048 AD. But many think the location of the tomb is three
quarters of a mile, 1 km, to the north in the Garden Tomb “discovered” by General
Gordon as a result of his studies in Jerusalem in 1882. othing hangs on the
location of Jesus’ tomb or that of any of the apostles.
Here we see Joseph and all his brothers in the Promised Land, and yet it was not yet
to be their possession. They had to return to Egypt for many generations before they
could go and claim the land. At this point they were not strong enough.”
3. Rabbi Shmuel Weiss, “Our sages see a certain significance in this, hinting at a
number of different closures suggested by the form of the column. Jacob would
die in this portion, and his eyes would be closed by his son Joseph, a sign of respect
for the deceased. A chapter of Jewish life was also closing. For until now, the Torah
discussed the lives of unique, great individuals who guided our destiny. Beginning in
the book of Exodus, however, the focus would be on the Jewish nation.

33. The Midrash adds another idea when it says: The eyes and hearts of the Jewish
people were closed from all the suffering and enslavement which had now begun.
Though physical bondage was still some years off, the death of Jacob signaled the
official start of our slavery in Egypt. We lost our guiding light, our protector, and
we would now be at the mercy of the cruel Egyptians.
14. After burying his father, Joseph returned to
Egypt, together with his brothers and all the
others who had gone with him to bury his father.
1. Gill, “ And Joseph returned into Egypt,.... As he promised he would, Gen_50:5.
he and his brethren; the eleven sons of Jacob; for though they had not made the
same promise, nor Joseph for them, yet they returned, having left their little ones,
flocks and herds, in Egypt:
and all that went up with him to bury his father; the elders and great men of the
land of Egypt, with their attendants:
after he had buried his father; in the land of Canaan, which, though given to the
seed of Jacob, the time was not come for them to possess it, nor the time of their
departure out of Egypt thither, which was to be a good while hence, and after
another manner.
2. Calvin, “And Joseph returned. Although Joseph and the rest had left so many
pledges in Egypt, that it would be necessary for them to return; it is yet probable
that they were rather drawn back thither by the oracle of God. For God never
permitted them to choose an abode at their own will; but as he had before led
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in their journeying, so he held their sons shut up in the
land of Goshen, as within barriers. And there is no doubt that the holy fathers left
that oracle which we have in the fifteenth chapter and the thirteenth verse, Genesis
15:13 to their sons, to be kept in faithful custody as a precious treasure.“And he said
unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not
theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years.”
They return, therefore, into Egypt, not only because they were compelled by present
necessity, but because it was not lawful for them to shake off with the hand, the yoke
which God had put upon their necks. But if the Lord does not hold all men bound
by voluntary obedience to himself, he nevertheless holds their minds by his secret

34. rein, that they may not withdraw themselves from his government; nor can we form
any other conjecture than that they were restrained by his fear, so that even when
admonished of the tyrannical oppression which was coming upon them, they did not
attempt to make their escape. We know that their disposition was not so mild as to
prevent them from rebelling against lighter burdens. Wherefore, on this point, a
special sense of religious obligation subdued them, so that they prepared themselves
quietly and silently to endure the hardest servitude.
3. CALVI'S EDITOR, “Calvin, in his criticism on Joseph’s conduct with reference
to his father’s funeral, seems to bear hard upon the motives of the patriarch. As
there is nothing in Joseph’s previous history which is derogatory either to his moral
courage or his integrity, it is scarcely justifiable to impute a want of firmness and of
straightforwardness to him on this occasion. Is not the concluding portion of
Calvin’s remarks a sufficient answer to all that has gone before? And may we not
conclude, that the whole of the circumstances of Jacob’s funeral were divinely
ordered to perpetuate his memory? — Ed.
4. Leupold, “To leave no doubt in any man’s mind whether Joseph actually
returned to Egypt as he had promised (v. Ge 50:5) the writer informs us of his own
return as well as of that of his brethren and of that of all the rest who had gone
(ha’olîm —participle referring to past time as Ge 43:18) up with him. As the group
was a unit in its going up, so it apparently continued as a unit in its return, a still
further testimony to the honoured memory of Jacob; for out of courtesy to Joseph
and to Jacob’s memory they did not scatter on the homeward way.
15. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father
was dead, they said, What if Joseph holds a
grudge against us and pays us back for all the
wrongs we did to him?
1. Barnes 15-21, “His brethren supplicate Joseph for forgiveness. “They sent unto
Joseph,” commissioned one of their number to speak to him. now that our common
father has given us this command. “And Joseph wept” at the distress and doubt of
his brothers. He no doubt summons them before him, when they fall down before
him entreating his forgiveness. Joseph removes their fears. “Am I in God’s stead?”
that I should take the law into my own hands, and take revenge. God has already
judged them, and moreover turned their sinful deed into a blessing. He assures them
of his brotherly kindness toward them.

35. 2. Clarke, “Saw that their father was dead - This at once argues both a sense of guilt
in their own consciences, and a want of confidence in their brother. They might
have supposed that hitherto he had forborne to punish them merely on their
father’s account; but now that he was dead, and Joseph having them completely in
his power, they imagined that he would take vengeance on them for their former
conduct towards him.
Thus conscience records criminality; and, by giving birth to continual fears and
doubtfulness, destroys all peace of mind, security, and confidence. On this subject
an elegant poet has spoken with his usual point and discernment: -
Exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi
Displicet auctori. Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absolvitur, improba quamvis
Gratia fallaci Praetoris vicerit urna.
Juv. Sat. xiii. 1, etc.
Happily metaphrased by Mr. Dryden: -
He that commits a fault shall quickly find The pressing guilt lie heavy on his
mind. Though bribes, or favor shall assert his cause, Pronounce him guiltless, and
elude the laws, one quits himself; his own impartial thought Will damn, and
conscience will record the fault. This, first, the wicked feels.
We have seen this in the preceding history often exemplified in the case of
Joseph’s brethren.
3. Gill, “ And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead,.... And
buried; for this and what follows were after their return to Egypt, from the burial of
their father; though some think it was before, and as soon as they saw their father
was dead, when they thought it a proper time, while Joseph's heart was tender and
affected with his father's death, to compromise matters with him: but there is no
reason to invert the order of the narration, for this seeing is not to be understood
of their bodily sight, but of the contemplation of their minds; they considered with
themselves that their father was now dead and buried, they had lost an affectionate
parent, who was concerned for the welfare and peace of all his family, but what a
turn things would now take they knew not:
they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil
which we did unto him; their sin came fresh to their remembrance, guilt arose in
their consciences and flew in their faces, and this caused fear and distrust where
there was no reason for it, and led them to treat Joseph's character very ill; who was
far from being of such a temper and disposition suggested by them, as if he retained
hatred in his breast, and was of a revengeful spirit, only hid it during his father's
life, because he would not grieve him.
4. Henry 15-16, “We have here the settling of a good correspondence between
Joseph and his brethren, now that their father was dead. Joseph was at court, in the

36. royal city; his brethren were in Goshen, remote in the country; yet the keeping up of
a good understanding, and a good affection, between them, would be both his
honour and their interest. ote, When Providence has removed the parents by
death, the best methods ought to be taken, not only for the preventing of quarrels
among the children (which often happen about the dividing of the estate), but for
the preserving of acquaintance and love, that unity may continue even when that
centre of unity is taken away.
I. Joseph's brethren humbly make their court to him for his favour. 1. They began
to be jealous of Joseph, not that he had given them any cause to be so, but the
consciousness of guilt, and of their own inability in such a case to forgive and forget,
made them suspicious of the sincerity and constancy of Joseph's favour
(Gen_50:15): Joseph will peradventure hate us. While their father lived, they thought
themselves safe under his shadow; but now that he was dead they feared the worst
from Joseph. ote, A guilty conscience exposes men to continual frights, even where
no fear is, and makes them suspicious of every body, as Cain, Gen_4:14. Those that
would be fearless must keep themselves guiltless. If our heart reproach us not, then
have we confidence both towards God and man. 2. They humbled themselves before
him, confessed their fault, and begged his pardon. They did it by proxy
(Gen_50:17); they did it in person, Gen_50:18. ow that the sun and moon had set,
the eleven stars did homage to Joseph, for the further accomplishment of his dream.
They speak of their former offence with fresh regret: Forgive the trespass. They
throw themselves at Joseph's feet, and refer themselves to his mercy: We are thy
servants. Thus we must bewail the sins we committed long ago, even those which we
hope through grace are forgiven; and, when we pray to God for pardon, we must
promise to be his servants. 3. They pleaded their relation to Jacob and to Jacob's
God. (1.) To Jacob, urging that he directed them to make this submission, rather
because he questioned whether they would do their duty in humbling themselves
than because he questioned whether Joseph would do his duty in forgiving them;
nor could he reasonably expect Joseph's kindness to them unless they thus qualified
themselves for it (Gen_50:16): Thy father did command. Thus, in humbling ourselves
to Christ by faith and repentance, we may plead that it is the command of his
Father, and our Father, that we do so.
4B. Leupold, “The Hebrew says they saw that their father was dead. This here
means they realized it and began to see that the restraining influence that the
father may have exercised upon Joseph was now at an end. They all seem to feel
about the same, except perhaps Benjamin, who naturally was excluded; for they
express but one sentiment—apprehension: What if (lû introducing a conditional
clause, more vivid) Joseph should turn against us (shatam —antagonize) and
should actually pay back (verb with an absolute infinitive) all the evil which we did
him. The apodosis is not stated—aposiopesis. This silence makes their
apprehension appear all the more vivid: there was no end of possibilities that their
excited imagination conjured up before them. So they sent a message —tsiwwah
means this in the Piel—to Joseph, perhaps through the person who would meet with
the favour of both parties— Benjamin.

37. 5. Wendy Amsellem, “These brothers knew that Joseph would not do anything
harmful to them while Jacob was alive, but now he is dead, and they are worried
that his friendly attitude would change, and he would want revenge for their evil
treatment of him.
This week's portion, Vayekhi, focuses on the events surrounding Jacob's death. As
he realizes he is dying, Jacob calls to his sons and blesses them (although some of the
blessings are mostly recriminations) and instructs them to bury him in the grave
of his fathers. After Jacob's death, Joseph's brothers fear that Joseph will now
avenge their earlier mistreatment of him. They send a message to Joseph saying that
their father Jacob had requested that Joseph forgive his brothers' sins.
There is a syntactical irregularity in the verse that records this exchange: And
Joseph's brothers saw that their father had died, and they said, 'Lest (lu) Joseph
will hate us and repay us all of the evil that we have done him.' And they sent to
Joseph saying, 'Your father commanded before his death...' (Genesis 50:15-16).
The medieval commentator Rashi notes that elsewhere in the Bible, the word lu
always means either if only or perhaps. Here, though, lu must mean lest.
Otherwise, the verse would read, If only Joseph would hate us, and surely
Joseph's brothers do not want him to hate them. They go to great lengths to
convince Joseph that their father had asked for forgiveness for them.
An alternate reading of the verses, though, could suggest that the brothers are
feeling conflicted. Certainly, a part of them wants good treatment and absolution
from Joseph. I would argue, though, that another part of them wants Joseph to hate
them. In order to understand how this could be, we must look back at the history of
the relationship between Joseph and his brothers.
In Chapter 37, overcome by jealousy and rage, the brothers throw Joseph into a pit
and sell him as a slave. The brothers return home to face their father's tormented
anguish over the loss of Joseph, and for 22 years they walk around with a crippling
burden of guilt.
Their abuse of Joseph weighs heavily on them, and they interpreted even apparently
unrelated events through the lens of their culpability. When the viceroy of Egypt--a
disguised Joseph--treats them harshly and accuses them of spying, the brothers
begin to talk about their home life and about the brother who is missing.
When the viceroy imprisons Simon, the brothers say to each other, But we are
guilty about our brother [Joseph] as we saw the suffering of his soul as he called out

38. to us and we did not listen, this is why this trouble has [now] come upon us
(Genesis 42:21). Their blood guilt lies right beneath the surface of their
consciousness, and at the slightest pricking it comes pouring out.
Joseph tries to make it better for them. When he reveals himself to them, he offers
them forgiveness. He tells them it was God's will that he come to Egypt. He promises
them food and support. He kisses them all and cries on them, but they can barely
speak to him. They are too imprisoned by their own guilt to be able to reconcile.
They cannot accept Joseph's forgiveness because they cannot forgive themselves.
And so, in our portion, when Jacob dies, what the brothers are saying in part is if
only Joseph will hate us and repay the evil we did him. If only Joseph could avenge
himself and give us back the wrong we did him, then perhaps we could finally be at
peace. It is a complex moment, with their instinct for self-preservation mixing with
their desire for ultimate absolution. They both want Joseph's hatred and yet need
his protection.
But Joseph does not crave revenge. All he yearns for is reunion with his family. He
has spent 22 lonely years, and now he wants his brothers back. He will give them
everything--forgiveness, sustenance, vocations, even riches--and all he wants in
return is once more to be part of the family.
The book of Genesis ends with Joseph asking his brothers to take his bones with
them when they eventually leave Egypt. He must ask them to do this because he
does not believe they would think to do it on their own. Even on his deathbed,
Joseph knows that his brothers do not really think of him as one of the family.
The last words of Genesis tell us that Joseph's body has been placed in a coffin in
Egypt. There he waits until the book of Exodus, where he will discover a
reconciliation in death that he could not achieve in life.
6. KRELL What a beautiful response by Joseph. The only tears recorded in
Joseph’s life were not for himself but for the plight of his brothers and now the loss
of his father.5 The suffering that Joseph had endured had turned him into a man of
love. Suffering can push us in one of two directions: it can create bitterness in us or
it can soften us. Joseph was a man of tenderness and loving graciousness to others.
He was very affectionate to his father and wept over him when he died.6 When
somebody we love dies, God expects us to weep. That’s why He gave us the ability to
shed tears. ormal tears are a part of the healing process (Ps 30:5), while abnormal
grief only keeps the wounds open and prolongs the pain. In my pastoral ministry,
I’ve learned that people who suppress their grief are in danger of developing
emotional or physical problems that are difficult to heal.7 Don’t be afraid to express

39. yourself when you grieve or experience loss.
Reflecting on death, it is important to be sure that you have harmonious
relationships. Right relationships in life ease the sting of grief in death. Today, if
things are not right between you and your dad, mom, siblings, or children, do all
that you can to make sure that there is peace (Rom 12:18).
7. RO RITCHIE, “So out of guilt and fear they sent this note to their brother, the
second in command of Egypt, using their dead father as a mediator to indirectly ask
Joseph to forgive their sins. Joseph had wanted to be reconciled to his brothers, but
this is the first time it is recorded that they wanted to be reconciled to him. They had
never asked him for forgiveness, so their feelings of guilt and shame had continued
to haunt them. ow they began to look for mercy. The brothers were living like
most of the world---very clear about their sin, knowing that a day of accounting was
coming, and not sure they had anyone in their corner to guard them against God in
the day of judgment. Their hearts were full of fear. They had everything materially,
and yet their souls and spirits were struggling with Joseph's love for them because it
seemed as if they had committed a sin that could not be forgiven. But they were
hoping Joseph would hear their dead father Jacob's words on their behalf.
The brothers acknowledged that they had sinned against Joseph and twice asked for
forgiveness of their sins. They then acknowledged their relationship as servants of
the God of Israel who was also the God of their father. Joseph wept because his
older brothers finally admitted their sin for what it really was---horrible; clearly
harmful; deserving of death or, even worse, slavery.
The brothers then arrived at the palace, walked into Joseph's presence, and fulfilled
the dream he had told them and his father so many years before: We were binding
sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright,
while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it. (Genesis 37:7.) At
that time the brothers had become jealous and had hated him. ow they came and
threw themselves down before him. We are your slaves, they said.
As the brothers threw themselves down before Joseph hoping to obtain the
forgiveness of their sins, so we must all fall down before Jesus Christ to obtain the
forgiveness of our sins. And we have the hope that one day all of Israel will fall
down before our risen Lord Jesus and ask him to forgive them for their rejection of
him as their Messiah and Savior. For as Paul recorded for us, one day ...all Israel
will be saved...
'The Deliverer [the Redeemer] will come from Zion;
He will remove ungodliness from Jacob [the people of Israel].'

40. 'And this is My [new] covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.'
(Romans 11:26-36; see also Isaiah 59:21; Jeremiah 31:31-34.)
8. Calvin, “And when, Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead. Moses here
relates, that the sons of Jacob, after the death of their father, were apprehensive lest
Joseph should take vengeance for the injury they had done him. And whence this
fear, but because they form their judgment of him according to their own
disposition? That they had found him so placable they do not attribute to true piety
towards God, nor do they account it a special gift of the Spirit: but rather, they
imagine that, out of respect to his father alone, he had hitherto been so far
restrained, as barely to postpone his revenge. But, by such perverse judgment, they
do a great injury to one who, by the liberality of his treatment, had borne them
witness that his mind was free from all hatred and malevolence. Part of the
injurious surmise reflected even upon God, whose special grace had shone forth in
the moderation of Joseph. Hence, however, we gather, that guilty consciences are so
disturbed by blind and unreasonable fears, that they stumble in broad day-light.
Joseph had absolved his brethren from the crime they had committed against him;
but they are so agitated by guilty compunctions, that they voluntarily become their
own tormentors. And they have not themselves to thank, that they did not bring
down upon themselves the very punishment which had been remitted; because the
mind of Joseph might well have been wounded by their distrust. For, what could
they mean by still malignantly suspecting him to whose compassion they had again
and again owed their lives? Yet I do not doubt, that long ago they had repented of
their wickedness, but, perhaps, because they had not yet been sufficiently purified,
the Lord suffered them to be tortured with anxiety and trouble: first, to make them
a proof to others, that an evil conscience is its own tormentor, and, then, to humble
them under a renewed sense of their own guilt; for, when they regard themselves as
obnoxious to their brother’s judgment, they cannot forget, unless they are worse
than senseless, the celestial tribunal of God. What Solomon says, we see daily
fulfilled, that the wicked flee when no man pursueth; (Proverbs 28:1;) but, in this
way, God compels the fugitives to give up their account. They would desire, in their
supine torpor, to deceive both God and men; and they bring upon their minds, as
far as they are able, the callousness of obstinacy: in the mean time, whether they will
or no, they are made to tremble at the sound of a falling leaf, lest their carnal
security should obliterate their sense of the judgment of God. (Leviticus 26:36.)
othing is more desirable than a tranquil mind. While God deprives the wicked of
this singular benefit, which is desired by all, he invites us to cultivate integrity. But
especially, seeing that the patriarchs, who were already affected with penitence for
their wickedness, are yet thus severely awakened, a long time afterwards, let none of
us yield to self-indulgence; but let each diligently examine himself, lest hypocrisy
should inwardly cherish the secret stings of the wrath of God; and may that happy
peace, which can find no place in a double heart, shine within our thoroughly
purified breasts. For this due reward of their neglect remains for all those who do

41. not draw nigh to God sincerely and with all their heart, that they are compelled to
stand before the judgment-seat of mortal man. Wherefore, there is no other method
which can free us from disquietude, but that of returning into favor with God.
Whosoever shall despise this remedy, shall be afraid not only of man, but also of a
shadow, or a breath of wind.
9. Rev. Bruce Goettsche, “There are times when life feels like it is out of control. A
shooting is reported on the news. One more person has cancer. Someone we love is
diagnosed with debilitating disease. A long term relationship crumbles. Someone we
love dies suddenly. We lose a job. We face financial reversals. We are falsely
accused. Or we have one of those periods where nothing seems to go as planned. At
these times life seems unpredictable and arbitrary. And that's why the concluding
chapter of Genesis is so important. In the words of Joseph we gain insight to these
difficult times of life. Joseph gives us insight into the Providence of God.
That term may be unfamiliar to you. The word providence means literally to see
beforehand. It teachers that God sees the end or the purpose for what happens in
life. He sees (and ordained) the final goal. . . . so God is actively involved moving
creation toward that goal. R.C. Sproul states it succinctly,
The central point of the doctrine of providence is the stress on God's
government of the universe. He rules His creation with absolute
sovereignty and authority. He governs everything that comes to pass,
from the greatest to the least. othing ever happens beyond the scope of
His sovereign providential government. He makes the rain to fall and the
sun to shine. He raises up kingdoms and brings them down. He numbers
the hairs on our head and the days of our life. [Essential Truths p. 62]
Where do I find this doctrine in Genesis 50? Look at verses 15-21
When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What
if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs
we did to him?” So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left
these instructions before he died: ‘This is what you are to say to Joseph:
I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they
committed in treating you so badly.’ ow please forgive the sins of the
servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him,
Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before
him. “We are your slaves,” they said. But Joseph said to them, be afraid.
Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it
for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And
he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.n (Genesis 50:15-21)
The brothers of Joseph have been uncomfortable. Ever since they met up with
Joseph after all the years of separation they have been concerned about retribution.
Joseph has given no indication that he is vindictive but the brothers know human

42. nature. They know that offenses are not forgotten. They have concluded that the
only reason Joseph hasn't done anything is out of love for his father. So, when Jacob
dies, they are worried that the time of retribution is at hand.
They bring a real or a made up message (we don't know which) from their father.
The message is simple: please forgive your brothers. Joseph sees through the
message. It breaks his heart that the brothers don't take his love at face value.
Joseph gathers his brothers together and says, Am I in the place of God? You
intended me to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now
being done, the saving of many lives.
Joseph contends God was guiding the circumstances of his life. He looks back at the
events of his life and see that God was working in the details. He sees the fact that he
was sent by his Father, that he was sold by his brothers, purchased by Potiphar,
accused by Mrs. Potiphar, imprisoned with the Bake and Cupbearer, and elevated
by Pharoah as all part of God's perfect plan in his life. He believes in God's
providence.
The doctrine of providence is not very popular today. When difficult circumstances
come our way many contemporary folks are quick to jump to God's defense.
They proclaim, God had nothing to do with it! or worse, they will say, God
couldn't do anything about it. But there are two problems with these statements.
First, there is no comfort in them at all. What is comforting about knowing that God
is powerless to control the things that happen in your life? And second,in this
attempt to safeguard God's reputation . . . they make God less than God. God's
promises, His plans, His purpose are now subject to the arbitrary whims of man. If
He is God . . . .OF COURSE He could have done something about it. . . .God is never
powerless! So the question becomes: what is God doing in bringing about or in not
stopping certain events. Joseph contends that God's actions or inaction (in some
cases) is due to His providence.
IMPORTAT COSIDERATIOS
When we talk about God's providence it is important that we understand the issue
clearly. There are some things we need to be clear about.
Some things are Evil. Please understand that we are not saying that what his
brothers did was good. Joseph acknowledges that the brothers ITEDED evil.
They wanted to hurt him. They sinned and are responsible to God for that sin. What
Joseph acknowledges is that God took their evil intentions and used t for good.
When children commit terrorist acts, when one person abuses another, when drug
dealers peddle death to others, when God's standards are laughed at and ridiculed,
these are evil acts. These people will stand before the judge of the world and have to
give account for their wickedness. God has chosen (according to His wisdom) to
allow us a measure of freedom. With freedom comes consequences. Some of those
consequences are bad. But what the Bible teaches is that in God's mercy He uses the
free acts of men (albeit evil) to accomplish his purpose.
Some Things are Painful. Certainly during the difficult times of his life Joseph hurt.
I suspect he may have been discouraged. Believing in God's providence does not

43. mean that things were easy for Joseph. They weren't. We have reflected on what it
might have been like to be sold by your own brothers. We break out into a cold
sweat as we imagine being falsely charged with rape. We have all felt the pain of
feeling forgotten.
Holding to the doctrine of God's Providence does not mean that we won't feel the
pain of life. Some things even when they are necessary, are not pleasant. We may
know that a certain surgical procedure is required for us to be well. But that doesn't
mean that we won't feel pain.
God is Working But That Doesn't Mean We Understand. I suspect that there were
many nights when Joseph cried out Why Lord? Like Job I imagine that there
were nights when Joseph asked, God, what have I done to deserve this? Even in
hindsight Joseph may not have understood some of the whys of his circumstances.
And the same may also be true of you.
• why did my spouse die?
• why do I have cancer?
• why did I have to bury my child?
• why is my relationship such a mess?
• why does everyone else seem to prosper while I struggle?
Believing in God's providence doesn't mean that you will understand what God is
doing . . . it only means you will trust that God is doing something.
God's Definition of Good is not the same as ours. We don't define good the same
way that God does. To us good is that which makes us happy, satisfied or brings
us enjoyment. We see good as the absence of any pain. But God's definition is
different. God defines good as that which leads us to Christlikeness, or that which
brings us to trust Him more or which advances His Kingdom.
Think about life as a baby in a mother's womb. You are warm, comfortable, all
your needs are provided and life is good. All of a sudden things become tumultuous.
Things seem to be closing in around you, you are being forced against your will into
a cramped space and it is uncomfortable. Suddenly, you are being poked, grabbed
and handled. Your life support is cut and suddenly you have to fend for yourself.
The brightness and noise is painful. This is a horrible tragedy! But we know
otherwise. This baby has just been born.
The baby surely believed that they were better off if they had stayed where they
were. However, they don't realize how temporary a residence that was. They don't
know that if they had remained there they would have eventually died. They don't
realize what is before them. They don't know about taste, sight, touch and smell.
They don't have any concept of locomotion or cognitive reasoning. They don't know
about faith, love, hope, joy. From their immediate perspective birth is not a good
thing.
This is the way it often is for us. We don't see where the pushing, squeezing, pain
and discomfort are bringing us. Often in the midst of God's Providence we feel
something horrible is happening. But God sees what we don't.

44. We don't know how a death could be good
• but we don't know what the person has been spared
• we don't know what the person has been given in eternity
• we don't know the changes that are taking place in the lives of those involved
Our perspective is faulty. We don't see the whole picture. We must trust God's
wisdom.
THE TRUTH OF GOD'S PROVIDECE
One of the most quoted verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28, And we know that all
things work for the good of those who love God and are called according to his
purposes. This verse about God's providence teaches us vital truths for our lives.
God is ot Indifferent. Sometimes it feels that God is far away. I know. I've felt that
way. There are times when we feel that we pray but nothing happens. We believe
but see nothing change. At times we cry out to God and seem to hear nothing.
We have studied the book of Genesis for 16 months. But in doing so our perspective
is skewed. The events in these pages have not taken place over a 16 month period,
they have taken place over several hundred years. Consequently we may miss the
faith that was necessary to hang on.
• Think of the many months oah was building the Ark with no evidence of a
flood
• Think many years between God's promise that Abraham would have a child
and the birth of Isaac
• Think of the 14 years Jacob worked so he could be married to Rachel
• Think of the years of bareness Rachel endured before she had Joseph
• Think of the years of separation between when Joseph was sold into slavery
and when he saw his family again.
In each of these cases I suspect there were questions. These people wondered if God
has forgotten them. But He hadn't. And He hasn't forgotten you. God knows where
you are and He knows where you are going. God is getting you into position so you
can accomplish His good purpose for your life. What you are going through is no
accident! In the life of a believer there are no accidents. There is no such thing as
chance. God has allowed even the evil and the painful because He intends to use
even these things for his glory.
God is working ALL things for Good in the life of the believer
Paul does not say that God uses pleasant things for good. He doesn't say that God
uses some things for good. God is at work in ALL things for the good of the one who
is called by Him. I believe that means before conversion and after our conversion.
EVERYTHIG is filtered through the hands of our loving Father . . . everything!
The Wedgwood Baptist Church suffered the horror of a gunman by the name of
Larry Ashbrook coming into their church on a Wednesday night in September of
1999 while a See You at the Pole rally was taking place. He began shooting . . .
killing seven young people. It was a horrible situation. Months afterward the church

45. looks back and sees a number of ways God has used this painful time.
• All the victims were believers.
• the memorial service at the football stadium of Texas Christian University
was attended by 15,000 people and was broadcast on C and because Kim
Jone's parents live and work in Saudi Arabia, that country, which is close to
the gospel, allowed portions of the service to be broadcast there.
• In response to a question by Al Gore, Pastor Mereditih was able to present
the gospel clearly on Larry King Live and was in the days following able to
pray with President Clinton and Texas Governor George W. Bush.
• A DJ at a local Christian radio station was able to lead a caller to Christ. He
said he wanted what the church members had.the only people who were
killed were believers who were ushered into the presence of the Almighty.
These are just a few of the evidences of God's providence in this circumstance.
There are certainly other things we will not learn about until we are in Heaven. God
was at work even in the horror and madness of this situation.
Have you ever thought about what the disciples were thinking as Jesus was
crucified? Certainly they thought God had forgotten them. What a travesty of
justice. Where was God? But later they understood. Without the cross there could
be no forgiveness. Without the cross their was no salvation. Without the cross there
can be no resurrection. God was at work even in the cruelest event of history.
God is at work in your life too. He is involved in the big things . . . and the little
things of your life. Stay open. Keep listening. Learn the lessons He is trying to teach
you.
We Know This by Faith Paul says we KOW that God is working all things for
good. But how do we know that? We know it because this is God's promise.
The one area that Satan attacks again and again is God's Word. Satan wants us to
turn away from the promises of God. In Genesis 3 we read about Adam and Eve.
They were told they could eat from every tree except one. And they were warned
that to eat from that tree would mean death. Things are going along fine until they
encounter the serpent. And what are the first words the serpent says, Did God
really say . . . . .
In the record of the temptation of Jesus we find that he is sent into the desert to be
tempted following our baptism. At his baptism He heard God's voice say, This is
my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And do you remember the first words
of Satan as he tempts Jesus? If you are the son of God . . . . .
Satan wants us to turn away from God's promises. But God is trustworthy. His
promises are sure. There is no weakness in God. There is no bravado in God. There
is no sense in which God will promise what He doesn't do. When God says He is
weaving all things for good . . . we can go to the bank on it.
• even though we don't understand
• even though we find the process painful
• even though it is not the course we desires

46. • even though we can't imagine what good could come from these things.
COCLUSIOS . . . LIVIG I LIGHT OF GOD'S PROVIDECE
So what does it mean to live in light of God's providence? First, it means we hang on
tight to the Lord no matter what the circumstances. We must judge the
circumstances by the Word and not the Word by our circumstances. There are
many things that happen that will never make sense in this life. This is because some
things are too complex to understand and some things will only make sense in light
of Heaven.
Are you in one of those difficult times right now? Are you tempted to walk away
and conclude that God doesn't care? Do you want to throw up your hands and say,
What's the use? Friend, it may be that God has allowed these things to happen in
your life simply to bring you to this point today. I don't think it is an accident that
you are here for this message.
Could it be that God is calling you to take a stand in faith. He is calling you to do
more than repeat the truth, or testify to the truth. Today may be your moment of
decision. He calls you today to trust Him. He invites you to trust Him for what you
need in order to be made right with God. He calls you to trust Him to make you
new. He calls you to trust Him for the strength to get you through your crisis. He
calls you to trust Him to lead you home to life eternal. Will you take that step today?
Will you stop running from God and instead confess your sin and receive His grace?
Does this seem like a little thing to you? Friend, if all the painful circumstances of
your life have been for this one moment. . . .if it has all been to get you to see how
much you need the Lord . . . it has been worth it. You may not see it now. You may
feel that it is a bad trade. But someday you will see what God has done to bring you
to Himself. And when you do, you will spend the rest of eternity giving Him thanks.
Second, living in light of God's providence means we are always looking beyond the
pain and seeking to be faithful in the painful times. Rather than assuming that God
has deserted us (which is the most common response) we confess and stand on the
truth that God is doing something we do not yet understand. We look at every
circumstance as an opportunity for growth.
The one thing I have said that gets repeated back to me again and again by people
who are going through tough times is this simple creed about God's providence
which I cling to with every ounce of strength I have.
God is in Control
God Loves Me
God ever, Ever, Makes a Mistake
This creed will not take away the pain. It will not make bad situations something we
can understand. But it will help us hang on until we can see more clearly. Thanks be
to God that life is not left to the mere whims of chance. Thank God that God does
not leave us to simply work things out ourselves. He is there to help us. And even
though we may not know HOW we will get through a difficult time . . . we know
from these truths that we WILL get through it. And when we understand we will be

47. grateful.
With eager heart and will on fire, I strove to win my great desire.
Peace shall be mine, I said; but life grew bitter in the barren strife.
My soul was weary, and my pride was wounded deep;
to Heaven I cried
God grant me peace or I must die; the silent stars gave no reply.
Broken at last I bowed my head, forgetting all myself, and said –
Whatever comes, His will be done;' and in that moment
peace was won
[Kenneth Osbeck, 101 MORE HYM STORIES)
16. So they sent word to Joseph, saying, Your
father left these instructions before he died:
1. Clarke, “Thy father did command - Whether he did or not we cannot tell. Some
think they had feigned this story, but that is not so likely. Jacob might have had
suspicions too, and might have thought that the best way to prevent evil was to
humble themselves before their brother, and get a fresh assurance of his forgiveness.
2. Gill, “ And they sent a messenger unto Joseph,.... ot Bilhah, as the Targums of
Jonathan and Jerusalem, nor her sons, Dan and aphtali, as Jarchi, grounding it on
Gen_37:1 though it is not improbable that some from among themselves were
deputed, who were most interested in Joseph; since it is not very likely they would
commit such an affair to a stranger or to a servant; and the most proper persons to
be sent on such an errand seem to be Judah and Benjamin, the latter as having had
no concern in the affair of selling him, and was his own brother by father and
mother's side, and very dear to him; and the former, because he saved his life, when
the rest, excepting Reuben, were for shedding his blood, and had endeared himself
also to Joseph, by his tender concern both for his father and his brother Benjamin;
however, they thought fit first to sound Joseph by a messenger, how he stood
affected to them, before they appeared in a body in person, to whom they gave a
charge, as the words may be rendered, they commanded unto Joseph (t); that is,
they commanded those that were deputed by them to him:
saying, thy father did command before he died; some think, this was no better than
a lie, which their fear prompted them to; and that they framed the following story,
the more to work upon the mind of Joseph, and dispose it in their favour; seeing it is
a question whether Jacob ever knew anything of the affair of their ill usage to

48. Joseph; since otherwise it would have been, in all likelihood, taken notice of in his
last dying words, as well as the affair of Reuben, and that of Simeon and Levi; and
besides, had he been apprised of it, he knew such was the clemency and generosity
of Joseph, that he had nothing to fear from him, nor could he entertain any
suspicion of a malevolent disposition in him towards his brethren, or that he would
ever use them ill for former offences:
3. Calvin, “And they sent a messenger. Because they are ashamed themselves to
speak, they engage messengers of peace, in whom Joseph might have greater
confidence. But here also we perceive that they who have an accusing conscience are
destitute of counsel and of reason. For if Jacob had been solicitous on this point,
why did he not effect reconciliation between the son who was so obedient unto
himself, and his brethren? Besides, for what reason should they attempt to do that
through mediators, which they could do so much better in their own persons? The
Lord, therefore, suffers them to act like children; that we, being instructed by their
example, may look for no advantage from the use of frivolous inventions. But it may
be asked, where the sons of Jacob found men to whom they could venture to commit
such a message; for it was no light thing to make known their execrable crime to
strangers? And it would have been folly to subject themselves to this infamy among
the Egyptians. The most probable conjecture is, that some domestic witnesses were
chosen from the number of their own servants; for though Moses makes no mention
of such, when he relates that Jacob departed into Egypt; yet that some were brought
with him, may easily be gathered from certain considerations.
So the brothers do a bit of inventing. Jacob never gave such a command to Joseph
via the brothers. There are several reasons why verses 16-17 are a lie. First, Jacob
did not mention what the brothers did to Joseph in the blessings in chapter 49.
Given the fact that he did mention Reuben, Simeon and Levi’s shortcomings, it
would be very hard to believe that Jacob would not have mentioned what the
brothers did to Joseph. Secondly, if Jacob had had such a command, he would have
given it straight to Joseph, not given it through the brothers. It is clear that Joseph
had the most access to Jacob. He was there when Jacob died. For these reasons, I
believe that the brothers are making up this command that Jacob supposedly gave
to them. They were afraid, and wanted Jacob’s protection one more time from their
brother Joseph. What they did not understand was the power of forgiveness.
Let’s think carefully through the implications of this situation. The implications are
startling. If Jacob never gave such a command, and did not mention in chapter 49
what the brothers did, then we can come to only one conclusion: Jacob never found
out! But we must go one step further: if Jacob never found out, then it is equally
true that Joseph never told him!! There is the power of forgiveness put on a
billboard for the world to see. ot only had Joseph really forgiven his brothers, but
he did not mention to his father what they had done. Is that not an amazing
forgiveness? It is truly of God, truly a divine forgiveness. It was a true forgiveness.

49. The brothers, on the other hand, could not really believe that Joseph had truly
forgiven them. That’s why they dream up this lie about what Jacob said. They
forgot what Joseph had said before, or else they thought he didn’t really mean what
he said. They appeal on the basis of this lie, but also on the basis of the fact that they
serve the same God that Joseph does. Ironically, the brothers fall on their knees,
just as they thought originally that they would never do. You might remember
Joseph’s dreams where the stalks of wheat belonging to the brothers bowed down to
Joseph’s stalk. The brothers were indignant, and yet here they are, bowing down to
Joseph, just as they thought they never would!
otice Joseph’s response. He says, “Am I in the place of God?” One writer has
remarked about this statement that Genesis starts with Adam trying to take the
place of God, and Genesis ends with a man in an amazing place of power refusing to
take the place of God. Genesis ends with a redemption of a kind. However, that
redemption is not final. We need someone in a far higher place of power who refuses
to use His deity for his own advantage. Philippians 2 helps us out here: “Have the
same attitude among yourselves as Christ Jesus, who, though being in the form of
God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied
Himself, taking upon Himself the form of a servant.” Can we see then how Joseph’s
divine forgiveness and refusal to take revenge points us to what Jesus Christ would
accomplish on the cross? It is Joseph’s not-grasping after divine power that points
us to Christ’s own humility that He showed during His entire life, but especially on
the cross.
Do you really believe that God has forgiven you? Sometimes we doubt the Word of
God, don’t we? We can see plainly enough that those who believe that Christ died
for their sins are forgiven. However, we just have a hard time believing that
sometimes, don’t we? We are just like the brothers of Joseph. Sometimes we think
that our sins are too great for God to forgive. If that is so, then remember that
Christ’s blood is more powerful than all sin. To say that God cannot forgive is to say
that God is not God, and that He is not powerful enough to erase sin. It is to sin
against Christ, because it is His blood that says “what you meant for evil, God has
turned into good at the cross.” God has taken His vengeance out on His beloved Son
that we might not have to face it. He did that so that He might speak words of
comfort to us, just as Joseph comforted his brothers in verse 21.
We must always connect forgiveness of one another with our forgiveness from God.
That is the point of the ungrateful servant, you remember. Joyce Baldwin puts it
this way: “Only a deep sense of gratitude for the wonder of our own experience of
forgiveness in Christ, and for the provision he has made for others to be forgiven,
can break down the barriers we put up between ourselves and others, both those we
have wronged and those who have wronged us.” If you are having trouble really
forgiving someone else, ask yourself this question: “Do you realize that if you are
not forgiving someone else, then you are taking the place of God?” It is idolatry of
self not to forgive someone else. It is to take the place of God. That is something
Joseph would not do. Jesus Himself would not take vengeance on those persecuting

50. Him, but said rather, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Supposing you are the one who needs to ask forgiveness. Beware of putting the other
person in the place of God. What do I mean? Matthew Henry explains: “When we
ask forgiveness of those whom we have offended we must take heed of putting them
in the place of God, by dreading their wrath and soliciting their favour more than
God’s.” Don’t fear others more than God. Don’t make up a lie like the brothers did
in order to solicit favour with the person of whom you are asking forgiveness. Tell
the truth, and be humble. But ask for forgiveness. The brothers waited all this time,
and never asked forgiveness. Such things should not be swept under the rug, but
should be brought out and resolved. This is the unity of the body of Christ. This is
true forgiveness.
In Genesis 49-50, we see the brothers still fearful of Joseph’s retaliation. But we also
have Jacob giving blessings. What is most conspicuous by its absence is any mention
of how Joseph was taken by the brothers into slavery. Since Jacob had mentioned
Reuben’s sin, Simeon’s and Levi’s sin, etc., it is unthinkable that Jacob would have
left unmentioned something which threatened to take him down into the grave.
Therefore, Jacob must not have known about what the brothers did! This is not so
amazing in and of itself. or is the fact that brothers did not mention it. What is so
amazing is that Joseph did not mention it to Jacob either! And there was no lack of
opportunity, since Jacob was in Egypt for 17 years communing with Joseph before
he died. That is not only amazing love for his brothers on Joseph’s part, but also an
amazingly forgiving spirit. “As far as the East is from the West…”
17.`This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask
you to forgive your brothers the sins and the
wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.'
ow please forgive the sins of the servants of the
God of your father. When their message came to
him, Joseph wept.
1. Joseph was already in an emotional state, and when he heard this message he
could not help but let the tears flow again. He was touched to the heart by their fear
that he would be angry, for they did not know what he knew, and that was that God

51. was in charge of what happened, and he used their evil intentions for the blessing of
many, including themselves.
2. Clarke, “The servants of the God of thy father - These words were wonderfully
well chosen, and spoken in the most forcible manner to Joseph’s piety and filial
affection. o wonder then that he wept when they spake to him.
3. Gill, “ So shall ye say unto Joseph, forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy
brethren, and their sin,.... Their very great sin, and therefore more words than one
are used to express it: unless this repetition should be intended, and signifies that
their crime was a trespass against God, and a sin against their brother; and however
they are directed to ask forgiveness for it, and urge the relation they stood in to
Joseph, in order to obtain it, which they were ready to acknowledge as a very great
evil, and of which they repented:
and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father;
they urge not only the common relation they stood in to Jacob, but what they stood
in to the God of Jacob, being his servants, his worshippers, as Joseph also was; and
therefore, being his brethren not only in nature but in religion and grace, they
hoped he would forgive their trespass:
and Joseph wept when they spake unto him; by their messenger; being troubled that
they should be in such anxiety and distress of mind, which he had a fellow feeling
with, and that they should have no better opinion of him, but entertain such distrust
of him, notwithstanding all the kindness he had shown them, as to imagine that he
should ever deal hardly with them for their former ill usage of him, which was
forgiven and forgotten by him long ago.
4. Henry, “To Jacob's God. They plead (Gen_50:17), We are theservants of the God
of thy father; not only children of the same Jacob, but worshippers of the same
Jehovah. ote, Though we must be ready to forgive all that are any way injurious to
us, yet we must especially take heed of bearing malice towards any that are the
servants of the God of our father: such we should always treat with a peculiar
tenderness; for we and they have the same Master.
II. Joseph, with a great deal of compassion, confirms his reconciliation and
affection to them; his compassion appears, Gen_50:17. He wept when they spoke to
him. These were tears of sorrow for their suspicion of him, and tears of tenderness
upon their submission.
4B. Leupold, “The best aid to the understanding of the entire situation is to use the
approach set forth with greatest emphasis by Luther, who pictures graphically what
a bitter thing sin is—easy to commit, but after it has come to light it rears its ugly
head, and its prick keeps rankling, so that no forgiveness and comfort are strong
enough to alleviate the bite and to remove the prick. Consequently, their feeling of

52. guilt is their primary trouble; it tends to make them suspect Joseph. We should
hardly do them justice to suppose that the message which they claim to have from
their father is merely a fictitious one. It seems fair and right to regard these
brethren of Joseph as men of good and seasoned character, who speak the truth as
godly men should. They all seem worthy of their rank as patriarchs. Consequently
we must probe more deeply into Jacob’s motive and purpose in commanding his
sons to proceed after this fashion. For Jacob had actually given a commandment
(tsiwwah) before his death. It seems unreasonable to suppose that Jacob questioned
the sincerity of Joseph’s forgiveness of the sin of his brothers. So very likely this step
was taken for the sake of the ten brothers, who had hitherto really made no open
confession and full disavowal of their treachery over against Joseph. The episode Ge
42:21,22 cannot be interpreted to amount to a true confession. Yet heavy sins
require to be confessed, especially over against the person whom they wronged.
Otherwise they leave behind the seed of further misunderstanding. Besides,
confession eases the conscience of those who are troubled over their wrong. So Jacob
commands them to take this step, partly to put their own mind at ease, when they
hear Joseph’s assurance of the fullest pardon; and partly to remove any possible
remnant of misunderstanding that might yet remain. Jacob as well as those sons use
a strong term for their wrong—pésha’— rebellion, of course, against God. Here it
seems very proper to render it crime (Meek). Very naturally Joseph wept at the
message that they sent to him —literally, at their speaking to him; but above we
noted that they spoke through a messenger. There is a measure of mistrust revealed
by the brethren. But it was ungrounded. Joseph’s forgiveness had been without
condition or proviso. To have sincere motives questioned is painful.
5. Quotations on the Many Views of Forgiveness
Leaders, Scientists Psychologists
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive
but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin
Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition,
and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.
Simon Wiesenthal
If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?
Dolores Huerta
I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God

53. recognizes I do and I have done it and God forgives me for it.
Jimmy Carter, Playboy, ov. 1976
It is not forgive and forget as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but forgive
and go forward, building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by
reconciliation to create a new future.
Carolyn Osiek, Beyond Anger
I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward
anyone.
Edith Cavell, on the night before her execution, 1915
...there can be no reconciliation without memory.
Richard Von Weisaecker, Speech, 5/8/85
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
Mother Teresa
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head on. If I can feel outrage
at the injustice I have suffered, can recognize my persecution as such, and can
acknowledge and hate my persecutor for what he or she has done, only then will the
way to forgiveness be open to me.
Alice Miller,For Your Own Good
Mrs. Hart always looks great...Put it down to a daily treadmill workout and
daily...leg exercises given her 40 years ago by fitness doyenne Marjorie Craig. Or
put it down to the big smile she determinedly gives the mirror every morning along
with the words, Kitty, I forgive you, absolution for any sins committed in the
previous 24 hours.
Article on Kitty Carlisle Hart in The Wall Street Journal
Empathy also carries with it forgiveness. Lincoln, it can be fairly said, never held a
grudge.
Charles B. Strozer, Lincoln's Quest for Union
loathe ...drug dealers and pushers. I loathe and despise what they do to kids...I hate
their cruelty and viciousness. I know maybe I should find a place in my heart to
forgive them, God, but I can't. I just can't..

54. Sister Mary Rose, President of Covenant House
... whoever closes his eyes to the past becomes blind to the present. Whoever does
not wish to remember inhumanity becomes susceptible to the dangers of new
infection.
Richard Von Weizaecher, Speech 5/8/85
Copyright © 2005 All Right Reserved
The Living Pulpit, Inc.
6. MACLARE, Joseph’s brothers were right in thinking that he loved Jacob
better than he did them; and they knew only too well that he had reasons for doing
so. But their fear that Jacob’s death would be followed by an outbreak of long-smothered
revenge betrayed but too clearly their own base natures. They thought
him like themselves, and they knew themselves capable of nursing wrath to keep it
warm through long years of apparent kindliness. They had no room in their hearts
for frank, full forgiveness. So they had lived on through numberless signs of their
brother’s love and care, and still kept the old dread, and, probably, not a little of the
old envy. How much happiness they had lost by their slowness to believe in Joseph’s
love!
Joseph’s answer is but the reiteration of his words at his first making
himself known. He soothes unworthy fears, says not a word of reproach for
their misunderstanding of him, waives all pretension to deal out that
retribution which God alone sends, and shows that he has lost all bitterness
in thinking of the past, since he sees in it, not the working of their
malice, but of God’s providence, and is ready to thank, if not them, at any
rate Him, for having, by even so painful a way, made him the instrument of
widespread good. A man who sees God’s hand in his past, and thinks lightly
of his sorrows and nobly of the opportunities of service which they have
brought him, will waste no feeling on the men who were God’s tools. If we
want to live high above low hatreds and revenges, let us cultivate the habit
of looking behind men to God. So we shall be saved from many fruitless pangs
over irrevocable losses and from many disturbing feelings about other
people.

55. 7. CALVI, “17. Forgive, I pray thee now. They do not dissemble the fact that they
had grievously sinned; and they are so far from extenuating their fault, that they
freely heap up words in charging themselves with guilt. They do not, therefore, ask
that pardon should be granted them as if the offense were light: but they place in
opposition to the atrocity of their crime, first, the authority of their father, and then
the sacred name of God. Their confession would have been worthy of
commendation, had they proceeded directly, and without tortuous contrivances, to
appease their brother. ow, since they have drawn from the fountain of piety the
instruction that it is right for sin to be remitted to the servants of God; we may
receive it as a common exhortation, that if we have been injured by the members of
the Church, we must not be too rigid and immovable in pardoning the offense. This
humanity indeed is generally enjoined upon us towards all men: but when the bond
of religion is superadded, we are harder than iron, if we are not inclined to the
exercise of compassion. And we must observe, that they expressly mention the God
of Jacob: because the peculiar faith and worship by which they were distinguished
from the rest of the nations, ought to unite them with each other in a closer bond: as
if God, who had adopted that family, stood forth in the midst of them as engaged to
produce reconciliation.
And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. It cannot be ascertained with certainty
from the words of Moses, whether the brethren of Joseph were present, and were
speaking, at the time he wept. Some interpreters imagine that a part was here acted
designedly; so that when the mind of Joseph had been sounded by others, the
brethren, soon afterwards, came in, during the discourse. I rather incline to a
different opinion; namely, that, when he knew, from the messengers, that their
minds were tormented, and they were troubling themselves in vain, he was moved
with sympathy towards them. Then, having sent for them, he set them free from all
care and fear; and their speech, when they themselves were deprecating his anger,
drew forth his tears. Moreover, by thus affectionately weeping over the sorrow and
anxiety of his brethren, he affords us a remarkable example of compassion. But if
we have an arduous conflict with the impetuosity of an angry temper, or the
obstinacy of a disposition to hatred, we must pray to the Lord for a spirit of
meekness, the force of which manifests itself not less effectually, at this day, in the
members of Christ, than formerly in Joseph.
18. His brothers then came and threw themselves
down before him. We are your slaves, they said.
1. Gill, “ And his brethren also went,.... The messengers being returned to them, and

56. acquainting them with what Joseph had said, they took courage and went from
Goshen to Joseph's house or palace, be it where it may:
and fell down before his face; in an humble suppliant manner:
and they said, behold, we be thy servants; they were content to be so, would he but
forgive their sin, and not resent their ill behaviour to him; thus they further fulfilled
his dream of the eleven stars making obeisance to him, Gen_37:9.
2. Unknown author, “ow, years later, they were still plagued with guilt about their
treatment of Joseph (cf. 42:21-22). They had not yet fathomed Joseph’s forgiveness,
even though 17 years had evidenced nothing but grace. But, they reasoned, that was
a time when Jacob still lived. Would Joseph not hesitate to retaliate with his father
present even as they had waited for an opportune moment away from their father to
eliminate Joseph? ow Jacob was gone for good. Joseph was free to do with them as
he pleased. That thought consumed them, even more than the loss of their father.
This fear prompted a plan which they hoped would soften Joseph’s anger.
So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father charged before he
died, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to Joseph, “Please forgive, I beg you, the
transgression of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong.”‘ And
now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your
father.” And Joseph wept when they spoke to him (Genesis 50:16-18).
A message was conveyed to Joseph, perhaps through Benjamin. Joseph was told
that Jacob had yet another charge not yet made known, to which Joseph was urged
to submit. Before his death Jacob had requested that Joseph forgive his other sons
for their sins. Having sent this message ahead, perhaps by Benjamin, the brothers
appeared before Joseph. Humbly they fell before Joseph pledging their obedience
and submission (verse 18). They now volunteered to do the very thing which Joseph
had predicted (37:5-9) and which they had sought to avoid (37:19-20).”
3. Leupold 18-21, “Their sorrow is so genuine and their repentance so genuine that
these brethren come on the heels of their messenger and offer themselves to Joseph
as his slaves. Their words run thus, Behold us to thee for slaves. That must mean,
Here we are ready to be thy slaves. Joseph seems to understand by this time why
his father had ordered his brethren to take this step and reassures them very
effectually. His way of doing it is to point primarily to a rare token of divine
providence which was immediately before their eyes: God had used their evil deed
and turned it for good. All that so openly declares that God has the case in hand
that Joseph may well ask, What could I do to interfere with God’s plans even if I
desired to do so? This is the meaning of the question, Am I in God’s place?
Delitzsch has very correctly pointed out that the same thought is found in Ge 30:2,
where it means: have I the power to interfere in God’s doings? Here, however, its
meaning is: have I the right to do so? Joseph explains this by saying that the proof of
God’s control of the situation lies in the fact that where they on their part did devise

57. evil against him, God devised it for good—a remarkable example of God’s
concurrence, overriding the evil consequence of the wicked deed to bring about
results remarkably blessed. For on God’s part it was all planned in order to keep
alive a great multitude — a result which is clearly in evidence. For the expression
as of this day means as it has this day actually happened (cf. K. S. 402 u). It
surely is one of the most astounding examples of God’s control of all things to see a
group like Israel’s descendants and household preserved in famine as an indirect
result of the treachery of men who thought only in terms of bloody vengeance.
A second time Joseph reassures his brethren, do not be afraid, and promises to
use his best endeavours in providing for them and their little ones. This does not
imply that the famine was still in progress. But it does suggest that as strangers in
Egypt, Jacob’s sons could well use an influential person like Joseph to guard their
interests and represent fair play. To this Joseph adds words calculated to comfort
and reassure them, and he spoke comforting words, for which the expressive
Hebrew says: he spoke to their hearts.
19. But Joseph said to them, Don't be afraid. Am
I in the place of God?
1. Clarke, “Am I in the place of God? - These words may be understood either as a
question, or an affirmative proposition. How should I take any farther notice of
your transgression? I have passed it by, the matter lies now between God and you.
Or, in the order of Divine providence I am now in God’s place; he has furnished me
with means, and made me a distributor of his bounty; I will therefore not only
nourish you, but also your little ones, Gen_50:21 : and therefore he spake
comfortably unto them, as in Gen_45:8, telling them that he attributed the whole
business to the particular providence of God rather than to any ill will or malice in
them, and that, in permitting him to be brought into Egypt, God had graciously
saved their lives, the life of their father, the lives of the people of Canaan, and of the
Egyptians: as therefore God had honored him by making him vicegerent in the
dispensations of his especial bounty towards so many people, it was impossible he
should be displeased with the means by which this was brought about.
2. Gill, “And Joseph said unto them, fear not,.... That any hurt would be done by
him to them, or that he would use them ill for their treatment of him:
for am I in the place of God? to receive such homage from you, that you should be
my servants, as Saadiah Gaon gives the sense; or rather to take vengeance for injury

58. done, which belongs to God alone: or, am I not under God (u)? subject to him, a
servant of his, and why should you be mine? nor is it in my power, if I had a will to
it, to change his purposes, to alter his providences, or contradict his will, and do
hurt to those whom God hath blessed; and so may have regard to the late
patriarchal benediction of his father, under the direction of the Holy Spirit: or, am
I in the place of God? and under him a father of them, as he had been a provider
for them, and a supporter of them, and still would be.
3. Henry, “He directs them to look up to God in their repentance (Gen_50:19): Am I
in the place of God? He, in his great humility, thought they showed him too much
respect, as if all their happiness were bound up in his favour, and said to them, in
effect, as Peter to Cornelius, “Stand up, I myself also am a man. Make your peace
with God, and then you will find it an easy matter to make your peace with me.”
ote, When we ask forgiveness of those whom we have offended we must take heed
of putting them in the place of God, by dreading their wrath and soliciting their
favour more than God's. “Am I in the place of God, to whom alone vengeance
belongs? o, I will leave you to his mercy.” Those that avenge themselves step into
the place of God, Rom_12:19.
4. RO RITCHIE, “Joseph was saying, I have no revenge in my heart against you.
Yes it was horrible, difficult, deadly, lonely, and unjust---but looking back now on
all those years of pain and suffering and then on the years of the blessings of God
through Pharaoh, my wife and children, and my rank and position, I can see that
God was behind every event in my life and I am right where God has always
planned for me to be! Remember, I told you when I first revealed myself to you not
to become distressed because you sold me into Egypt, for '...God sent me ahead of
you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great
deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.' [Genesis 45:7-8]. I
take no credit, I was and I remain clay in the hands of the Master Potter. My life has
never been my own. I have sought by faith to serve Yahweh in the land of many
gods, and now as I look back I see that he has had his hand on me every step of the
way. I could never have dreamed of a better place to be than the place of God for
me in the great plan of redemption he has designed to come through our fathers
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and now through me, and in the years to come, through
Messiah.
Jesus also understood the place of God for his life. For in the beginning of his life a
righteous Jew named Simeon came to the temple to bless Jesus when he was just
eight days old: Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in
Israel... (Luke 2:34). John the Baptist said to his disciples upon seeing Jesus at the
beginning of his ministry, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world! (John 1:29.) He understood that his cousin was in the place of God. Jesus
understood the place of God for him just before his triumphal entry to Jerusalem:
For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke
19:10). And then in the garden while speaking with his Father the night before his
death, he said he understood the place of God: Father, if Thou art willing, remove

59. this cup from Me, yet not My will, but Thine be done (Luke 22:42). When Jesus
was on the cross he understood the place of God for him, praying, Father, forgive
them; for they do not know what they are doing. And then he said, Father, into
Thy hands I commit My spirit (Luke 23:34, 46; see also Psalm 31:5)---finally, the
perfect place of God.
Behind all the events and human plans recounted in the story of Joseph lay the
unchanging plan of God. It was a good plan from the beginning for Joseph, and it
was as well for Jesus. For after he had risen, he reviewed the plan of God for his life
to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus: Thus it is written, that the Christ
should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day; and that repentance for
forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all the nations.... (Luke
24:46-47).
Joseph spoke kindly to them: So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and
your children, reflecting the character of God who is the God of all comfort (see 2
Corinthians 1:3-4).
for am I in the place of God?
to receive such homage from you, that you should be my servants, as Saadiah Gaon
gives the sense; or rather to take vengeance for injury done, which belongs to God
alone: or, am I not under God F21? subject to him, a servant of his, and why
should you be mine? nor is it in my power, if I had a will to it, to change his
purposes, to alter his providences, or contradict his will, and do hurt to those whom
God hath blessed; and so may have regard to the late patriarchal benediction of his
father, under the direction of the Holy Spirit: or, am I in the place of God? and
under him a father of them, as he had been a provider for them, and a supporter of
them, and still would be.
5. CALVI, “Am I in the place of God? Some think that, in these words, he was
rejecting the honor paid him: as if he would say, that it was unjustly offered to him,
because it was due to God alone. But this interpretation is destitute of probability,
since he often permitted himself to be addressed in this manner, and knew that the
minds of his brethren were utterly averse to transfer the worship of God to mortal
man. And I equally disapprove another meaning given to the passage, which makes
Joseph refuse to exact punishment, because he is not God: for he does not restrain
himself from retaliating the injury, in the hope that God will prove his avenger.
Others adduce a third signification; namely, that the whole affair was conducted by
the counsel of God, and not by his own: which though I do not entirely reject,
because it approaches the truth, yet I do not embrace the interpretation as true. For
the word תחת (tachat) sometimes signifies instead of, sometimes it means subjection.
Therefore if the note of interrogation were not in the way, it might well be rendered,
“Because I am under God;” and then the sense would be, “Fear not, for I am under

60. God;” so that Joseph would teach them, that because he is subject to the authority
of God, it is not his business to lead the way, but to follow. But, whereas ה(he,) the
note of interrogation, is prefixed to the word, it cannot be otherwise expounded than
to mean that it would be wrong for him, a mortal man, to presume to thwart the
counsel of God. But as to the sum of the matter, there is no ambiguity. For seeing
that Joseph considers the design of divine providence, he restrains his feelings as
with a bridle, lest they should carry him to excess. He was indeed of a mild and
humane disposition; but nothing is better or more suitable to assuage his anger,
than to submit himself to be governed by God. When, therefore, the desire of
revenge urges us, let all our feelings be subjected to the same authority. Moreover,
since he desires his brethren to be tranquil and secure, from the consideration, that
he, ascribing due honor to God, willingly submits to obey the Divine command; let
us learn, hence, that it is most to our advantage to deal with men of moderation,
who set God before them as their leader, and who not only submit to his will, but
also cheerfully obey him. For if any one is impotently carried away by the lust of the
flesh, we must fear a thousand deaths from him, unless God should forcibly break
his fury. ow as it is the one remedy for assuaging our anger, to acknowledge what
we ourselves are, and what right God has over us; so, on the other hand, when this
thought has taken full possession of our minds, there is no ardor, however furious,
which it will not suffice to mitigate.
6. “Joseph could have gotten revenge on his brothers, but he saw the providence of
God in all their evil intensions and was thus able to forgive them. Forgiving or not-forgiving
is the theme for the day both in this conclusion to the Joseph story and in
the gospel parable about the unforgiving steward, Matt 18:21-35. The Joseph story
strikes modern readers as a modern story. God does not intervene with miracles
or direct appearances, but at the end of the story the reader is convinced that God
has been in control all along. God has transformed the evil intentions of the brothers
into good. Their scheme brought Joseph to power, and his administrative abilities
saved many people from starvation. Joseph also reassures his brothers that he will
take care of them, not just in words, but in concrete acts of sustenance.” author
unknown
20. You intended to harm me, but God intended it
for good to accomplish what is now being done,
the saving of many lives.
1. Gill, “That must be said and owned, that their intentions were bad; they thought
to have contradicted his dreams, and made them of none effect, to have token away

61. his life, or however to have made him a slave all his days:
1B. F. B. Meyer, “God's deeper meanings - We are apt to see a malicious meaning;
are we equally apt to detect the Divine and benevolent one? Our enemies are many,
and they hate us with perfect hatred; they are ever laying their plots, and working
their unholy purposes. But there is a greater and wiser than they, who, through all
these plottings, is prosecuting His Divine purpose. There is another and deeper
meaning than appears to the short sight of sense.
Let us believe that there is a Divine and deeper meaning in the adversities of our
lives. - Joseph might be forgiven for not doing so; but with his history and that of
many others before us, we have no excuse for despair in the face of crushing sorrow.
Whether it comes from man or devil, all creatures are under the Divine control,
holding to our lips cups which the Father's hand has mixed. He has no complicity
with their evil, but they unconsciously perform His will. Even if you cannot see the
Divine meaning, dare to believe that it is there.
Await the disclosures of time. - Even here we sometimes reach an eminence from
which we detect the meaning of the path by which we have been conducted. It may
have been rough and circuitous, but there was reason in it all. Often God rewards
patient trust by allowing us to see and know.
And for the full revelation of eternity. - One day God will call us to His side in the
clear light of eternity, and will explain His meanings in life's most sorrowful
experiences; and we shall learn that we suffered, not for ourselves only, but for
others, and, as part of His great remedial scheme, to save much people alive.
2. Henry, “ He extenuates their fault, from the consideration of the great good which
God wonderfully brought out of it, which, though it should not make them the less
sorry for their sin, yet might make him the more willing to forgive it (Gen_50:20):
You thought evil (to disappoint the dreams), but God meant it unto good, in order to
the fulfilling of the dreams, and the making of Joseph a greater blessing to his
family than otherwise he could have been. ote, When God makes use of men's
agency for the performance of his counsels, it is common for him to mean one thing
and them another, even the quite contrary, but God's counsel shall stand. See
Isa_10:7. Again, God often brings good out of evil, and promotes the designs of his
providence even by the sins of men; not that he is the author of sin, far be it from us
to think so; but his infinite wisdom so overrules events, and directs the chain of
them, that, in the issue, that ends in his praise which in its own nature had a direct
tendency to his dishonour; as the putting of Christ to death, Act_2:23. This does not
make sin the less sinful, nor sinners the less punishable, but it redounds greatly to
the glory of God's wisdom.
2B. Many commentators and pastors go too far in their exposition of God using evil
to bring forth good. I have messages on this myself, for it is a common theme, and a

62. great blessing. However, to say that all evil is used for good leads to determinism
and universalism, both of which are not biblical. If all evil is used for good, then all
evil is a part of God's plan, and even the fall then is a part of God's will. All evil is
really good then if God uses it for good. This eliminates evil as evil and out of God's
will. If evil people are being used to bring forth good by their evil, then they are
really agents of God in accomplishing his purpose. We know this is false, and that
not all evil brings forth good, for there is hell to pay for evil. ot all who are sold
into slavery end with a happy story like Joseph. The whole history of slavery is one
of unbelievable evil that led to more and more evil for the human race. You cannot
take a special providence of God in the life of one person and make it a universal
truth to apply to every other person. That is reading into the Bible what the Bible
itself does not teach. God got exceeding angry at the evil of his own children and he
brought terrible judgment on them. Many dies horrible death because of their
idolatry. To conclude that this was all for their own good is to make God a liar, for
he says he hates such wickedness. We need to use common sense and not make
something that is a wonderful truth to be a universal truth so that all evil is
something God uses for good. It is a lie, for there would be no hell if it was true.
3. GUZIK As said before, if Joseph's brothers never sell him to the Midianites, then
Joseph never goes to Egypt. If Joseph never goes to Egypt, he never is sold to
Potiphar. If he is never sold to Potiphar, Potiphar's wife never falsely accuses him of
rape. If Potiphar's wife never falsely accuses him of rape, then he is never put in
prison. If he is never put in prison, he never meets the baker and butler of Pharaoh.
If he never meets the baker and butler of Pharaoh, he never interprets their dreams.
If he never interprets their dreams, he never gets to interpret Pharaoh's dream. If
he never gets to interpret Pharaoh's dream, he never is made prime minister. If he is
never made prime minister, he never wisely administrates for the severe famine
coming upon the region. If he never wisely administrates for the severe famine
coming upon the region, then his family back in Canaan perishes from the famine.
If his family back in Canaan perishes from the famine, then the Messiah can't come
forth from a dead family. If the Messiah can't come forth, then Jesus never came. If
Jesus never came, then you are dead in your sins and without hope in this world.
Thank you, Jesus!
[but] God meant it unto good;
he designed good should come by it, and he brought good out of it: this shows that
this action, which was sinful in itself, fell under the decree of God, or was the object
of it, and that there was a concourse of providence in it; not that God was the
author of sin, which neither his decree about it, nor the concourse of providence
with the action as such supposes; he leaving the sinner wholly to his own will in it,
and having no concern in the ataxy or disorder of it, but in the issue, through his
infinite wisdom, causes it to work for good, as follows:
to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive;

63. the nation of the Egyptians and the neighbouring nations, as the Canaanites and
others, and particularly his father's family: thus the sin of the Jews in crucifying
Christ, which, notwithstanding the determinate counsel of God, they most freely
performed, was what wrought about the greatest good, the salvation of men.
4. Clarke, “These words may be understood either as a question, or an affirmative
proposition. How should I take any farther notice of your transgression? I have
passed it by, the matter lies now between God and you. Or, in the order of Divine
providence I am now in God's place; he has furnished me with means, and made me
a distributor of his bounty; I will therefore not only nourish you, but also your little
ones, Genesis 50:21: and therefore he spake comfortably unto them, as in Genesis
45:8, telling them that he attributed the whole business to the particular providence
of God rather than to any ill will or malice in them, and that, in permitting him to be
brought into Egypt, God had graciously saved their lives, the life of their father, the
lives of the people of Canaan, and of the Egyptians: as therefore God had honoured
him by making him vicegerent in the dispensations of his especial bounty towards so
many people, it was impossible he should be displeased with the means by which this
was brought about.”
5. With eager heart and will on fire, I strove to win my great desire.
Peace shall be mine, I said; but life grew bitter in the barren strife.
My soul was weary, and my pride was wounded deep;
to Heaven I cried
God grant me peace or I must die; the silent stars gave no reply.
Broken at last I bowed my head, forgetting all myself, and said –
Whatever comes, His will be done;' and in that moment
peace was won
[Kenneth Osbeck, 101 MORE HYM STORIES)
6. KRELL
1. God gave Joseph long life (50:22). He lived 110 years. An expert in Egyptian
history has collected at least 27 references to the age of 110 years. It was considered
an ideal age.22 Joseph’s first 17 years were spent as a young man in Canaan, the
next 13 years as a slave in Egypt, and the last 80 years as a ruler of all Egypt.
2. God gave Joseph the privilege of seeing his great-great grandchildren (50:22-
23). For more than 20 years Joseph had missed his family for the sake of what God
was doing through him, but now what he had lost is made up to him. He lived to see
God’s blessing on his children’s children (cf. 48:11). It was a part of God’s reward
(Ps 128:6). As Prov 17:6 says, “Grandchildren are the crown of the aged” (ESV).
The above two blessings are not guarantees to those who are faithful. As the old

64. Billy Joel song goes, “Sometimes the good die young.” But these are general
principles that are frequently true.
3. God gave Joseph remarkable faith (50:24-26). Joseph told his brothers four
important things: First, God would come to Israel’s aid. Twice Joseph repeats the
phrase, “God will surely take care of you” (50:24-25). These are the words that you
and I need to leave with our loved ones. Don’t promise them financial wealth or
security. Assure them of God’s care. He is all they need! Second, God would take
them up out of Egypt. Although God’s people would spend 400 years in Egyptian
bondage, Joseph sees a brighter day.23 Third, God would bring them to the
Promised Land. Fourth, God would fulfill his oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
(Heb 11:22). In light of his great faith, Joseph made his wishes known to be buried
in the Promised Land (50:25). It was an expression of faith and confidence that
God’s covenant promises would come to pass. He died and was placed in a coffin in
Egypt (50:26). Unlike his father, Jacob, Joseph’s body wasn’t buried immediately.
Instead, his coffin lay aboveground for over 400 years until the people of Israel took
it back to Canaan as they left Egypt under Moses’ leadership. So there it sat in
Egypt for 400 years as a silent witness of Joseph’s confidence that Israel was going
back to the Promised Land, just as God had said (Exod 13:19). This expression of
Joseph’s faith in God’s promises to his forefathers provides a fitting climax for the
book of Gen and the formative period of Israel’s history.
Genesis begins with creation and ends with a coffin. It begins in a garden and ends
in a grave. It begins with the living God and ends with a dead man. Why? It is the
Holy Spirit’s final commentary at the end of this foundational book of Gen
displaying the condition of man and outcome of sin. The message of the Bible is this:
You and I are sinful and God seeks to restore sinners. Since He cannot overlook sin,
He sent His Son, Jesus Christ (the Messiah), to pay the penalty for man’s sin.
Similarities between Joseph and Jesus
* Both men were loved by their father (Gen 37:3; Matt 3:17).
* Both men were shepherds of their father’s sheep (Gen 37:2; John 10:11-16).
* Both men were sent by their father to their brothers, but Joseph’s brothers
hated him and sought to kill him and Jesus’ blood brothers rejected him and his
spiritual brothers sought to kill him (Gen 37:13ff; John 7:3; Luke 20:47).
* Both men had a personal robe that was taken from them (Gen 37:23-24; John
19:24).
* Both men spent time in Egypt (Gen 37:25-28; Matt 2:14-15).

65. * Both men were sold for the price of a slave (Gen 37:28; Matt 26:15).
* Both men were bound in chains (Ps 105:18; Gen 39:20; Matt 27:2).
* Both men were tempted (Gen 39:7-10; Matt 4:1-11).
* Both men were falsely accused (Gen 39:16-17; Matt 26:59).
* Both men were placed with two other prisoners, one of whom was saved and the
other lost (Gen 40:2-22; Luke 23:32-43).
* Both men began their ministries at the age of thirty (Gen 41:46; Luke 3:23).
* Both men were exalted by God after a season of suffering (Gen 41:41-43; Phil
2:9-11).
* Both men forgave those who harmed them (Gen 45:1-15; Luke 23:34).
* Both men were sent by God to save many (Gene 45:7; Matt 1:21; Mark 10:45).
* Both men understood that God turned evil into good (Gen 50:20; Rom 8:28).
David Jeremiah, Grace for the Day: Turning Point Daily Devotional, 4/14/06.
Copyright © 2006 Keith R. Krell. All rights reserved. All Scripture quotations,
unless indicated, are taken from the ew American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962,
1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, and 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, and are
used by permission.
Permissions: Feel free to reproduce and distribute any articles written by Keith
Krell, in part or in whole, in any format, provided that you do not alter the wording
in any way or charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. It is our desire to spread
this information, not protect or restrict it. Please include the following statement on
any distributed copy: by Keith Krell, Timeless Word Ministries, 2508 State Ave E
Olympia, WA 98506, 360-352-9044, undefined undefined undefined
undefinedwww.timelessword.com
7. In ancient times, the use of the clause “gathered to his people” was a euphemistic
way of speaking of the death of an individual. At times (e.g., in the present passage),
however, the clause seems to convey more than the mere death of an individual; it
appears to suggest a meeting of departed souls in the afterlife. In other words, the
individual who dies is not considered to have ceased in his or her existence but to
have moved on to another dimension, to the place where his deceased ancestors also

66. live. Within Scripture, the idiomatic expression occurs only in the Pentateuch and
only on ten occasions to predict or describe the passing of Abraham (25:8); Ishmael
(25:17); Isaac (35:29); Jacob (49:29, 33); Aaron (um 20:24, 26); Moses (um
27:13; 31:2; Deut 32:50). Barry C. Davis, Genesis (Portland, OR: Multnomah
Biblical Seminary unpublished class otes, 2003).
8. Sailhmaer writes, “The last description of Joseph’s dealings with his brothers is
the statement that ‘he comforted them [wayenahem 'oth am; IV, “reassured”] and
spoke kindly to them [wayedabber `al-libbam]’ (v. 21). It is again difficult not to see
in this picture of Joseph and his brothers a foreshadowing of the future community
of the sons of Israel in exile awaiting their return to the Promised Land. To that
same community the call went out by the prophet Isaiah to ‘comfort [nahamu],
comfort [nahamu] my people, says your God. Speak tenderly [dabberu `al-leb] to
Jerusalem...she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins’ (Isa
40:1-2). John H. Sailhamer, Genesis: EBC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990),
Electronic ed.
9. “Unfortunately, many of us who have the text do not have the truth! For us to
benefit from this truth, we have to realize that how we define “good” is often
different from how God defines “good.” To us “good” is whatever makes us happy,
satisfied or brings us enjoyment. We see good as the absence of any pain or
suffering. But God defines “good” as that which leads us to Christ-likeness, brings
us to trust Him more or advances His Kingdom. As I have said before, if Joseph’s
brothers never sell him to the Midianites, then Joseph never goes to Egypt. If Joseph
never goes to Egypt, he never is sold to Potiphar. If he is never sold to Potiphar,
Potiphar’s wife never falsely accuses him of rape. If Potiphar’s wife never falsely
accuses him of rape, then he is never put in prison. If he is never put in prison, he
never meets the baker and butler of Pharaoh. If he never meets the baker and butler
of Pharaoh, he never interprets their dreams. If he never interprets their dreams, he
never gets to interpret Pharaoh’s dream. If he never gets to interpret Pharaoh’s
dream, he never is made prime minister. If he is never made prime minister, he
never wisely administrates for the severe famine coming upon the region. If he never
wisely administrates for the severe famine coming upon the region, then his family
back in Canaan perishes from the famine. If his family back in Canaan perishes
from the famine, then the Messiah can’t come forth from a dead family. If the
Messiah can’t come forth, then Jesus never came. If Jesus never came, then you are
dead in your sins and without hope in this world!” author unknown
10. CALVI, “Ye thought evil against me. Joseph well considers (as we have said)
the providence of God; so that he imposes it on himself as a compulsory law, not
only to grant pardon, but also to exercise beneficence. And although we have treated
at large on this subject, in Genesis 45:1, yet it will be useful also to repeat something

67. on it now. In the first place, we must notice this difference in his language: for
whereas, in the former passage, Joseph, desiring to soothe the grief, and to alleviate
the fear of his brethren, would cover their wickedness by every means which
ingenuity could suggest; he now corrects them a little more openly and freely;
perhaps because he is offended with their disingenousness. Yet he holds to the same
principle as before. Seeing that, by the secret counsel of God, he was led into Egypt,
for the purpose of preserving the life of his brethren, he must devote himself to this
object, lest he should resist God. He says, in fact, by his action, “Since God has
deposited your life with me, I should be engaged in war against him, if I were not to
be the faithful dispenser of the grace which he had committed to my hands.”
Meanwhile, he skillfully distinguishes between the wicked counsels of men, and the
admirable justice of God, by so ascribing the government of all things to God, as to
preserve the divine administration free from contracting any stain from the vices of
men. The selling of Joseph was a crime detestable for its cruelty and perfidy; yet he
was not sold except by the decree of heaven. For neither did God merely remain at
rest, and by conniving for a time, let loose the reins of human malice, in order that
afterwards he might make use of this occasion; but, at his own will, he appointed the
order of acting which he intended to be fixed and certain. Thus we may say with
truth and propriety, that Joseph was sold by the wicked consent of his brethren, and
by the secret providence of God. Yet it was not a work common to both, in such a
sense that God sanctioned anything connected with or relating to their wicked
cupidity: because while they are contriving the destruction of their brother, God is
effecting their deliverance from on high. Whence also we conclude, that there are
various methods of governing the world. This truly must be generally agreed, that
nothing is done without his will; because he both governs the counsels of men, and
sways their wills and turns their efforts at his pleasure, and regulates all events: but
if men undertake anything right and just, he so actuates and moves them inwardly
by his Spirit, that whatever is good in them, may justly be said to be received from
him: but if Satan and ungodly men rage, he acts by their hands in such an
inexpressible manner, that the wickedness of the deed belongs to them, and the
blame of it is imputed to them. For they are not induced to sin, as the faithful are to
act aright, by the impulse of the Spirit, but they are the authors of their own evil,
and follow Satan as their leader. Thus we see that the justice of God shines brightly
in the midst of the darkness of our iniquity. For as God is never without a just cause
for his actions, so men are held in the chains of guilt by their own perverse will.
When we hear that God frustrates the wicked expectations, and the injurious
desires of men, we derive hence no common consolation. Let the impious busy
themselves as they please, let them rage, let them mingle heaven and earth; yet they
shall gain nothing by their ardor; and not only shall their impetuosity prove
ineffectual, but shall be turned to an issue the reverse of that which they intended,
so that they shall promote our salvation, though they do it reluctantly. So that
whatever poison Satan produces, God turns it into medicine for his elect. And
although in this place God is said to have “meant it unto good,” because contrary to
expectation, he had educed a joyful issue out of beginnings fraught with death: yet,
with perfect rectitude and justice, he turns the food of reprobates into poison, their
light into darkness, their table into a snare, and, in short, their life into death. If

68. human minds cannot reach these depths, let them rather suppliantly adore the
mysteries they do not comprehend, than, as vessels of clay, proudly exalt themselves
against their Maker.
To save much people alive. Joseph renders his office subservient to the design of
God’s providence; and this sobriety is always to be cultivated, that every one may
behold, by faith, God from on high holding the helm of the government of the world,
and may keep himself within the bounds of his vocation; and even, being
admonished by the secret judgments of God, may descend into himself, and exhort
himself to the discharge of his duty: and if the reason of this does not immediately
appear, we must still take care that we do not fly in confused and erratic circuits, as
fanatical men are wont to do. What Joseph says respecting his being divinely chosen
“to save much people alive,” some extend to the Egyptians. Without condemning
such an extension, I would rather restrict the application of the words to the family
of Jacob; for Joseph amplifies the goodness of God by this circumstance, that the
seed of the Church would be rescued from destruction by his labor. And truly, from
these few men, whose seed would otherwise have been extinct before their
descendants had been multiplied, that vast multitude sprang into being, which God
soon afterwards raised up.
11. STEVE COLE
A Mindset for Enduring Trials
Genesis 50:20
Two boys were walking along a street when they encountered a
large dog blocking the sidewalk. Don't be afraid, one of the boys
told his more timid companion. Look at his tail, how it wags. When
a dog wags his tail he won't bite you.
That may be, admitted the other, but look at that wild gleam in
his eye. He looks like he wants to eat us alive. … Which end are we
going to believe?
You may have felt like those two boys when you’ve had to face
trials in your life. The Bible exhorts us to “count it all joy” when we
encounter various trials (James 1:2). We are assured that God is
working all things together for good to those who love Him, who are
called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). But sometimes we aren’t
quite convinced whether to believe the wagging tail of God’s promises
or that wild gleam in the eye of the big trial confronting us. What if we
count it all joy and the trial bites us?
Joseph was a man who had developed a godly mindset that carried
him through the many trials in his life. He had been badly mistreated
by his own family, as well as by others whom he had not
wronged. He spent the better part of his twenties in an Egyptian
dungeon, separated from his father, not knowing if he would ever see
him again. Yet in spite of all these trials, he could say to his brothers,
“You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20). He
knew that even though his brothers hated him at the time and were
trying to get rid of him, behind them it was God who was at work,

69. sending Joseph to Egypt for God’s sovereign purposes (Gen. 45:5, 7,
8). Joseph’s trust in the sovereign goodness of God carried him
through these terrible trials with a joyful spirit, free from bitterness and
complaining. That same mindset will help us bear up under trials:
To bear up under trials, we must trust in the sovereign goodness
of God in every situation.
A mistaken idea, widely promoted in Christian circles, is that all
trials are from the devil and that a good God would never send trials to
His children. Thus when we are hit by a trial, whether sickness or a
difficult person or a financial setback, we are supposed to rebuke the
devil and claim our victory by faith. If we don’t experience fairly rapid
deliverance, then our faith may be defective. I believe that this is a
faulty paradigm for facing trials. We need to see that …
1. God is sovereign over all, even over the evil things people
do.
In this fallen world, there are many evil people who will seek to
harm you. Often, as with Joseph, these evil people are close family
members. It may be a parent who abused you emotionally, physically,
or even sexually when you were a child. In Joseph’s case, his half
brothers hated him and would have killed him had not the slave
traders providentially come by at just the right moment.
What is even more galling, often the family members who mistreated
you seem to be doing quite well in life. Genesis 38 shows how
Judah, who had suggested selling Joseph into slavery, was doing quite
well even though he was so far from God that he didn’t hesitate to go
in to what he thought was a harlot for a moment’s pleasure. He had
his pagan friends and seemed to be enjoying life, all the while that
Joseph was grinding out an existence as a slave in a foreign country.
You have to keep in mind as you work through Joseph’s story
that at the time he was suffering, Joseph didn’t know how the story
would turn out. He didn’t know yet that if he just held on for a few
years, God would raise him up as second to Pharaoh. But it is clear
that he knew one thing for certain, that God is sovereign, even over
the evil things people do (45:5, 7, 8; 50:20). Joseph’s trust in the
sovereign God carried him through many bleak days in the dungeon.
Let me clarify that trusting in God’s sovereignty does not mean
that you must passively endure the situation. If you are a child being
abused, you need to report it to proper authorities. If you are being
badly mistreated at work or at school, you may need to take some
action to deal with it. What I’m saying is that there is great comfort for
the believer in knowing that, however difficult your situation, the
sovereign God is still in control. The devil is not in control; evil people
are not in control; God is in control.
Many Scriptures teach us that God is sovereign even over evil
men, and yet He is completely unstained by their sin. In the story of
Job, the Chaldeans raided and stole Job’s camels, killing his servants

70. who kept them (Job 1:17). These wicked men were not acting simply
on their own accord, but were impelled by Satan. And yet God was
over Satan, giving him permission to go so far and no farther. Satan
could not do anything unless God willed it.
Take another story: God willed that the wicked King Ahab be
killed in battle. How did God do it? A demon presented himself
before God with the plan that he go and be a deceiving spirit in the
mouths of Ahab’s prophets. God granted permission; the wicked
prophets prophesied falsely; Ahab believed them, so that he was killed.
God’s righteous judgment was carried out by a demon using deception,
and yet God is not tainted by the evil. The prophets were responsible
for following demonic counsel.
Samson wanted to marry a Philistine woman, which was clearly a
sinful thing. His parents tried in vain to dissuade him from doing such
a thing. Yet, we read, “his father and mother did not know that it was
of the Lord, for He was seeking an occasion against the Philistines”
(Judges 14:4). Samson was sinning, yet God sovereignly used that sin
to achieve His righteous judgment!
Many more examples abound in Scripture. David’s son Absalom
sinfully committed incest with his father’s concubines in the sight of all
Israel, yet God declares the work to be His own: “You did it secretly,
but I will do this thing before all Israel” (2 Sam. 12:12). Rehoboam
foolishly rejected the counsel of his elders, resulting in the division of
the kingdom, but “it was a turn of events from the Lord, that He
might establish His word” through his prophet (1 Kings 12:15).
ebuchadnezzar selfishly and brutally wiped out Jerusalem, yet he was
doing God’s work and is called God’s servant (Jer. 1:15; 25:9; 27:6;
50:25). Cyrus, another pagan king, who like all pagan kings sought to
build his own empire for his own glory, is called God’s anointed,
whom God was using for His purpose (Isa. 45:1). Wicked men falsely
accused and crucified the Son of God, and yet they only did what
God’s hand and purpose predestined to occur (Acts 4:28).
After citing such examples, of which there are many more, John
Calvin concludes, “Yet from these it is more than evident that they
babble and talk absurdly who, in place of God’s providence, substitute
bare permission—as if God sat in a watchtower awaiting chance
events, and his judgments thus depended upon human will” (Institutes,
1.18.1).
Joseph not only knew that God was sovereign over the evil his
brothers had done; he realized that God is sovereign over even insignificant
things that we would tend to shrug off as chance. You’ll recall
the story of when his father sent him to check on his brothers, and he
didn’t find them at the place where they were supposed to be. A man
found Joseph wandering in a field and told him that his brothers had
moved the flocks to Dothan. So Joseph went to Dothan and found
them. They threw him into the pit, planning to kill him after lunch.

71. But it was precisely at that moment that the trading caravan “happened”
by, and they sold him into slavery (37:14-36).
As that caravan made its way south, Joseph had plenty of time to
think, “What rotten luck! Why did I happen to run into that man in
the field who happened to know where my brothers were? Why did
that caravan have to come along just then, when Reuben had indicated
that he was going to try to get me out of the pit and back to my dad?
Where was God in all this?” But Joseph didn’t believe in luck or
happenstance. He believed in a sovereign God who sent him down to
Egypt for reasons that, at the time, Joseph did not know (45:5, 7, 8).
Thus it is important to affirm God’s sovereignty not only over the
major things that happen, but also over the little daily mundane details
of life. Car problems, traffic jams, interruptions, clogged drains, sick
kids, and a million other frustrations in life, as well as the bad things
that evil people do to you, are under God’s sovereignty. othing and
no one can thwart God’s sovereign, loving purpose toward you in
Christ. He will work all things together for good to those who love
Him and are called according to His purpose. We need that mindset
to endure trials.
But, also, we must understand and affirm that …
2. God is good in everything He does.
“God meant it for good” (50:20). He “works all things together
for good” (Rom. 8:28). As God said through Jeremiah to the exiles who
had been carried off to Babylon, “’For I know the plans that I have for
you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give
you a future and a hope’” (Jer. 29:11). Although God’s people may
suffer terribly, they must affirm by faith with the psalmist, that even
though God afflicts us with trials, He is good and does good in all His
ways (Ps. 119:67-68; 75).
Most of us are quick to see God’s goodness in the blessings of
life, but not so quick to discern His goodness in the trials. Jacob was
like that. When his sons returned from their first trip down to Egypt
to buy grain, and the unknown lord of the land (Joseph) had taken
Simeon captive and was demanding that Benjamin accompany them
on the return visit, Jacob wailed, “You have bereaved me of my
children: Joseph is no more, and Simeon is no more, and you would
take Benjamin; all these things are against me” (42:36). But, in fact, all
these things were not against him. The truth was, God was for him.
Even the trial of the famine was being used to reunite him with his
beloved Joseph and to provide for all his needs for the rest of his life.
I have often profited spiritually from the incident in the life of
David where he hit bottom. He had gotten himself into a mess
because he had doubted the sovereign goodness of God in his life.
God had promised David that he would sit on the throne of Israel, but
for years he had been chased by the mad King Saul. In a moment of
despair, David said, “ow I will perish one day by the hand of Saul”

72. (1 Sam. 27:1). So he went and allied himself with the pagan Achish,
King of Gath.
For a while David was able to play the dangerous game of convincing
this pagan king that he was on his side. At first, things seemed
to go much better for David and his men. Saul stopped pursuing
them. Achish gave David a city, Ziklag, where he and his men could
live with their families, instead of having to hide in caves.
But then a ticklish situation came up, where Achish and the Philistine
warlords were going into battle against Saul. David went up with
them, pretending to be one of them. But it was awkward for him to be
going into battle against the Lord’s people, including his dear friend,
Jonathan. At the last minute, God rescued him by making the Philis
tine warlords insist that he not accompany them into battle. So David
and his men returned to Ziklag.
That’s when the bottom dropped out. Raiders had burned Ziklag
with fire and had taken all their wives and children captive. David’s
men were so upset that they were talking about stoning him.
But then comes a great verse: “But David strengthened himself
in the Lord his God” (1 Sam. 30:6). I can’t say for certain what all that
entailed. But, based on his many Psalms, I believe that David probably
confessed his sin of doubting God’s sovereign goodness when he had
gone over to Achish. He also probably reaffirmed God’s gracious
covenant promises. He definitely humbled himself under God’s
sovereign hand, because he inquired of God as to whether he should
go after the raiders and recover their wives and children. That was not
an easy thing to do! What if God had said, “o”? But David now
was bowing before God’s sovereign lordship.
But the great thing about the story is that even though David had
brought about many of his troubles by his own lack of faith, God was
graciously working things out to give him the kingdom. In the battle
against the Philistines, Saul and Jonathan were killed, opening the way
for David’s taking the throne. God graciously allowed David and his
men to recover their wives and children, along with much spoil. So
even though it seemed to David in his low point that God was not
good, he could look back and see how God’s sovereign goodness was
directing all the events of those difficult years.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones points out how when difficult things happen
to us, and we are quick to grumble and wonder why God would allow
this to happen, and even to doubt His love, it should awaken us to our
own sinfulness. We should realize in a new and deeper way how
prone we are to harbor unworthy thoughts of the God who has loved
us with an everlasting love, and we should be humbled. But, he points
out, such humility is good for us, and anything that so humbles us is
working together for our good. It also shows us our desperate need of
God’s forgiveness, help, and strength. “It is only in this way,” he
concludes, “that we really get to know the love and grace of God, His

73. kindness, His compassion, His tenderness, His patience, His longsuffering.
How little we know of them!” He sums it up by saying “that
our greatest trouble is our ignorance of God. We know things about
God, but our real trouble is our ignorance of God Himself—what He
really is, and what He is to His people.” (Romans, The Final Perseverance of
the Saints [Zondervan], pp. 166-168).
This affirmation of God’s goodness, even in our trials, has been
the refrain of the saints down through history. John Calvin cites many
Scriptures that show how God tenderly cares for and protects His
children. He sums it up: “Indeed, the principal purpose of Biblical
history is to teach that the Lord watches over the ways of the saints
with such great diligence that they do not even stumble over a stone
[Ps. 91:12]”(Institutes, 1.17.6).
In 1895, the beloved pastor and writer, Andrew Murray, was in
England suffering from a terribly painful back, the result of an injury
he had incurred years before. One morning while he was eating
breakfast in his room, his hostess told him of a woman downstairs
who was in great trouble and wanted to know if he had any advice for
her. Murray handed her a paper he had been writing on and said, “Just
give her this advice I’m writing down for myself. It may be that she’ll
find it helpful.” This is what he had written:
“In time of trouble, say, ‘First, He brought me here. It is by His
will I am in this strait place; in that I will rest.’ ext, ‘He will keep me
here in His love, and give me grace in this trial to behave as His child.’
Then say, ‘He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me lessons He
intends me to learn, and working in me the grace He means to bestow.’
And last, say, ‘In His good time He can bring me out again. How and
when, He knows.’ Therefore, say ‘I am here (1) by God’s appointment,
(2) in His keeping, (3) under His training, (4) for His time.”
So in times of trial, we can and must know that God is sovereign,
even over the evil things people may do to us. But also we must know
that God is good and that He will work every situation together for
good for His children. Finally, knowing this, …
3. We must trust the sovereign goodness of God in the midst of
our trials.
The reason we must trust God is that it may be years, or perhaps
only in eternity, before we figure out specifically how God is using our
trials for good. Joseph had to keep trusting for years as he sat in that
Egyptian dungeon. Every morning when he awoke in that foul place,
he had to direct his thoughts to God and say, “Lord, I trust that You
have some good and loving purpose in this situation. I submit to Your
sovereign purpose, even though I do not understand.” He may have
had to do that a hundred times a day. But I contend that he did it. If
he had not, we would not hear him say, “God sent me here”; “God
meant it for good.”
Trusting God is a mindset; it occurs in your thought life. It is a

74. mindset that puts God at the center, where He rightfully should be. If
we are focused on our happiness as the center, we will not be able to
trust or glorify God in the midst of our trials. But, as we have seen,
Joseph lived a God-centered life. As Scripture makes clear, God’s
glory is the supreme thing in all of life. If we daily, moment-bymoment,
put our thoughts on glorifying God, showing by our trusting
attitude that He is both sovereign and good, then He will bless us in
many ways as a by-product. But if we are focused on our own happiness,
we will find it hard to trust God and we will be miserable people.
In the Institutes (1.17.11), John Calvin develops at length the
blessings that come to the believer when he learns to live under the
loving providence of God. He cites a number of assuring verses from
the Psalms: “The Lord is my helper” [Ps. 118:6]; “I will not fear what
flesh can do against me” [Ps. 56:4]; “The Lord is my protector; what
shall I fear?” [Ps. 27:1]; “If armies should stand together against me”
[Ps. 27:3], “if I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death [Ps.
23:4], “I will not cease to have good hope” [Ps. 56:5; 71:14]. Then he
comments, ”Whence, I pray you, do they have this never-failing
assurance but from knowing that, when the world appears to be
aimlessly tumbled about, the Lord is everywhere at work, and from
trusting that his work will be for their welfare?” In other words, they
trust in the sovereign goodness of God.
Conclusion
A believer confided with his Christian friend, “I find it terribly
hard to trust God, and to sense His presence in the dark passages of
life.” “Well,” said his friend, “if you cannot trust a man out of your
sight, he isn’t worth much. But you can surely trust God even when
He is hidden in the shadows, for you have His promise that He will
never leave you or forsake you” (Heb. 13:5).
Another man who loved the Lord was going through deep and
discouraging trials, and his trust in God was near the breaking point.
One day he went for a walk in an orchard with his young son. The
boy wanted to climb an old apple tree, so the father patiently stood
below watching. Many of the limbs were dead, and some of them
began to break under the boy’s weight. Seeing his son’s plight, the
man held up his arms and called, “Jump, Buddy, I’ll catch you.” The
boy still hung on, and then as another branch snapped he said, “Shall I
let go of everything, Daddy?” “Yes,” came the reassuring reply.
Without hesitation, the boy jumped and the father safely caught him.
Later the man said, “That incident was God’s message directly to
me! I understood what the Lord was trying to teach me. At that
moment I did trust Him completely, and it wasn’t long until He
wonderfully supplied my need.” (“Our Daily Bread,” July, 1982).
That’s the mindset we need to endure trials—to trust in the sovereign
goodness of God in every situation. Whatever you’re going
through, you can know that though others may mean it for evil, God

75. means it for good. He wants you to trust Him so that He will be
glorified in your life.
Discussion Questions
1. We are often told today to let God know how angry we are at
Him. Is it sin to be angry at God? Should we be encouraged to
express it?
2. A skeptic sneers, “How can God be good and allow innocent
children to be abused?” Your answer?
3. How can God be sovereign over everything and yet not be responsible
for evil?
4. If God is sovereign, how can we know when to submit passively
to some wrong and when to take action against it?
Copyright 1997, Steven J. Cole, All Rights Reserved.
12. CRISWELL
A beautiful and precious sentiment. We're now in the last chapter of the Book of
Genesis, Chapter 50. And we have come to the close of the life of Joseph. Beginning
at Verse 18: His brethren fell down before Joseph's face, and they said, behold, we
be thy servants. Joseph said to them, Fear not: am I in the place of God? But as for
you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is
this day, to save much people alive. Therefore, fear ye not: I will nourish you, and
your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.
A beautiful, beautiful word. God meant it for good. The story back of that
word from Joseph is familiar to all of us. Because of their implacable envy and their
bitterness of spirit, they sought to kill their brother. They put him in a pit to die.
And out of the kindness of Ruben, seeing a group of Ishmaelites come by,
they lifted him out of the pit in which he was confined to death, sold him to the
Ishmaelites, and Joseph describes the sorrow and terror in his soul as a teenage boy.
He was taken down into the land of Egypt, placed on the slave block and sold to an
army captain in Pharaoh's regiment.
Then the story in the house of Potiphar is no less full of sorrow and
disappointment. And he's cast into prison, and he stays there for years and years.
This is the sad life of that devoted and gifted young man Joseph, all at the fault of
his brothers.
Then Joseph, speaking to them, does not castigate them, reprove them, but in
a beautiful way, What you did, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
So, all of the providences of life under God are just like that. However they may
appear to us to be hurtful or even heavenly forgetful, yet God means it for good. A
woman came to me and said, Why do you always turn your back when I come near

76. you? I had no thought. That's the last thing in the world I would ever do.
Yet, somehow, being sensitive, somehow in a providence that I had no
thought for, couldn't remember for, Pastor, why do you always turn your back
when I come near? We may be that way in our attitude toward God. Why does
God turn His back on me in the depths of my despair or in the billows of sorrow
that overwhelm my soul or in the providences of life that bring infinite
disappointment and despair?
Why does God turn His back on me? Remember, whatever the providence,
God means it for good. God's meaning is like Himself. God is good. There is none
good but one, said Jesus, to the rich young ruler. That is God.
In Romans 3 and 12: one doeth good but one; that is God. Out of all
creation, all humanity, all living, we can always be assured there is One someone
who is infinitely good, and that is God.
And God's goodness determines His activity. Jesus said on the Sermon on
the Mount: And ye then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to them that love
Him?
In Romans 8:28, we know that all things worketh together for good to them
that love God. And in Romans 12 and 2, We're to prove what is that good and
perfect will of God.
God's meanings often travel over strange paths. That was the life of Joseph.
Who would ever have thought that out of the determination on the part of his
brothers that he die in the pit, finally that he be sold to the Ishmaelites into slavery,
who would ever have thought that God was using those providences to save all of
Israel?
Who would ever have in the earth have thought that the gospel message
would center in the cross, in the suffering, in the crucifixion of Jesus our Lord?
And who would ever have claimed that it would be a bitter persecution of the
church that scattered it abroad and sent it out preaching the gospel to the civilized
world?
We are never to forget that some of our greatest blessings come through the
most tragic providences.
Many a rapturous minstrel
Among those sons of light
Will sing of his sweetest music,

77. “I learned it in the night.”
And many a rolling anthem
That fills the Father's home
Sobbed out its first rehearsal
in the shade of a darkened room.
And last, God's meanings will ultimately be made clear if you'll just wait on
the Lord. Joseph waited many, many, many years. Finally, God's purpose of grace
became plain. In Romans 11:33, “oh, the depth of the riches both in the wisdom and
knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding
out.” In Isaiah 55 and 9, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
purposes for you higher than any that you could ever realize.” When you cannot
grasp God's meaning, trust Him and wait on Him.
Isaiah 50:10: Who among you that walketh among darkness and hath no
light, let Him trust in the name of the Lord. In Psalm 37, Verse 7: Wait on the
Lord. And again I say wait on the Lord.
Until I learned to trust,
I never learned to pray;
And I did not learn to fully trust
Til sorrows came my way.
Until I felt my weakness,
His strength I never knew;
or dreamed til I was stricken
That He could see me through.
Who deepest drinks of sorrow
Drinks deepest, too, of grace;

78. He sends the storm so He Himself
Can be our hiding place.
His heart that seeks our highest GOOD
Knows well when things annoy;
We would not long for heaven
If earth held only joy.
Who would want to go to heaven? Who would even think about heaven if he
were strong and well, rich and everything going his way? It's in the sorrows and
disappointments and frustrations and hurts of life that we look upward to God.
And it is in age and in death that we long for heaven. A dear, sainted woman
in the hospital when I was a young pastor and unknowing, I prayed, Lord, raise
her up in strength and in health. She reached out her hand and touched me and
said, Young Pastor, don't pray that. My life is lived. My work is done. I want to
go to be with Jesus. Young Pastor, pray that God will open the door of heaven and
welcome me in.
If I lived a thousand lifetimes, I will never forget that dear sainted
woman teaching me in the days of my beginning ministry that these sorrows and
sicknesses and disappointments, frustrations and age of life are just God's ways of
making us long for heaven. God purposes some better thing for us.
13. WILLIAM BROWSO Coming Forth as Gold
ow the strange thing is that none of this embittering or vengefulness seemed to
occur
in the experience of Joseph. As we watch his reactions under extreme stress, we
can’t
understand them. We never see him getting hard or cynical. Whatever his situation,
he keeps
on acting in helpful, positive ways. As far as we know, he never sought revenge
against
anyone, never paid back with evil any evil he had received. Even when he became
second to
Pharaoh in the land of Egypt, with the power of life and death over his subjects, he
never

79. used it vindictively.
As we read about his career in the closing chapters of the book of Genesis, we
wonder if
this man Joseph can possibly be “for real,” if his character is even believable. Why
in the
world would he act in this amazingly magnanimous way? What kept him from
being
destroyed, poisoned, by what other people did to him?
We can simply affirm, of course, that he was a man of outstanding character, or say
that
God put it in his heart to feel and react in this way. Both statements are true, but
neither
penetrates to the heart of the question. The key lies in these words which form the
climax to
the last 14 chapters of the book of Genesis. They are Joseph’s to his guilty brothers.
They
fear that after their father Jacob’s death, Joseph will take revenge against them.
“Fear not,” says Joseph, “for am I in the place of God? As for you, you
meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that
many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will
provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he reassured them and comforted them.
Imagine that! He reassured them! Joseph, the wronged one, the grieved one,
becomes a
comforter to the brothers who had acted so wickedly toward him! And apparently
he acted as
he did because of the view he took of his life-history and how it fitted into God’s
plan.
Here’s the key: He saw God’s hand in what had befallen him.
ow that isn’t always easy to do. We may be able to see His hand fairly readily in
the
good things that happen to us, the happy circumstances. We can say, “God’s hand
was in
this” when we have a new baby, when we get a promotion or a raise, when we
experience a
marvelous healing. And I suppose we can sometimes see the work of the Almighty in
what
the insurance companies call “acts of God”—natural disasters. Everyone must
acknowledge
that storms and floods, avalanches and volcanic eruptions are in some sense God’s
work. But
when human agency is involved, it’s more difficult, isn’t it? When men and women
around
us are negligent, hostile, or cruel, it’s hard to see God’s hand in that.

80. And that’s what Joseph saw. “You meant evil against me;” he said, “but God meant
it
for good.” He saw human agents active in what had happened to him. But God had
acted
too. They had planned it, but somehow God had planned it too. Their hands had
been upon
him with malice but God’s with mercy. And God’s hand was over man’s hand.
For Joseph, that never meant that human beings weren’t responsible, that his
brothers,
for example, weren’t to be blamed. As we read this account in Genesis, we notice
how
Joseph labored long and wisely to bring his brothers to repentance. He put them
through a
number of testings to awaken conscience. o doubt about it—they had done these
cruel
things. They were guilty.
But for Joseph, God’s role in the sequence of events put everything in a new light.
He
saw what his brothers had done against a larger background. The net result was
that benefit
eventually came to Joseph and to a whole people. He could say to his brethren, “God
sent me
before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many
survivors.
So it was not you who sent me here but God.” Imagine that! Joseph is saying that
the
important thing to remember and focus upon here is God’s action and God’s design.
In the
midst of the brothers’ destructiveness, God had been savingly at work. He had
blessing in
view for many, many people in all that happened to His servant Joseph. And that
was what
this remarkable servant of God chose to remember.
I can imagine someone saying, “Well, that may be all right for him, but things don’t
always work out that way. There aren’t always happy endings like this one. How do
I know
that it will work out that way for me when I am wronged, abused, or neglected?
How can I
be sure that God has all these good things in mind for me and mine?”
Well, if the account about Joseph stood alone in the Bible, it might be just a
beautiful
exception to what usually seems ugly, tragic and meaningless. It might be only a
lovely tale,

81. a happy coincidence. But remember, friends, the ew Testament tells of One whose
experience roughly parallels that of Joseph, yet goes far beyond it. The apostles bear
witness
to Another who was rejected by His brothers. He too was falsely accused and made
to suffer
unjustly. He also was deserted by ungrateful friends. Worse still, He was delivered
up to die
and bore the most terrible suffering imaginable.
Many hands, it seemed, were turned against Jesus. Think of the hand of the traitor
Judas,
moved by avarice. There were the hands of the priests, trembling almost with envy.
There
were those hands that Pilate tried to wash clean, acting as he did in cowardly self-interest.
And what about the hands of the soldiers, brutal and violent? Yes, and all of us
somehow
had a hand in this, because Jesus was actually dying for our sins, suffering in our
place, for
our sake.
But after all that, listen to Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost. He’s talking
about
this very event—the crucifixion of Jesus. “This Jesus,” he says, “delivered up
according to
the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of
lawless
men” (Acts 2:23). There it is: you did it. “You crucified and killed Him,” Peter says.
“Lawlessly, wickedly, responsibly, you put Him to death.” But He was also delivered
up
according to the purpose of God. The Old Testament book of Isaiah mysteriously
describes
that:It was the will of the LORD to bruise him. . . . The LORD has laid on him [the
servant of the Lord] the iniquity of us all. (Isa. 53:10,6)
Here the deepest mystery—the Cross—is seen somehow to be God’s doing, God’s
hand over
man’s. So what we see at work in the life and experience of Joseph is not an isolated
incident,
not a random quirk of fate. It’s something that runs through the heart of human
history. In
these words, “You meant it to me for evil; but God meant it for good,” we find a
clue to
what God is up to in the whole human story. In the place where God reveals Himself
most
clearly, in the face of Jesus Christ, we see Him as a God of suffering love, taking

82. upon
Himself the worst evil men can do, transforming it, and making it work for the
salvation of
many.And that conviction, friends, awakened in our hearts by God’s Spirit, can
more and more
do for us what it did for Joseph. It can make us patient in time of adversity,
knowing that
God hasn’t forgotten us, that He’s still at work behind the scenes. It can make us
humbly
thankful and full of wonder when success and prosperity may visit us. We receive
this too
from God’s hand. And most remarkably, it can make us merciful, forgiving,
gracious and
kind to those who may have wronged us most.
It has become popular in our time to take a different view of God’s relationship to
the
tragedies that blast our lives. Some, in an effort to defend God’s character and
affirm His
loving concern for people, have argued that He has nothing to do with the disasters
that
overtake us. It is said not only that He does not send them, but also that He, in a
sense, can
do nothing about them. He is there only to support us, comfort us and help us pick
up the
pieces after the blow has fallen.
ow I honor the compassion and sensitivity behind that approach but I find it a
form of
comfort that is shallow and finally unsatisfying. Think of it, friends. If we live in a
world out
of God’s control, where He stands helpless before evils that can swallow up His
people, then
those malignant forces of wickedness may finally destroy us all. I find in the words
of
Joseph here and supremely in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, a comfort more
strange,
perhaps, but strong. We can look at the most shattering evil now that ever befalls us
and say
without blinking, “Wicked hands have done this to me. The malice of men and the
hatred of
hell was behind it.” But we can also affirm that somehow in the depths and with a
breaking
heart, God was at work there too. And He meant it, blessed be His name, for great
and

83. lasting good.
I may not see at the time what that good is. I may never see it in this life. And yet in
the
light of God’s supreme self-revealing in Jesus Christ, I heartily believe it. And
friends, I
invite you to say to your unhappy circumstances, to the powers of wickedness, to
cruel,
hurting people, “You meant it to me for evil, but God meant it for good.”
Study Questions
1. How can faith in God’s providence help to guard us from bitterness?
2. How does Joseph’s faith differ from fatalism?
3. According to this passage, can both God and man be responsible for the same
happening?
Explain.
4. In what sense does the crucifixion of Christ provide a key for the understanding
of
God’s providence?
21. So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you
and your children. And he reassured them and
spoke kindly to them.
1. Gill, “ow therefore, fear ye not,.... Which, is repeated to dispossess them of every
fear they might entertain of him on any account whatever:
I will nourish you, and your little ones; provide food for them, and their families,
not only for themselves and their sons, now grown up, but their grandchildren and
even the youngest and latest of their families should share in his favours:
and he comforted them, and spake kindly to them; even to their heart (w); such
things as were quite pleasing and agreeable to them, served to banish their fears,
revive their spirits, and afford comfort to them. Just so God and Christ do with
backsliding sinners, and would have done with his own people by his servants; see
Isa_40:1.
2. Henry, “He assures them of the continuance of his kindness to them: Fear not; I
will nourish you, Gen_50:21. See what an excellent spirit Joseph was of, and learn of
him to render good for evil. He did not tell them they were upon their good
behaviour, and he would be kind to them if he saw they conducted themselves well;
no, he would not thus hold them in suspense, nor seem jealous of them, though they
had been suspicious of him: He comforted them, and, to banish all their fears, he

84. spoke kindly to them. ote, Broken spirits must be bound up and encouraged. Those
we love and forgive we must not only do well for but speak kindly to.
3. BROW, We wonder whether Moses learned compassion and forgiveness from
his study of the record of the life of Joseph, which he must have collected and
studied in Egypt. He wrote in his law “You shall not take vengeance or bear a
grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself”
(Leviticus 19:18). He also said “Vengeance is mine, and
recompense”(Deuteronomy 32:35, see Proverbs 20:22). This teaching is picked up
by Paul when he wrote “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the
love of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’ says the Lord “
(Romans 12:19, see Luke 6:27-29, 35-36).
4. CALVI 21. I will nourish you. It was a token of a solid and not a feigned
reconciliation, not only to abstain from malice and injury, but also to “overcome evil
with good,” as Paul teaches, (Romans 12:21:) and truly, he who fails in his duty,
when he possesses the power of giving help, and when the occasion demands his
assistance, shows, by this very course, that he is not forgetful of injury. This requires
to be the more diligently observed, because, commonly, the greater part weakly
conclude that they forgive offenses if they do not retaliate them; as if indeed we were
not taking revenge when we withdraw our hands from giving help. You would assist
your brother if you thought him worthy: he implores your aid in necessity; you
desert him because he has done you some unkindness; what hinders you from
helping him but hatred? Therefore, we shall then only prove our minds to be free
from malevolence, when we follow with kindness those enemies by whom we have
been ill treated. Joseph is said to have spoken “to the heart of his brethren,”
because, by addressing them with suavity and kindness, he removed all their
scruples; as we have before seen, that Shechem spoke to the heart of Dinah, when he
attempted to console her with allurements, in order that, forgetting the dishonor he
had done her, she might consent to marry him.”
22. Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his
father's family. He lived a hundred and ten years
1. Barnes 22-26, “The biography of Joseph is now completed. “The children of the
third generation” - the grandsons of grandsons in the line of Ephraim. We have here
an explicit proof that an interval of about twenty years between the births of the
father and that of his first-born was not unusual during the lifetime of Joseph. “And
Joseph took an oath.” He thus expressed his unwavering confidence in the return of

85. the sons of Israel to the land of promise. “God will surely visit.” He was embalmed
and put in a coffin, and so kept by his descendants, as was not unusual in Egypt.
And on the return of the sons of Israel from Egypt they kept their oath to Joseph
Exo_13:19, and buried his bones in Shekem Jos_24:32.
The sacred writer here takes leave of the chosen family, and closes the bible of the
sons of Israel. It is truly a wonderful book. It lifts the veil of mystery that hangs over
the present condition of the human race. It records the origin and fall of man, and
thus explains the co-existence of moral evil and a moral sense, and the hereditary
memory of God and judgment in the soul of man. It records the cause and mode of
the confusion of tongues, and thus explains the concomitance of the unity of the race
and the specific diversity of mode or form in human speech. It records the call of
Abraham, and thus accounts for the preservation of the knowledge of God and his
mercy in one section of the human race, and the corruption or loss of it in all the
rest. We need scarcely remark that the six days’ creation accounts for the present
state of nature. It thus solves the fundamental questions of physics, ethics, philology,
and theology for the race of Adam. It notes the primitive relation of man to God,
and marks the three great stages of human development that came in with Adam,
oah, and Abraham. It points out the three forms of sin that usher in these stages -
the fall of Adam, the intermarriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men,
and the building of the tower of Babel. It gradually unfolds the purpose and method
of grace to the returning penitent through a Deliverer who is successively
announced as the seed of the woman, of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and
Judah. This is the second Adam, who, when the covenant of works was about to fall
to the ground through the failure of the first Adam, undertook to uphold it by
fulfilling all its conditions on behalf of those who are the objects of the divine grace.
Hence, the Lord establishes his covenant successively with Adam, oah, and
Abraham; with Adam after the fall tacitly, with oah expressly, and with both
generally as the representatives of the race descending from them; with Abraham
especially and instrumentally as the channel through which the blessings of
salvation might be at length extended to all the families of the earth. So much of this
plan of mercy is revealed from time to time to the human race as comports with the
progress they have made in the education of the intellectual, moral, and active
faculties. This only authentic epitome of primeval history is worthy of the constant
study of intelligent and responsible man.
2. Clarke, “Joseph dwelt in Egypt - Continued in Egypt after his return from
Canaan till his death; he, and his father’s house - all the descendants of Israel, till
the exodus or departure under the direction of Moses and Aaron, which was one
hundred and forty-four years after.
3. Gill, “ And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house,.... Comfortably,
quietly, and in great prosperity, not only he, but his brethren and their families, as
long as he lived:

86. and Joseph lived one hundred and ten years; and all but seventeen of them in Egypt,
for at that age it was when he was brought thither: thirteen years he lived in
Potiphar's house, and in prison, for he was thirty years of age when he was brought
to Pharaoh, and stood before him, and fourscore years he lived in the greatest
honour and prosperity that a man could well wish for.
4. Henry, “The prolonging of Joseph's life in Egypt: he lived to be a hundred and ten
years old, Gen_50:22. Having honoured his father, his days were long in the land
which, for the present, God had given him; and it was a great mercy to his relations
that God continued him so long, a support and comfort to them.
5. Jamison 22-23, “Joseph dwelt in Egypt — He lived eighty years after his elevation
to the chief power [see on Gen_41:46] witnessing a great increase in the prosperity
of the kingdom, and also of his own family and kindred - the infant Church of God.
6. KD 22-23, “Death of Joseph. - Joseph lived to see the commencement of the
fulfilment of his father's blessing. Having reached the age of 110, he saw Ephraim's
שִׁלֵּשִׁים בְּנֵי “sons of the third link,” i.e., of great-grandsons, consequently great-great-grandsons.
שִׁלֵּשִׁים descendants in the third generation are expressly distinguished
from “children's children” or grandsons in Exo_34:7. There is no practical
difficulty in the way of this explanation, the only one which the language will allow.
As Joseph's two sons were born before he was 37 years old (Gen_41:50), and
Ephraim therefore was born, at the latest, in his 36th year, and possibly in his 34th,
since Joseph was married in his 31st year, he might have had grandsons by the time
he was 56 or 60 years old, and great-grandsons when he was from 78 to 85, so that
great-great-grandsons might have been born when he was 100 or 110 years old. To
regard the “sons of the third generation” as children in the third generation (great-grandsons
of Joseph and grandsons of Ephraim), as many commentators do, as
though the construct בְּנֵ י stood for the absolute, is evidently opposed to the context,
since it is stated immediately afterwards, that sons of Machir, the son of Manasseh,
i.e., great-grandsons, were also born upon his knees, i.e., so that he could take them
also upon his knees and show them his paternal love. There is no reason for thinking
of adoption in connection with these words. And if Joseph lived to see only the
great-grandsons of Ephraim as well as of Manasseh, it is difficult to imagine why the
same expression should not be applied to the grandchildren of Manasseh, as to the
descendants of Ephraim.
7. “More than 50 years elapsed between verses 21 and 22. Moses was intent upon
placing the deaths of Jacob and Joseph side by side. Irrelevant details are therefore
set aside to take us directly to the death bed of Joseph, and thus to parallel the death
of Jacob.
Joseph’s life was full at the age of 110 (verse 22). He lived long enough to hold his

87. great-great-grandsons on his knee (verse 23). Knowing that the day of his death
drew near, Joseph like Jacob, charged his brothers concerning his burial. He did not
wish his body to be carried back to Canaan, as Jacob had insisted.
While the burial of Jacob and Joseph are quite different, they are both reflective of
the same faith and hope. Both believed that Israel’s blessings in the future would be
realized in the land of promise. Both were embalmed--Jacob so that his body could
be carried on the long journey to Canaan by his sons, Joseph so that his body could
wait for the exodus at which time his bones would be returned to Canaan, borne by
the Israelites:” author unknown
8. CALVI, “And Joseph dwelt in Egypt. It is not without reason that Moses relates
how long Joseph lived, because the length of the time shows the more clearly his
unfailing constancy: for although he is raised to great honor and power among she
Egyptians, he still is closely united with his father’s house. Hence it is easy to
conjecture, that he gradually took his leave of the treasures of the court, because he
thought there was nothing better for him to do than to hold them in contempt, lest
earthly dignity should separate him from the kingdom of God.
This mention of Israel's departure from Egypt places Joseph in the Hebrews 11
hall of faith (Hebrews 11:22).This mention of Israel's departure from Egypt
places Joseph in the Hebrews 11 hall of faith (Hebrews 11:22).ch might have
occupied his mind in Egypt: he now counts it necessary to proceed further, that,
laying aside his honor, he may descend to an ignoble condition, and wean his own
sons from the hope of succeeding to his worldly rank. We know how anxiously
others labor, both that they themselves may not be reduced in circumstances, and
that they may leave their fortune entire to their posterity: but Joseph, during sixty
years, employed all his efforts to bring himself and his children into a state of
submission, lest his earthly greatness should alienate them from the little flock of the
Lord. In short, he imitated the serpents, who cast off their exuviae, that, being
stripped of their old age, they may gather new strength. He sees the children of his
own grandchildren; why does not his solicitude to provide for them increase, as his
children increase? Yet he has so little regard for worldly rank or opulence, that he
would rather see them devoted to a pastoral life, and be despised by the Egyptians,
if only they might be reckoned in the family of Israel. Besides, in a numerous
offspring during his own life, the Lord afforded him some taste of his benediction,
from which he might conceive the hope of future deliverance: for, among so many
temptations, it was necessary for him to be encouraged and sustained, lest he should
sink under them.
9. Leupold 22-23, “Joseph’s story is briefly concluded. So important a character
cannot be dismissed without some report as to how his life ended. He dwelt —we
would prefer to say lived —in Egypt all his days. All involved understood from
chapter 15 that the time involved in their stay in Egypt was not yet concluded. So
did also the rest of his father’s household continue to reside there. The age to which
Joseph attained shows still more clearly how the span of human life was slowly

88. shortening—Isaac 180, Jacob 147, Joseph 110. During these years Joseph enjoyed
the blessing of seeing three generations after him develop and expand in normal
growth. For the expression children of the third generation (beney shilleshîm)
means grandchildren, for in the expression third generation the original father,
here Joseph, is counted along. K. W. rightly contends that Ex 20:5; De 5:9 settle the
case; for if there shilleshîm meant great-grandchildren, then these two passages
would strangely have omitted the grandchildren. In Manasseh’s line the same
development occurred during Joseph’s lifetime, with the exception that it appeared
only in the line of Machir. The expression were born upon Joseph’s knees is
without a sufficient number of parallels to allow us to decide exactly what it means.
Ge 48:12 does not belong here. The only other occurrence of the expression is Ge
30:3. There are two possibilities. Either these words describe some rite of adoption,
a meaning suitable in 30:3 but not in our passage. Or else they are a concise way of
expressing the double thought that Joseph lived till they were born and he on his
part was able to take them upon his knees. This appeals to us as the more
reasonable.
23. and saw the third generation of Ephraim's
children. Also the children of Makir son of
Manasseh were placed at birth on Joseph's knees.
1. Clarke, “Were brought up upon Joseph’s knees - They were educated by him, or
under his direction; his sons and their children continuing to acknowledge him as
patriarch, or head of the family, as long as he lived.
2. Gill, “And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation,.... His great
grandchildren's children; and which shows, as most interpreters observe, that
Jacob's prediction, that Ephraim should be the greatest and most numerous, very
early began to take place:
and the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon
Joseph's knees; Machir had but one son by his first wife, whose name was Gilead;
but marrying a second wife, he had two sons, Peresh and Sheresh; see 1Ch_7:14
who might be born before the death of Joseph, and be said to be brought up upon
his knees, being educated by him, and often took up in his lap, and dandled on his
knees, as grandfathers, being fond of their grandchildren, are apt to do.
3. Henry, “ The building up of Joseph's family: he lived to see his great-grand-children
by both his sons (Gen_50:23), and probably he saw his two sons solemnly
owned as heads of distinct tribes, equal to any of his brethren. It contributes much
to the comfort of aged parents if they see their posterity in a flourishing condition,
especially if with it they see peace upon Israel, Psa_128:6.

89. III. The last will and testament of Joseph published in the presence of his brethren,
when he saw his death approaching. Those that were properly his brethren perhaps
were some of them dead before him, as several of them were older than he; but to
those of them who yet survived, and to the sons of those who were gone, who stood
up in their fathers' stead, he said this.
4. “His great grandchildren's children; and which shows, as most interpreters
observe, that Jacob's prediction, that Ephraim should be the greatest and most
numerous, very early began to take place: and the children also of Machir, the son
of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph's knees;
Machir had but one son by his first wife, whose name was Gilead; but marrying a
second wife, he had two sons, Peresh and Sheresh; see (1 Chronicles 7:14-16) who
might be born before the death of Joseph, and be said to be brought up upon his
knees, being educated by him, and often took up in his lap, and dandled on his
knees, as grandfathers, being fond of their grandchildren, are apt to do. were
educated by him, or under his direction; his sons and their children continuing to
acknowledge him as patriarch, or head of the family, as long as he lived.” author
unknown
5. S. Lewis Johnson, “There are two great blessings mentioned in Joseph’s life. He
lived a hundred and ten years of age, to be hundred and ten years of age. ow
that’s interesting too because I think I read in one of the commentaries that in
ancient times, in the literature of ancient times, 27 times it is stated that the ideal age
was one hundred and ten years. So Joseph here is given the age that was regarded
as the ideally desirable lifespan in the land of Egypt. It was God’s gesture of
approval upon the activities of Joseph.
And then that other great blessing, he was allowed to see his grandchildren. Joseph
saw the third generation of Ephraim’s sons, also the sons of Machir, the son of
Manasseh who were born on Joseph’s knees. Did you know the Bible speaks about
that as one of the blessings that God gives to men? Grandchildren are the glory of
the father and one of the blessings of an individual is the privilege of seeing one’s
grandchildren. And I have seen my grandchildren, and it looks like I have seen all
of my grandchildren too so far as I can tell. And I am grateful to God for the
privilege of seeing my grandchildren and I know exactly what this means. In the
proverbs, it is stated that that’s one of the blessings of God. In the Psalms it is
stated that that is one of the blessings of God. It was one of those little blessings that
God bestowed upon Joseph. He was able to see his grandchildren.
24. Then Joseph said to his brothers, I am about
to die. But God will surely come to your aid and

90. take you up out of this land to the land he
promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
1. Clarke, “Joseph said - I die - That is, I am dying; and God will surely visit you -
he will yet again give you, in the time when it shall be essentially necessary, the most
signal proof of his unbounded love towards the seed of Jacob.
And bring you out of this land - Though ye have here every thing that can render
life comfortable, yet this is not the typical land, the land given by covenant, the land
which represents the rest that remains for the people of God.
2. Gill, “ And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die,.... Some time before his death he
called them together, and observed to them, that he expected to die in a little time,
as all must:
and God will surely visit you; not in a way of wrath and vindictive justice, as he
sometimes does, but in a way of love, grace, and mercy:
and bring you out of this land; the land of Egypt, in which they then dwelt:
unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; meaning the land
of Canaan, which he swore to those patriarchs that he would give to their posterity.
3. Henry, “He comforted them with the assurance of their return to Canaan in due
time: I die, but God will surely visit you, Gen_50:24. To this purport Jacob had
spoken to him, Gen_48:21. Thus must we comfort others with the same comforts
with which we ourselves have been comforted of God, and encourage them to rest
on those promises which have been our support. Joseph was, under God, both the
protector and the benefactor of his brethren; and what would become of them now
that he was dying? Why, let this be their comfort, God will surely visit you. ote,
God's gracious visits will serve to make up the loss of our best friends. They die; but
we may live, and live comfortably, if we have the favour and presence of God with
us. He bids them be confident: God will bring you out of this land, and therefore, (1.)
They must not hope to settle there, nor look upon it as their rest for ever; they must
set their hearts upon the land of promise, and call that their home. (2.) They must
not fear sinking, and being ruined there; probably he foresaw the ill usage they
would meet with there after his death, and therefore gives them this word of
encouragement: “God will bring you in triumph out of this land at last.” Herein he
has an eye to the promise, Gen_15:13, Gen_15:14, and, in God's name, assures them
of the performance of it. 2. For a confession of his own faith, and a confirmation of
theirs, he charges them to keep him unburied till that day, that glorious day, should
come, when they should be settled in the land of promise, v. 25. He makes them
promise him with an oath that they would bury him in Canaan. In Egypt they

91. buried their great men very honourably and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph
prefers a significant burial in Canaan, and that deferred too almost 200 years,
before a magnificent one in Egypt. Thus Joseph, by faith in the doctrine of the
resurrection and the promise of Canaan, gave commandment concerning his bones,
Heb_11:22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake that God will surely visit
Israel, and bring them to Canaan.
4. Jamison, “Joseph said unto his brethren, I die — The national feelings of the
Egyptians would have been opposed to his burial in Canaan; but he gave the
strongest proof of the strength of his faith and full assurance of the promises, by
“the commandment concerning his bones [Heb_11:22].
5. KD, “When Joseph saw his death approaching, he expressed to his brethren his
firm belief in the fulfilment of the divine promise (Gen_46:4-5, cf. Gen_15:16,
Gen_15:18.), and made them take an oath, that if God should bring them into the
promised land, they would carry his bones with them from Egypt. This last desire of
his was carried out. When he died, they embalmed him, and laid him ( וַיִּישֶׂם from
יָשַׂם , like Gen_24:33 in the chethib) “in the coffin,” i.e., the ordinary coffin,
constructed of sycamore-wood (see Hengstenberg, pp. 71, 72), which was then
deposited in a room, according to Egyptian custom (Herod. 2, 86), and remained in
Egypt for 360 years, until they carried it away with them at the time of the exodus,
when it was eventually buried in Shechem, in the piece of land which had been
bought by Jacob there (Gen_33:19; Jos_24:32).
Thus the account of the pilgrim-life of the patriarchs terminates with an act of
faith on the part of the dying Joseph; and after his death, in consequence of his
instructions, the coffin with his bones became a standing exhortation to Israel, to
turn its eyes away from Egypt to Canaan, the land promised to its fathers, and to
wait in the patience of faith for the fulfilment of the promise.
6. And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the sons of Israel
solemnly swear, saying, “God shall surely take care of you; and you shall carry my
bones from here with you” (Exodus 13:19).
Jacob’s death occasioned a journey to Canaan where the Israelites once again
beheld the land of promise to which they (in their offspring) would return at the
exodus. The burial of Jacob reminded his descendants of their final home, and that
Egypt was only a place of sojourn.
Joseph, on the other hand, was a continual reminder that some day the exodus
would occur. Day after day in Egypt, that coffin spoke of Israel’s future and
Joseph’s faith. And day after weary day, the Israelites trudged through the
wilderness carrying the casket of Joseph. Both men, Jacob and Joseph, determined
that their death and burial would be a testimony to their faith and a stimulus to the
faith of their offspring. “by Yogi Robkin Torah from Dixie Staff Writer

92. 7. “Realizing that his father was about to die, Joseph drew his two sons, Efraim and
Menashe, to Jacob’s deathbed to be blessed while there was still time. Clearly
foreshadowing the fact that Jacob was soon to grant Ephraim and Menashe their
own inheritances in the land of Israel along with the brothers of Joseph, Jacob sits
up in his bed and speaks of the promise that G-d had made with him, that his
offspring would be numerous and inherit the land of Israel.
Then, just when it seemed appropriate to bless his grandchildren, Jacob begins to
discuss the death of his beloved wife Rachel, and where she was buried. What is the
purpose of this latter discussion?Finally, Jacob poises himself to bless Ephraim and
Menashe, and places his hands upon their heads, but, instead of blessing his
grandchildren, Jacob proceeds to bless their father, Joseph. What is going on?
After this delay, Ephraim and Menashe are finally blessed by Jacob, and informed
that their destinies lie not with the rest of Jacob’s grandchildren, but with the sons
of Jacob himself who merit to have their own inheritances in the land of Israel. Why
were Ephraim and Menashe specifically chosen for this special destiny?
The Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson and the author of his own classic commentary on
the Torah, explains that since Jacob was promised the land of Israel, it was within
his rights to grant whomever he wished the firstborn rights to two portions of
inheritance.Based on this explanation, it is clear why Jacob placed his hands on
Ephraim and Menashe, and proceeded in blessing their father, Joseph. As the
Rashbam himself later clarifies, Jacob blessed his grandchildren by blessing their
father.
What the Rashbam is saying is that, in order to bless Ephraim and Menashe with
their own inheritances, Jacob had to first bless Joseph with the firstborn rights
which come with two portions of land. Why though did Jacob give the firstborn
rights to Joseph and not to Reuben, the biological firstborn?
The Chizkuni, a 13th century Torah commentator, explains that, Joseph, out of all
of his brothers, was given a double inheritance because he was the firstborn of
Jacob’s main wife, Rachel. (Jacob only worked for Laban for Rachel’s hand in
marraige.) Based on this understanding we can gather an insight into the reason
why the death of Rachel is mentioned in the middle of this episode.
Before blessing Joseph with the firstborn rights, Jacob informs Joseph of his
intention to bless him; Jacob reveals that Ephraim and Menashe will receive their
own portions of land, and Joseph realized that this was only possible if he was given
the firstborn rights. Clear to Joseph that he was only given these rights as a result of

93. his being the firstborn of Rachel, Jacob’s main wife, Joseph was subsequently
disturbed. If my mother was Jacob’s main wife, why was Leah, unlike my mother,
buried in the Cave of Machpelah, with the other patriarchs and matriarchs?
Jacob, realizing that Joseph would be disturbed with this question, beat Joseph to
the point, and explained that since Rachel died on the way to the land of Israel, she
was buried there on the road, and not in the Cave of Machpelah.
On another level, it is possible to suggest that Joseph was given the firstborn rights
because of who Joseph the individual was. Joseph is actually the Jacob of the next
generation. The Midrash on the verse, These are the offspring of Jacob: Joseph....
(Genesis 37:2), comments that Joseph alone was called the offspring of Jacob. The
Midrash explains that this is so for several reasons. Firstly, because Jacob’s sole
purpose in working for Laban was for Rachel, Joseph’s mother. Secondly, because
Joseph’s physical appearance resembled Jacob. Furthermore, because everything
that happened to Jacob happened to Joseph as well: Jacob was hated, and Joseph
was hated; Jacob’s brother sought to kill him, and Joseph’s brothers sought to kill
him.
As evident from this Midrash, Jacob’s special relationship with Joseph existed
because these two spiritual giants were essentially one and the same person. This
being the case, if Jacob was one of the forefathers, Joseph too was a quasi father;
making Joseph’s children, Ephraim and Menashe, quasi tribes, and deserving of
their own inheritances. In fact, later in the Torah portion, Joseph is described as the
shepherd of the evan—stone of Israel (ibid. 49:24).
Rashi, the preeminent commentator on the Torah, explains that the Hebrew word
evan is an abbreviated form of av ve’ben—father and son. Joseph is connected
to both the destiny of the forefathers and the sons. In fact, Joseph serves as the
bridge between the two. It is no coincidence then that the death of Joseph is
mentioned at the end of Genesis, the Biblical book dealing almost exclusively with
the happenings of the forefathers, and mentioned once again in the book of Exodus,
the Biblical book involved with the dealings of the sons—the twelve tribes.
The job of the Jew is to search deep inside of himself and discern where his destiny
lies. Is he to be the father, acting as the leader and guide, or is he to be the passive
son, acting as a receiver of wisdom, and following in the ways previously paved for
him, or is he to be a little of both? Success in life comes with finding and accepting
one’s true destiny, and playing out that destiny as best as one can.
This article was based on a lecture delivered by Rabbi Isaacson of Yeshiva
Mevasserret Tzion, which was based on a shiur of his wife Rebbetzin Isaacson of
Michlelet Mevasseret Yerushalayim.

94. 8. BROW, Before his death Joseph prophesied the Exodus and Joseph made the
Israelites swear that they would take his bones out of Egypt. With that in mind he
was embalmed (as Jacob was, 50:2-3) and placed in a coffin as evidence of their
faith in the return of the Jewish nation to thepromised land. The coffin was taken
out according to Joseph’s instructions in the Exodus a hundred and forty years
later (13:19). Joseph did not say, as Jacob had done, that the coffin should be
interred in the Cave of Machpelah (49:30). A site for the grave of Joseph is located
in Shechem, which is 60 miles, 72 km. to the north of the family tomb. It is possible
that, in the confusion of the wars that Joshua had to fight, Joshua’s bones were
interred in what became the orthern Kingdom and later named Samaria.
9. Leupold 24-26, “When Joseph felt his end approach, he spoke these last words
and made this last provision. The participle meth describes an act which takes its
beginning in the present and runs on into the future (K. S. 237 d). The pronoun I
(’anokhî) is emphatic by the contrast involved: I die, but God will visit. The
statement implies that during Joseph’s lifetime Israel’s sons derived much comfort
from the fact that Joseph sponsored their best interests. ow he, indeed, must die.
Joseph emphasizes that they will have a Greater than himself to provide for them.
In giving assurance of positive divine deliverance Joseph is not uttering a prediction
which came to him by divine revelation. He is merely perpetuating a truth revealed
already in Abraham’s time (Ge 15:16), a truth of which Israel will stand in need
more and more as the stay in Egypt grows protracted. Assuredly visit is expressed
by the strong construction of a verb reinforced by an absolute infinitive. God’s
promise to the patriarchs justly looms up as of fundamental importance from these
times onward especially. So much for the momentous word of encouragement from
the lips of the dying Joseph.
10. CALVI, “And Joseph said unto his brethren. It is uncertain whether Joseph
died the first or the last of the brethren, or whether a part of them survived him.
Here indeed Moses includes, under the name of brethren, not only those who were
really so, but other relations. I think, however, that certain of the chiefs of each
family were called at his command, from whom the whole of the people might
receive information: and although it is probable that the other patriarchs also gave
the same command respecting themselves, since the bones of them all were, in like
manner, conveyed into the land of Canaan; yet special mention is made of Joseph
alone, for two reasons. First, since the eyes of them all were fixed upon him, on
account of his high authority, it was his duty to lead their way, and cautiously to
beware lest the splendor of his dignity should cast a stumbling block before any of
them. Secondly, it was of great consequence, as an example, that it should be known
to all the people, that he who held the second place in the kingdom of Egypt,
regardless of so great an honor, was contented with his own coalition, which was
only that of the heir of a bare promise.
I die. This expression has the force of a command to his brethren to be of good

95. courage after his death, because the truth of God is immortal; for he does not wish
them to depend upon his life or that of another man, so as to cause them to
prescribe a limit to the power of God; but he would have them patiently to rest till
the suitable time should arrive. But whence had he this great certainty, that he
should be a witness and a surety of future redemption, except from his having been
so taught by his father? For we do not read that God had appeared unto him, or
that an oracle had been brought to him by an angel from heaven; but because he
was certainly persuaded that Jacob was a divinely appointed teacher and prophet,
who should transmit to his sons the covenant of salvation deposited with him;
Joseph relies upon his testimony not less securely than if some vision had been
presented to him, or he had seen angels descending to him from heaven: for unless
the hearing of the word is sufficient for our faith, we deserve not that God, whom we
then defraud of his honor, should condescend to deal with us: not that faith relies on
human authority, but because it hears God speaking through the mouth of men, and
by their external voice is drawn upwards; for what God pronounces through men,
he seals on our hearts by his Spirit. Thus faith is built on no other foundation than
God himself; and yet the preaching of men is not wanting in its claim of authority
and reverence. This restraint is put upon the rash curiosity of those men, who,
eagerly desiring visions, despise the ordinary ministry of the Church; as if it were
absurd that God, who formerly showed himself to the fathers out of heaven, should
send forth his voice out of the earth. But if they would reflect how gloriously he once
descended to us in the person of his only-begotten Son, they would not so
importunately desire that heaven should daily be opened unto them. But, not to
insist upon these things; when the brethren saw that Joseph, — who in this respect
was inferior to his fathers, as having been partaker of no oracle, — had been
imbued by them with the doctrine of piety, so that he contended with a faith similar
to theirs; they would at once be most ungrateful and malignant, if they rejected the
participation of his grace.”
25. And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an
oath and said, God will surely come to your aid,
and then you must carry my bones up from this
place.
1. Clarke, “Ye shall carry up my bones - That I may finally rest with my ancestors
in the land which God gave to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and which is a
pledge as it is a type of the kingdom of Heaven. Thus says the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, Heb_11:22 : “By Faith Joseph, when he died, (τελευτων, when
dying), made mention of the departure (εξοδου, of the Exodus) of the children of

96. Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. From this it is evident that
Joseph considered all these things as typical, and by this very commandment
expressed his faith in the immortality of the soul, and the general resurrection of the
dead. This oath, by which Joseph then bound his brethren, their posterity
considered as binding on themselves; and Moses took care, when he departed from
Egypt, to carry up Joseph’s body with him, Exo_13:19; which was afterwards
buried in Shechem, Jos_24:32, the very portion which Jacob had purchased from
the Amorites, and which he gave to his son Joseph, Gen_48:22; Act_7:16. See the
reason for this command as given by Chrysostom, vol. ii., p. 695, sec. D.E.
1B. Heb. 11:22 is a ref. To this text. This is about all the ew Testament says of a
man who takes up 13 chapters of the Genesis. He was sold at 17 and dies at 110, and
so lived in Egypt for 93 years. He still lived in the hope of the future for his people in
Israel. His bones traveled further than any other persons bones in the Bible. He laid
in his coffin for four centuries. Few travel far after they are boned, but he was still
on the move as bones.
2. Gill, “And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel,.... ot of his brethren
only, but of their posterity, as many of them as were now grown up, that so it might
be communicated from one to another, and become well known to that generation
which should depart out of Egypt:
saying, God will surely visit you; which he repeats for the certainty of it, and that it
might be observed:
and ye shall carry up my bones from hence; when they should go from thence to
Canaan's land; he did not desire them to carry him thither when he should die,
which he knew would give umbrage to the Egyptians, and they would not be so able
to obtain leave to do it as he had for his father. This was accordingly done; when
Israel went out of Egypt, Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, and they were
buried in Shechem; see Exo_13:19.
3. CALVI, “God will surely visit you. By these words he intimates that they would
be buried as in oblivion, so long as they remained in Egypt: and truly that exile was
as if God had turned his back on them for a season. evertheless, Joseph does not
cease to fix the eyes of his mind on God; as it is written in the Prophet,
“I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face
from the house of Jacob.” (Isaiah 8:17.)
This passage also clearly teaches what was the design of this anxious choice of his
sepulcher, namely, that it might be a seal of redemption: for after he has asserted
that God was faithful, and would, in his own time, grant what he had promised, he
immediately adjures his brethren to carry away his bones. These were useful relics,

97. the sight of which plainly signified that, by the death of men, the eternal covenant in
which Joseph commands his posterity safely to rest, had by no means become
extinct; for he deems it sufficient to adduce the oath of God, to remove all their
doubts respecting their deliverance.”
4.Leupold, “25. In addition he has a solemn word of request to make, to which he
binds the Israelites by oath, namely that they are ultimately to bring his bones up to
the land of promise, that is to say at the time when they are themselves brought up
by God, an act here again rightly described as a visiting (paqodh), a term
descriptive of every act of divine intervention in the lives of men. Joseph does not
expect his brethren to execute this commission at once. The circumstances are so
different at his death from what they were when Jacob died. Then an immediate
granting of the request was feasible because of Joseph’s influential position. After
Joseph’s death there was no man of Israel influential enough to make the needed
arrangements. It would be misconstruing Joseph’s purpose to regard the oath
imposed as little more than an act designed for the gratification of a cherished hope.
By laying it upon his people he gave eloquent testimony to his faith in God’s
promises, and by leaving his body in their midst he gave them a continual reminder
of that gracious promise.
5. MACLARE, “ ‘Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will
surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.’—GEESIS l. 25.
This is the one act of Joseph’s life which the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews selects as the sign that he too lived by faith. ‘By faith Joseph,
when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and
gave commandment concerning his bones.’
It was at once a proof of how entirely he believed God’s promise, and of how
earnestly he longed for its fulfilment. It was a sign too of how little he
felt himself at home in Egypt, though to outward appearance he had become
completely one of its people. The ancestral spirit was in him true and
strong though he was ‘separate from his brethren.’ He bore an Egyptian name,
a swelling title, he married an Egyptian woman, he had an Egyptian priest

98. for father-in-law, but he was an Israelite in heart; and in the midst of
official cares and a surfeit of honours, his desires turned away from them
all towards the land promised by God to his fathers.
And when he lay dying, he could not bear to think that his bones should
moulder in the country where his life had been spent. ‘I know that this is
not our land after all; swear to me that when the promise that has tarried
so long comes at last, you will take me, all that is left of me, and carry
it up, and lay it in some corner of the blessed soil, that I too may somehow
share in the inheritance of His people. God shall surely visit you. Carry my
bones up hence.’
Perhaps there is in this wish a trace of something besides faith in God’s
promises. Of course, there is a natural sentiment which no clearness of
knowledge of a future state wholly dispels. We all feel as if somehow our
bodies remain a part of ourselves even after death, and we have wishes where
they shall lie. But perhaps Joseph had a more definite belief on the matter
than that. What theory of another life does an Egyptian mummy express? Why
all that sedulous care to preserve the poor relics? Was it not a consequence
of the belief that somehow or other there could be no life without a body,
and that in some mysterious way the preservation of that contributed to the
continuance of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and
put into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought
prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the land
of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry him thither. Be that as it
may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation of flesh and

99. spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too possess, that our
graves may not be among strangers, but beside our father’s and our mother’
s—that is not the main thing in this fact. The main thing is that this dying
man believed God’s promise, and claimed his share in it.
And on this the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was,
fastens. eglecting the differences in knowledge between Joseph and the
Christians whom he addresses, and pointing back to the strong confidence in
God and longing for participation in the promises which brightened the
glazing eye and gave him ‘hope in his death,’ he declares that the principle
of action which guided this man in the dim twilight of early revelation, is
that same faith which ought to guide us who live in the full light of the
unsetting sun.
Taking, then, this incident, with the ew Testament commentary upon it, it
leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of, but which is indispensable
if we would understand the relations of the earlier and later days.
1. Faith is always the same, though knowledge varies.—There is a vast
difference between a man’s creed and a man’s faith. The one may vary, does
vary within very wide limits; the other remains the same. The things
believed have been growing from the beginning—the attitude of mind and will
by which they have been grasped has been the same from the beginning, and
will be the same to the end. And not only so, but it will be substantially
the same in heaven as it is on earth. For there is but one bond which unites
men to God; and that emotion of loving trust is one and the same in the dim

100. twilight of the world’s morning, and amid the blaze of the noonday of
heaven. The contents of faith, that on which it relies, the treasure it
grasps, changes; the essence of faith, the act of reliance, the grasp which
holds the treasure, does not change.
It is difficult to decide how much Joseph’s gospel contained. From our point
of view it was very imperfect. The spiritual life was nourished in him and
in the rest of ‘the world’s grey fathers’ on what looks to us but like seven
basketsful of fragments. They had promises, indeed, in which we, looking at
them with the light of fulfilment blazing upon them, can see the broad
outlines of the latest revelation, and can trace the future flower all
folded together and pale in the swelling bud. But we shall err greatly if we
suppose, as we are apt to do, that those promises were to them anything like
what they are to us. It requires a very vigorous exercise of very rare gifts
to throw ourselves back to their position, and to gain any vivid and
approximately accurate notion of the theology of these ancient lovers of
God.
This, at any rate, we may, perhaps, say: they had a sure and clear knowledge
of the living God, who had talked with them as with a friend; they knew His
inspiring, guiding presence; they knew the forgiveness of sins; they knew,
though they very dimly understood, the promise, ‘In thy seed shall all the
families of the earth be blessed.’ How far they looked across the gulf of
death and beheld anything—even cloudland—on the other side, is a question
very hard to answer, and about which confident dogmatism, either affirmative
or negative, is unwarranted. But it is to be remembered that, whether they

101. had any notion of a future state or no, they had a promise which fulfilled
for them substantially the same office as that does for us. The promise of
the land of Canaan gleaming before them through the mists, bare and
‘earthly’ as it seems to us when compared with our hope of an inheritance
incorruptible in the heavens, is, by the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, identified with that hope of ours, for he expressly says that,
whilst they were looking for an earthly Canaan, they were ‘desiring a better
country, that is an heavenly.’ So that, whether they definitely expected a
life after death or not, the anticipation of the land promised to them and
to their fathers held the same place in their creed, and as a moral agent in
their lives, which the rest that remains for the people of God ought to do
in ours.
And it is to be taken into account also that fellowship with God has in it
the germ of the assurance of immortality. It seems almost impossible to
suppose a state of mind in which a man living in actual communion with God
shall believe that death is to end it all. Christ’s proof that immortal life
was revealed in the Pentateuch, was the fact that God there called Himself
the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; by which our Lord meant us to
learn that men who are brought into personal relations with God can never
die, that it is impossible that a soul which has looked up to the face of
the unseen Father with filial love should be left in the grave, or that
those who are separated to be His, as He is theirs, should see corruption.
The relation once established is eternal, and some more or less definite
expectation of that eternity seems inseparable from the consciousness of the
relation.

102. But be that as it may, and even taking the widest possible view of the
contents of the patriarchal creed, what a rude outline it looks beside ours!
Can there be anything in common between us? Can they be in any way a pattern
for us? Yes; as I said, faith is one thing, creed is another. Joseph and his
ancestors were joined to God by the very same bond which unites us to Him.
There has never been but one path of life: ‘They trusted God and were
lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ In that Old Covenant the one
thing needful was trust in the living Jehovah. In the ew, the one thing
needful is the very same emotion, directed to the very same Lord, manifested
now and incarnate in the divine Son, our Saviour. In this exercise of loving
confidence, in which reason and will and affection blend in the highest
energy and holiest action, Joseph and we are one. Across the gulf of
centuries we clasp hands; and in despite of all superficial differences of
culture and civilisation, and all deeper differences in knowledge of God and
His loving will, Pharaoh’s prime minister, and the English workman, and the
Hindoo ryot, may be alike in what is deepest—the faith which grasps God. How
all that mysterious Egyptian life fades away as we think of the fundamental
identity of religious emotion then and now! It disguises our brother from
us, as it did from the wandering Arabs who came to buy corn, and could not
recognise in the swarthy, imperious Egyptian, with strange head-dress and
unknown emblems hanging by chains of gold about his neck, the fair boy whom
they had sold to the merchants. But beneath it all is the brother’s heart,
fed by the same life-blood which feeds ours. He trusts in God, he expects a
future because God has promised it, and, therefore, he is separated from
those among whom he dwells, and knit to us in this far-off island of the

103. sea, who so many centuries after are partakers of like precious faith.
And incomplete as his creed was, Joseph may have been a better Christian
than some of us, and was so, if what he knew nourished his spiritual life
more than what we know nourishes ours, and if his heart and will twined more
tenaciously round the fragments of revelation which he possessed, and drew
from them more support and strength than we do from the complete Gospel
which we have.
Brethren, what makes us Christians is not the theology we have in our heads,
but the faith and love we have in our hearts. We must, indeed, have a clear
statement of truth in orderly propositions—that is, a system of dogmas—to
have anything to trust to at all. There can be no saving faith in an unseen
Person, except through the medium of thoughts concerning Him, which thoughts
put into words are a creed. The antithesis which is often eagerly urged upon
us—not doctrines, but Christ—is a very incomplete and misleading one.
‘Christ’ is a mere name, empty of all significance till it is filled with
definite statements of who and what Christ is. But whilst I, for my part,
believe that we must have doctrines to make Christ a reality and an object
of faith to grasp at all, I would urge all the more earnestly, because I
thus believe, that, when we have these doctrines, it is not the creed that
saves, but the faith. We are united to Christ, not by the doctrine of His
nature and work, needful as that is, but by trusting in Him as that which
the doctrine declares Him to be—Redeemer, Friend, Sacrifice, Divine Lover of
our souls. Let us always remember that it is not the amount of religious
knowledge which I have got, but the amount which I use, that determines my

104. religious position and character. Most of us have in our creeds principles
that have no influence upon our moral and active life; and, if so, it
matters not one whit how pure, how accurate, how comprehensive, how
consistent, how scriptural my conceptions of the Gospel may be. If they are
not powers in my soul, they only increase my responsibility and my liability
to condemnation. The dry light of the understanding is of no use to anybody.
You must turn your creed into a faith before it has power to bless and save.
There are hosts of so-called Christians who get no more good out of the most
solemn articles of their orthodox belief than if they were heathens. What in
the use of your saying that you believe in God the Father Almighty, when
there is no child’s love and happy confidence in your heart? What the better
are you for believing in Jesus Christ, His divine nature, His death and
glory, when you have no reliance on Him, nor any least flutter of trembling
love towards Him? Is your belief in the Holy Ghost of the smallest
consequence, if you do not yield to His hallowing power? What does it matter
that you believe in the forgiveness of sins, so long as you do not care a
rush whether yours are pardoned or no? And is it anything to you or to God
that you believe in the life everlasting, if all your work, and hopes, and
longings are confined to ‘this bank and shoal of time’? Are you any more a
Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these solemn verities?
Is not your life like some secularised monastic chamber, with holy texts
carved on the walls, and saintly images looking down from glowing windows on
revellers and hucksters who defile its floor? Your faith, not your creed,
determines your religion. Many a ‘true believer’ is a real ‘infidel.’

105. Thank God that the soul may be wedded to Christ, even while a very partial
conception of Christ is in the understanding. The more complete and adequate
the creed, indeed, the mightier and more fruitful in blessing will the faith
naturally be; and every portion of the full orb of the Sun of Righteousness
which is eclipsed by the shadow of our intellectual misconceptions, will
diminish the light and warmth which falls upon our souls. It is no part of
our duty to pronounce what is the minimum of a creed which faith needs for
its object. For myself, I confess that I do not understand how the spiritual
life can be sustained in its freshness and fervour, in its fulness and
reality, without a belief in the divinity and saving work of Jesus Christ.
But with that belief for the centre which faith grasps, the rest may vary
indefinitely. All who stand around that centre, some nearer, some further
off, some mazed in errors which others have cast behind them, some of them
seeing and understanding more, and some less of Him and of His work—are His.
He loves them, and will save them all. Knowledge varies. The faith which
unites to God remains the same.
2. We may gather from this incident another consideration, namely, that
Faith has its noblest office in detaching from the present.
All his life long, from the day of his captivity, Joseph was an Egyptian in
outward seeming. He filled his place at Pharaoh’s court, but his dying words
open a window into his soul, and betray how little he had felt that he
belonged to the order of things in the midst of which he had been content to
live. This man, too, surrounded by an ancient civilisation, and dwelling
among granite temples and solid pyramids and firm-based sphinxes, the very

106. emblems of eternity, confessed that here he had no continuing city, but
sought one to come. As truly as his ancestors who dwelt in tabernacles, like
Abraham journeying with his camels and herds, and pitching his tent outside
the walls of Hebron, like Isaac in the grassy plains of the South country,
like Jacob keeping himself apart from the families of the land, their
descendant, an heir with them of the same promise, showed that he too
regarded himself as a ‘stranger and a sojourner.’ Dying, he said, ‘Carry my
bones up from hence. Therefore we may be sure that, living, the hope of the
inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an
alien everywhere but on its blessed soil.
And faith will always produce just such effects. In exact proportion to its
strength, that living trust in God will direct our thoughts and desires to
the ‘King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.’ In proportion
as our thoughts and desires are thus directed, they will be averted from
what is round about us; and the more longingly our eyes are fixed on the
furthest horizon, the less shall we see the flowers at our feet. To behold
God pales the otherwise dazzling lustre of created brightness. They whose
souls are fed with heavenly manna, and who have learned that it is their
necessary food, will scent no dainties in the fleshpots of Egypt, for all
their rank garlic and leeks. It is simply a question as to which of two
classes of ideas occupies the thoughts, and which of two sets of affections
engages the heart. If vulgar brawling and rude merrymakers fill the inn,
there will be no room for the pilgrim thoughts which bear the Christ in
their bosom, and have angels for their guard; and if these holy wayfarers
enter, their serene presence will drive forth the noisy crowd, and turn the

107. place into a temple. othing but Christian faith gives to the furthest
future the solidity and definiteness which it must have, if it is to be a
breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must be through their
thoughts. It must become intelligible, clear, real. It must be brought out
of the flickering moonlight of fancy and surmises, into the sunlight of
certitude and knowledge. Dreams, and hopes, and peradventures are too
unsubstantial stuff to be a bulwark against the very real, undeniable
present. And such certitude is given through faith which grasps the promises
of God, and twines the soul round the risen Saviour so closely that it sits
with Him in heavenly places. Such certitude is given by faith alone.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must become not only an
object for certain knowledge, but also for ardent wishes. The vague sense of
possible evils lurking in its mysteries must be taken out of the soul, and
there must come somehow an assurance that all it wraps in its folds is joy
and peace. It must cease to be doubtful, and must seem infinitely desirable.
Does anything but Christian faith engage the heart to love, and all the
longing wishes to set towards, the things that are unseen and eternal? Where
besides, then, can there be found a counterpoise weighty enough to heave up
the souls that are laden with the material, and cleaving to the dust?
owhere. The only possible deliverance from the tyrannous pressure of the
trifles amidst which we live is in having the thoughts familiarised with
Christ in heaven, which will dwarf all that is on earth, and in having the
affections fixed on Him, which will emancipate them from the pains and

108. sorrows that ever wait upon love of the mutable and finite creatures.
Let us remember that such deliverance from the present is the condition of
all noble, joyous, pure life. It needs Christianity to effect it indeed, but
it does not need Christianity to see how desirable it is, and how closely
connected with whatever is lovely and of good report is this detachment from
the near and the visible. A man that is living for remote objects is, in so
far, a better man than one who is living for the present. He will become
thereby the subject of a mental and moral discipline that will do him good.
And, on the other hand, a life which has no far-off light for its guiding
star, has none of the unity, of the self-restraint, of the tension, of the
conscious power which makes our days noble and strong. Whether he accomplish
them or fail, whether they be high or low, the man who lets future objects
rule present action is in advance of others. ‘To scorn delights and live
laborious days,’ which is the prerogative of the man with a future, is
always best. He is rather a beast than a man, who floats lazily on the warm,
sunny wavelets as they lift him in their roll, and does not raise his head
high enough above them to see and steer for the solid shore where they
break. But only he has found the full, controlling, blessing, quickening
power that lies in the thought of the future, and in life directed by it, to
whom that future is all summed in the name of his Saviour. Whatever makes a
man live in the past and in the future raises him; but high above all others
stand those to whom the past is an apocalypse of God, with Calvary for its
centre, and all the future is fellowship with Christ, and joy in the
heavens. Having these hopes, it will be our own faults if we are not pure
and gentle, calm in changes and sorrows, armed against frowning dangers, and

109. proof against smiling temptations. They are our armour—‘Put on the
breastplate of faith . . .and for an helmet the hope of salvation.’
A very sharp test for us all lies in these thoughts. This change of the
centre of interest from earth to heaven is the uniform effect of faith.
What, then, of us? On Sundays we profess to seek for a city; but what about
the week, from Monday morning to Saturday night? What difference does our
faith make in the current of our lives? How far are they unlike—I do not
mean externally and in occupations, but in principle—the lives of men who
‘have no hope’? Are you living for other objects than theirs? Are you
nurturing other hopes in your hearts, as a man may guard a little spark of
fire with both his hands, to light him amid the darkness and the howling
storm? Do you care to detach yourself from the world? or are you really ‘men
of this world, which have their portion in this life,’ even while Christians
by profession? A question which I have no right to ask, and no power to
answer but for myself; a question which it concerns your souls to ask and to
answer very definitely for yourselves. There is no need to preach an
exaggerated and impossible abstinence from work and enjoyment in the world
where God has put us, or to set up a standard ‘too high for mortal life
beneath the sky.’ Whatever call there may have sometimes been to protest
against a false asceticism, and withdrawing from active life for the sake of
one’s personal salvation, times are changed now. What we want to-day is:
‘Come ye out and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.’ In my
conscience I believe that multitudes are having the very heart of the
Christian life eaten out by absorption in earthly pursuits and loves, and by
the effacing of all distinction in outward life, in occupation, in

110. recreation, in tastes and habits, between people who call themselves
Christians, and people who do not care at all whether there is another world
or not. There can be but little strength in our faith if it does not compel
us to separation. If it has any power to do anything at all, it will
certainly do that. If we are naturalised as citizens there, we cannot help
being aliens here. ‘Abraham,’ says the ew Testament, ‘dwelt in tabernacles,
for he looked for a city.’ Just so! The tent life will always be the natural
one for those who feel that their mother-country is beyond the stars. We
should be like the wandering Swiss, who hear in a strange land the rude, old
melody that used to echo among the Alpine pastures. The sweet, sad tones
kindle home-sickness that will not let them rest. o matter where they are,
or what they are doing, no matter what honour they have carved out for
themselves with their swords, they throw off the livery of the alien king
which they have worn, and turning their backs upon pomp and courts, seek the
free air of the mountains, and find home better than a place by a foreign
throne. Let us esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures of Egypt, and go forth to Him without the camp, for here have we
no continuing city.
3. Again, we have here an instance that Faith makes men energetic in the
duties of the present.
The remarks which I have been making must be completed by that
consideration, or they become hurtful and one-sided. You know that common
sarcasm, that Christianity degrades this present life by making it merely
the portal to a better, and teaches men to think of it as only evil, to be

111. scrambled through anyhow. I confess that I wish the sneer were a less
striking contrast to what Christian people really think. But it is almost as
gross a caricature of the teaching of Christianity as it is of the practice
of Christians.
Take this story of Joseph as giving us a truer view of the effect on present
action of faith in, and longing for, God’s future. He was, as I said, a true
Hebrew all his days. But that did not make him run away from Pharaoh’s
service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better worker in the
passing moment, and kept him tugging away all his life at the oar,
administering the affairs of a kingdom.
Of course it is so. The one thing which saves this life from being
contemptible is the thought of another. The more profoundly we feel the
reality of the great eternity whither we are being drawn, the greater do all
things here become. They are made less in their power to absorb or trouble,
but they are made infinitely greater in importance as preparations for what
is beyond. When they are first they are small, when they are second they are
great. When the mist lifts, and shows the snowy summits of the ‘mountains of
God,’ the nearer lower ranges, which we thought the highest, dwindle indeed,
but gain in sublimity and meaning by the loftier peaks to which they lead
up. Unless men and women live for eternity, they are ‘merely players,’ and
all their busy days ‘like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.’ How absurd, how monotonous, how trivial it all is, all
this fret and fume, all these dying joys and only less fleeting pains, all
this mill-horse round of work which we pace, unless we are, mill-horse-like,

112. driving a shaft that goes through the wall, and grinds something that falls
into ‘bags that wax not old’ on the other side. The true Christian faith
teaches us that this world is the workshop where God makes men, and the
next, the palace where He shows them. All here is apprenticeship and
training. It is of no more value than the attitudes into which gymnasts
throw themselves, but as a discipline most precious. The end makes the means
important; and if we believe that God is preparing us for immortal life with
Him by all our work, then we shall do it with a will: otherwise we may well
be languid as we go on for thirty or forty years, some of us, doing the same
trivial things, and getting nothing out of them but food, occupation of
time, and a mechanical aptitude for doing what is not worth doing.
It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground. A picture without
sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal
calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree-tops with withering leaves, and
the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts
to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to
heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is
blessed to gaze, it is possible to love, the earthly shadows of the
uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work.
Remember, too, that faith will energise us for any sort of work, seeing that
it raises all to one level and brings all under one sanction, and shows all
as cooperating to one end. Look at that muster-roll of heroes of faith in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, and mark the variety of grades of human life
represented there—statesmen, soldiers, prophets, shepherds, widow women,

113. martyrs—all fitted for their tasks and delivered from the snare that was in
their calling, by that faith which raised them above the world, and
therefore fitted them to come down on the world with stronger strokes of
duty. This is the secret of doing with our might whatsoever our hand finds
to do-to trust Christ, to live with Him, and by the hope of the inheritance.
Then, brethren, let us see that our clearer revelation bears fruit in a
faith in the great divine promises as calm and firm as this dying patriarch
had. Then the same power will work not only the same detachment and energy
in life, but the same calmness and solemn light of hope in death. It is very
beautiful to notice how Joseph dying almost overleaps the thought of death
as a very small matter. His brethren who stood by his bedside might well
fear what might be the consequences to their people when the powerful
protector, the prime minister of the kingdom, was gone. But the dying man
has firm hold of God’s promises, and he knows that these will be fulfilled,
whether he live or no. ‘I die,’ says he, ‘but God shall surely visit you. He
is not going to die; and though I stand no more before Pharaoh, you will be
safe.’
Thus we may contemplate our own going away, or the departure of the dearest
from our homes, and of the most powerful for good in human affairs, and in
the faith of God’s true promises may feel that no one is indispensable to
our well-being or to the world’s good. God’s chariot is self-moving. One
after another, who lays his hand upon the ropes, and hauls for a little
space, drops out of the ranks. But it will go on, and in His majesty He will
ride prosperously.

114. And for himself, too, the dying man felt that death was a very small matter.
‘Whether I live or die I shall have a share in the promise. Living, perhaps
my feet would stand upon its soil; dying, my bones will rest there.’ And we,
who know a resurrection, have in it that which makes Joseph’s fond fancy a
reality, and reduces the importance of that last enemy to nothing. Some will
be alive and remain till the coming of the Lord, some will be laid in the
grave till His voice calls them forth, and carries their bones up from hence
to the land of the inheritance. But whether we be of generations that fell
on sleep looking for the promise of His coming, or whether of the generation
that go forth to meet Him when He comes, it matters not. All who have lived
by faith will then be gathered at last. The brightest hopes of the present
will be forgotten. Then, when we too shall stand in the latter day, wearing
the likeness of His glory, and extricated wholly from the bondage of
corruption and the dust of death, we, perfected in body, soul, and spirit,
shall enter the calm home, where we shall change the solitude of the desert
and the transitoriness of the tent and the dangers of the journey, for the
society and the stability and the security of the city which hath
foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
_________________________________________________________________
26. So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and
ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed
in a coffin in Egypt.
1. Clarke, “Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old - בן מאה ועשר שנים ben

115. meah vaeser shanim; literally, the son of a hundred and ten years. Here the period
of time he lived is personified, all the years of which it was composed being
represented as a nurse or father, feeding, nourishing, and supporting him to the
end. This figure, which is termed by rhetoricians prosopopaeia, is very frequent in
Scripture; and by this virtues, vices, forms, attributes, and qualities, with every part
of inanimate nature, are represented as endued with reason and speech, and
performing all the actions of intelligent beings.
They embalmed him - See Clarke on Gen_50:2 (note). The same precautions were
taken to preserve his body as to preserve that of his father Jacob; and this was
particularly necessary in his case, ‘because his body was to be carried to Canaan a
hundred and forty-four years after; which was the duration of the Israelites’
bondage after the death of Joseph.
And he was put in a coffin in Egypt - On this subject I shall subjoin some useful
remarks from Harmer’s Observations, which several have borrowed without
acknowledgment. I quoted my own edition of this Work, vol. iii., p. 69, etc. Lond.
1808.
“There were some methods of honoring the dead which demand our attention; the
being put into a coffin has been in particular considered as a mark of distinction.
“With us the poorest people have their coffins; if the relations cannot afford them,
the parish is at the expense. In the east, on the contrary, they are not always used,
even in our times. The ancient Jews probably buried their dead in the same manner:
neither was the body of our Lord put in a coffin, nor that of Elisha, whose bones
were touched by the corpse that was let down a little after into his sepulcher,
2Ki_13:21. That coffins were anciently used in Egypt, all agree; and antique coffins
of stone and of sycamore wood are still to be seen in that country, not to mention
those said to be made of a sort of pasteboard, formed by folding and gluing cloth
together a great number of times, curiously plastered, and then painted with
hieroglyphics.
“As it was an ancient Egyptian custom, and was not used in the neighboring
countries, on these accounts the sacred historian was doubtless led to observe of
Joseph that he was not only embalmed, but was also put in a coffin, both being
practices almost peculiar to the Egyptians.
“Mr. Maillet conjectures that all were not enclosed in coffins which were laid in
the Egyptian repositories of the dead, but that it was an honor appropriated to
persons of distinction; for after having given an account of several niches which are
found in those chambers of death, he adds: ‘But it must not be imagined that the
bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all enclosed in chests, and placed
in niches. The greater part were simply embalmed and swathed, after which they
laid them one by the side of the other, without any ceremony. Some were even put
into these tombs without any embalming at all, or with such a slight one that there
remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and
these half rotten. It is probable that each considerable family had one of these
burial-places to themselves; that the niches were designed for the bodies of the
heads of the family; and that those of their domestics and slaves had no other care
taken of them than merely laying them in the ground after being slightly embalmed,

116. and sometimes even without that; which was probably all that was done to heads of
families of less distinction.’-Lett. 7, p. 281. The same author gives an account of a
mode of burial anciently practiced in that country, which has been but recently
discovered: it consisted in placing the bodies, after they were swathed up, on a layer
of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, under a bed of sand seven or eight feet
deep.
“Hence it seems evident that coffins were not universally used in Egypt, and were
only used for persons of eminence and distinction. It is also reasonable to believe
that in times so remote as those of Joseph they might have been much less common
than afterwards, and that consequently Joseph’s being put in a coffin in Egypt
might be mentioned with a design to express the great honors the Egyptians did him
in death, as well as in life; being treated after the most sumptuous manner,
embalmed, and put into a coffin.”
It is no objection to this account that the widow of ain’s son is represented as
carried forth to be buried in a σορος or bier; for the present inhabitants of the
Levant, who are well known to lay their dead in the earth unenclosed, carry them
frequently out to burial in a kind of coffin, which is not deposited in the grave, the
body being taken out of it, and placed in the grave in a reclining posture. It is
probable that the coffins used at ain were of the same kind, being intended for no
other purpose but to carry the body to the place of interment, the body itself being
buried without them.
It is very probable that the chief difference was not in being with or without a
coffin, but in the expensiveness of the coffin itself; some of the Egyptian coffins
being made of granite, and covered all over with hieroglyphics, the cutting of which
must have been done at a prodigious expense, both of time and money; the stone
being so hard that we have no tools by which we can make any impression on it.
Two of these are now in the British Museum, that appear to have belonged to some
of the nobles of Egypt. They are dug out of the solid stone, and adorned with almost
innumerable hieroglyphics. One of these, vulgarly called Alexander’s tomb, is ten
feet three inches and a quarter long, ten inches thick in the sides, in breadth at top
five feet three inches and a half, in breadth at bottom four feet two inches and a
half, and three feet ten in depth, and weighs about ten tons. In such a coffin I
suppose the body of Joseph was deposited; and such a one could not have been made
and transported to Canaan at an expense that any private individual could bear. It
was with incredible labor and at an extraordinary expense that the coffin in
question was removed the distance of but a few miles, from the ship that brought it
from Egypt, to its present residence in the British Museum. Judge, then, at what an
expense such a coffin must have been dug, engraved, and transported over the
desert from Egypt to Canaan, a distance of three hundred miles! We need not be
surprised to hear of carriages and horsemen, a very great company, when such a
coffin was to be carried so far, with a suitable company to attend it.
Joseph’s life was the shortest of all the patriarchs, for which Bishop Patrick gives
a sound physical reason - he was the son of his father’s old age. It appears from
Archbishop Usher’s Chronology that Joseph governed Egypt under four kings,
Mephramuthosis, Thmosis, Amenophis, and Orus. His government, we know, lasted
eighty years; for when he stood before Pharaoh he was thirty years of age,

117. Gen_41:46, and he died when he was one hundred and ten.
On the character and conduct of Joseph many remarks have already been made
in the preceding notes. On the subject of his piety there can be but one opinion. It
was truly exemplary, and certainly was tried in cases in which few instances occur
of persevering fidelity. His high sense of the holiness of God, the strong claims of
justice, and the rights of hospitality and gratitude, led him, in the instance of the
solicitations of his master’s wife, to act a part which, though absolutely just and
proper, can never be sufficiently praised. Heathen authors boast of some persons of
such singular constancy; but the intelligent reader will recollect that these relations
stand in general in their fabulous histories, and are destitute of those characteristics
which truth essentially requires; such, I mean, as the story of Hippolytus and
Phaedra, Bellerophon and Antea or Sthenobaea, Peleus and Astydamia, and others
of this complexion, which appear to be marred pictures, taken from this highly
finished original which the inspired writer has fairly drawn from life.
His fidelity to his master is not less evident, and God’s approbation of his conduct
is strongly marked; for he caused whatsoever he did to prosper, whether a slave in
the house of his master, a prisoner in the dungeon, or a prime minister by the
throne, which is a full proof that his ways pleased him; and this is more clearly seen
in the providential deliverances by which he was favored.
On the political conduct of Joseph there are conflicting opinions. On the one hand
it is asserted that “he found the Egyptians a free people, and that he availed himself
of a most afflicting providence of God to reduce them all to a state of slavery,
destroyed their political consequence, and made their king despotic.” In all these
respects his political measures have been strongly vindicated, not only as being
directed by God, but as being obviously the best, every thing considered, for the
safety, honor, and welfare of his sovereign and the kingdom. It is true he bought the
lands of the people for the king, but he farmed them to the original occupiers again,
at the moderate and fixed crown rent of one-fifth part of the produce. “Thus did he
provide for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the
authority of the king by making him sole proprietor of the lands. And to secure the
people from farther exaction, Joseph made it a law over all the land of Egypt, that
Pharaoh (i. e. the king) should have only the fifth part; which law subsisted to the
time of Moses, Gen_47:21-26. By this wise regulation,” continues Dr. Hales, “the
people had four-fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were
exempted from any farther taxes, the king being bound to support his civil and
military establishment out of the crown rents.” By the original constitution of Egypt
established by Menes, and Thoth or Hermes his prime minister, the lands were
divided into three portions, between the king, the priests, and the military, each
party being bound to support its respective establishment by the produce. See the
quotations from Diodorus Siculus, in the note on Gen_47:23 (note). It is certain,
therefore, that the constitution of Egypt was considerably altered by Joseph, and
there can be no doubt that much additional power was, by this alteration, vested in
the hands of the king; but as we do not find that any improper use was made of this
power, we may rest assured that it was so qualified and restricted by wholesome
regulations, though they are not here particularized, as completely to prevent all
abuse of the regal power, and all tyrannical usurpation of popular rights. That the

118. people were nothing but slaves to the king, the military, and the priests before,
appears from the account given by Diodorus; each of the three estates probably
allowing them a certain portion of land for their own use, while cultivating the rest
for the use and emolument of their masters. Matters, however, became more regular
under the administration of Joseph; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that,
previously to this, Egypt was without a fixed regular constitution, and that it was
not the least of the blessings that it owed to the wisdom and prudence of Joseph, that
he reduced it to a regular form of government, giving the people such an interest in
the safety of the state as was well calculated to insure their exertions to defend the
nation, and render the constitution fixed and permanent.
It is well known that Justin, one of the Roman historians, has made particular and
indeed honorable mention of Joseph’s administration in Egypt, in the account he
gives of Jewish affairs, lib. 36. cap. 2. How the relation may have stood in Trogus
Pompeius, from whose voluminous works in forty-four books or volumes Justin
abridged his history, we cannot tell, as the work of Trogus is irrecoverably lost; but
it is evident that the account was taken in the main from the Mosaic history, and it
is written with as much candor as can be expected from a prejudiced and
unprincipled heathen.
Minimus aetate inter fratres Joseph fruit, etc. “Joseph was the youngest of his
brethren, who, being envious of his excellent endowments, stole him and privately
sold him to a company of foreign merchants, by whom he was carried into Egypt;
where, having diligently cultivated magic arts, he became, in a short time, a prime
favorite with the king himself. For he was the most sagacious of men in explaining
prodigies; and he was the first who constructed the science of interpreting dreams.
or was there any thing relative to laws human or Divine with which he seemed
unacquainted; for he predicted a failure of the crops many years before it took
place; and the inhabitants of Egypt must have been famished had not the king,
through his counsel, made an edict to preserve the fruits for several years. And his
experiments were so powerful, that the responses appear to have been given, not by
man, but by God.” Tantaque experimenta ejus fuerunt, ut non ab homine, sed a Deo,
responsa dari viderentur. I believe Justin refers here in the word experimenta, to his
figment of magical incantations eliciting oracular answers. Others have translated
the words: “So excellent were his regulations that they seemed rather to be oracular
responses, not given by man, but by God.”
I have already compared Joseph with his father Jacob, See Clarke on Gen_48:12
(note), and shall make no apology for having given the latter a most decided
superiority. Joseph was great; but his greatness came through the interposition of
especial providences. Jacob was great, mentally and practically great, under the
ordinary workings of Providence; and, towards the close of his life, not less
distinguished for piety towards God than his son Joseph was in the holiest period of
his life.
Thus terminates the Book of Genesis, the most ancient record in the world;
including the history of two grand subjects, Creation and Providence, of each of
which it gives a summary, but astonishingly minute, and detailed account. From this
book almost all the ancient philosophers, astronomers, chronologists, and historians
have taken their respective data; and all the modern improvements and accurate

119. discoveries in different arts and sciences have only served to confirm the facts
detailed by Moses; and to show that all the ancient writers on these subjects have
approached to or receded from Truth and the phenomena of nature, in proportion
as they have followed the Mosaic history.
In this book the Creative Power and Energy of God are first introduced to the
reader’s notice, and the mind is overwhelmed with those grand creative acts by
which the universe was brought into being. When this account is completed, and the
introduction of Sin, and its awful consequences in the destruction of the earth by a
flood, noticed, then the Almighty Creator is next introduced as the Restorer and
Preserver of the world; and thus the history of Providence commences: a history in
which the mind of man is alternately delighted and confounded with the infinitely
varied plans of wisdom and mercy in preserving the human species, counteracting
the evil propensities of men and devils by means of gracious influences conveyed
through religious institutions, planting and watering the seeds of righteousness
which himself had sowed in the hearts of men, and leading forward and maturing
the grand purposes of his grace in the final salvation of the human race.
After giving a minutely detailed account of the peopling of the earth, ascertaining
and settling the bounds of the different nations of mankind, the sacred writer
proceeds with the history of one family only; but he chooses that one through which,
as from an ever-during fountain, the streams of justice, grace, goodness, wisdom,
and truth, should emanate. Here we see a pure well of living water, springing up
into eternal life, restrained in its particular influence to one people till, in the
fullness of time, the fountain should be opened in the house of David for sin and for
uncleanness in general, and the earth filled with the knowledge and salvation of
God; thus by means of one family, as extensive a view of the economy of providence
and grace is afforded as it is possible for the human mind to comprehend.
In this epitome how wonderful do the workings of Providence appear! An
astonishing concatenated train of stupendous and minute events is laid before us;
and every transaction is so distinctly marked as everywhere to exhibit the finger, the
hand, or the arm of God! But did God lavish his providential cares and attention on
this one family, exclusive of the rest of his intelligent offspring? o: for the same
superintendence, providential direction, and influence, would be equally seen in all
the concerns of human life, in the preservation of individuals, the rise and fall of
kingdoms and states, and in all the mighty Revolutions, natural, moral, and
political, in the universe, were God, as in the preceding instances, to give us the
detailed history; but what was done in the family of Abraham, was done in behalf of
the whole human race. This specimen is intended to show us that God does work,
and that against him and the operations of his hand, no might, no counsel, no
cunning of men or devils, can prevail; that he who walks uprightly walks securely;
and that all things work together for good to them who love God; that none is so
ignorant, low, or lost, that God cannot instruct, raise up, and save. In a word, he
shows himself by this history to be the invariable friend of mankind, embracing
every opportunity to do them good, and, to speak after the manner of men, rejoicing
in the frequent recurrence of such opportunities; that every man, considering the
subject, may be led to exclaim in behalf of all his fellows, Behold How He Loveth
Them!

120. On the character of Moses as a Historian and Philosopher (for in his legislative
character he does not yet appear) much might be said, did the nature of this work
admit. But as brevity has been everywhere studied, and minute details rarely
admitted, and only where absolutely necessary, the candid reader will excuse any
deficiencies of this kind which he may have already noticed.
Of the accuracy and impartiality of Moses as a historian, many examples are
given in the course of the notes, with such observations and reflections as the
subjects themselves suggested; and the succeeding books will afford many
opportunities for farther remarks on these topics.
The character of Moses as a philosopher and chronologist, has undergone the
severest scrutiny. A class of philosophers, professedly infidels, have assailed the
Mosaic account of the formation of the universe, and that of the general deluge, with
such repeated attacks as sufficiently prove that, in their apprehension, the pillars of
their system must be shaken into ruin if those accounts could not be proved to be
false. Traditions, supporting accounts different from those in the sacred history,
have been borrowed from the most barbarous as well as the most civilized nations,
in order to bear on this argument. These, backed by various geologic observations
made in extensive travels, experiments on the formation of different strata or beds
of earth, either by inundations or volcanic eruption, have been all condensed into
one apparently strong but strange argument, intended to overthrow the Mosaic
account of the creation. The argument may be stated thus: “The account given by
Moses of the time when God commenced his creative acts is too recent; for,
according to his Genesis, six thousand years have not yet elapsed since the
formation of the universe; whereas a variety of phenomena prove that the earth
itself must have existed, if not from eternity, yet at least fourteen if not twenty
thousand years.” This I call a strange argument, because it is well known that all the
ancient nations in the world, the Jews excepted, have, to secure their honor and
respectability, assigned to themselves a duration of the most improbable length; and
have multiplied months, weeks, and even days, into years, in order to support their
pretensions to the most remote antiquity. The millions of years which have been
assumed by the Chinese and the Hindoos have been ridiculed for their manifest
absurdity, even by those philosophers who have brought the contrary charge
against the Mosaic account. So notorious are the pretensions to remote ancestry and
remote eras, in every false and fabricated system of family pedigree and national
antiquity, as to produce doubt at the very first view of their subjects, and to cause
the impartial inquirer after truth to take every step with the extreme of caution,
knowing that in going over such accounts he everywhere treads on a kind of
enchanted ground.
When in the midst of these a writer is found who, without saying a word of the
systems of other nations, professes to give a simple account of the creation and
peopling of the earth, and to show the very conspicuous part that his own people
acted among the various nations of the world, and who assigns to the earth and to its
inhabitants a duration comparatively but as of yesterday, he comes forward with
such a variety of claims to be heard, read, and considered, as no other writer can
pretend to. And as he departs from the universal custom of all writers on similar
subjects, in assigning a comparatively recent date, not only to his own nation, but to

121. the universe itself, he must have been actuated by motives essentially different from
those which have governed all other ancient historians and chronologists.
The generally acknowledged extravagance and absurdity of all the chronological
systems of ancient times, the great simplicity and harmony of that of Moses, its facts
evidently borrowed by others, though disgraced by the fables they have intermixed
with them, and the very late invention of arts and sciences, all tend to prove, at the
very first view, that the Mosaic account, which assigns the shortest duration to the
earth, is the most ancient and the most likely to be true. But all this reasoning has
been supposed to be annihilated by an argument brought against the Mosaic
account of the creation by Mr. Patrick Brydone, F.R.S., drawn from the evidence of
different eruptions of Mount Etna. The reader may find this in his “Tour through
Sicily and Malta,” letter vii., where, speaking of his acquaintance with the Canonico
Recupero at Catania, who was then employed on writing a natural history of Mount
Etna, he says: “ear to a vault which is now thirty feet below ground, and has
probably been a burying-place, there is a draw-well where there are several strata
of lavas, (i. e., the liquid matter formed of stones, etc., which is discharged from the
mountain in its eruptions), with earth to a considerable thickness over each stratum.
Recupero has made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of the
eruptions of this mountain. For if it requires two thousand years and upwards to
form but a scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have been more than that
space of time between each of the eruptions which have formed these strata. But
what shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci, of a great depth? They pierced
through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the surfaces of which were
parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth. ow, says he, the
eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason
from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years
ago! Recupero tells me, he is exceedingly embarrassed by these discoveries, in
writing the history of the mountain; that Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him,
and blunts all his zeal for inquiry, for that he really has not the conscience to make
his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world. “The bishop, who is
strenuously orthodox, (for it is an excellent see), has already warned him to be upon
his guard; and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses, nor to
presume to urge any thing that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory
to his sacred authority.”
Though Mr. Brydone produces this as a sneer against revelation, bishops, and
orthodoxy, yet the sequel will prove that it was good advice, and that the bishop was
much better instructed than either Recupero or Brydone, and that it would have
been much to their credit had they taken his advice.
I have given, however, this argument at length; and even in the insidious dress of
Mr. Brydone, whose faith in Divine revelation appears to have been upon a par with
that of Signior Recupero, both being built nearly on the same foundation; to show
from the answer how slight the strongest arguments are, produced from insulated
facts by prejudice and partiality, when brought to the test of sober, candid,
philosophical investigation, aided by an increased knowledge of the phenomena of
nature. “In answer to this argument,” says Bishop Watson, (Letters to Gibbon), “It
might be urged that the time necessary for converting lavas into fertile fields must

122. be very different, according to the different consistencies of the lavas, and their
different situations with respect to elevation and depression, or their being exposed
to winds, rains, and other circumstances; as for instance, the quantity of ashes
deposited over them, after they had cooled, etc., etc., just as the time in which heaps
of iron slag, which resembles lava, are covered with verdure, is different at different
furnaces, according to the nature of the slag and situation of the furnace; and
something of this kind is deducible from the account of the canon (Recupero)
himself, since the crevices in the strata are often full of rich good soil, and have
pretty large trees growing upon them. But should not all this be thought sufficient to
remove the objection, I will produce the canon an analogy in opposition to his
analogy, and which is grounded on more certain facts.
“Etna and Vesuvius resemble each other in the causes which produce their
eruptions, in the nature of their lavas, and in the time necessary to mellow them into
soil fit for vegetation; or, if there be any slight difference in this respect, it is
probably not greater than what subsists between different lavas of the same
mountain. This being admitted, which no philosopher will deny, the canon’s
(Recupero’s) analogy will prove just nothing at all if we can produce an instance of
seven different lavas, with interjacent strata of vegetable earth, which have flowed
from Mount Vesuvius within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of somewhat
less than one thousand seven hundred years; for then, according to our analogy, a
stratum of lava may be covered with vegetable soil in about two hundred and fifty
years, instead of requiring two thousand for that purpose.
“The eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, is
rendered still more famous by the death of Pliny, recorded by his nephew in his
letter to Tacitus. This event happened a. d. 79; but we are informed by
unquestionable authority, (Remarks on the nature of the soil of aples and its
vicinity, by Sir William Hamilton, Philos. Transact., vol. lxi., p. 7), that the matter
which covers the ancient town of Herculaneum is not the produce of one eruption
only, for there are evident marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken its
course over that which lies immediately over the town, and was the cause of its
destruction. The strata are either of lava or burnt matter with veins of good soil
between them. You perceive,” says the bishop, “with what ease a little attention and
increase of knowledge may remove a great difficulty; but had we been able to say
nothing in explanation of this phenomenon, we should not have acted a very rational
part in making our ignorance the foundation of our infidelity, or suffering a minute
philosopher to rob us of our religion.” In this, as well as in all other cases, the
foundation stands sure, being deeply and legibly impressed with God’s seal. See also
Dr. Greaves’s Lectures on the Pentateuch.
There is a very sensible paper written by Don Joseph Gioeni (The Chevalier
Gioeni was an inhabitant of the first region of Etna). on the eruption of Etna in
1781; in which, among many other valuable observations, I find the following note:
“I was obliged to traverse the current of lava made by the eruption of 1766, the most
ancient of any that took this direction, viz., Bronte. I saw several streams of lava
which had crossed others, and which afforded me evident proofs of the fallacy of the
conclusions of those who seek to estimate the period of the formation of the beds of
lava from the change they have undergone. Some lava of earlier date than others

123. still resist the weather, and present a vitreous and unaltered surface, while the lava
of later date already begin to be covered with vegetation.” - See Pinkerton on Rock,
vol. ii., p. 395.
On the geology and astronomy of the book of Genesis, much has been written,
both by the enemies and friends of revelation; but as Moses has said but very little
on these subjects, and nothing in a systematic way, it is unfair to invent a system
pretendedly collected out of his words, and thus make him accountable for what he
never wrote. There are systems of this kind, the preconceived fictions of their
authors, for which they have sought support and credit by tortured meanings
extracted from a few Hebrew roots, and then dignified them with the title of The
Mosaic System of the Universe. This has afforded infidelity a handle which it has
been careful to turn to its own advantage. On the first chapter of Genesis, I have
given a general view of the solar system, without pretending that I had found it
there. I have also ventured to apply the comparatively recent doctrine of caloric to
the Mosaic account of the creation of light previous to the formation of the sun, and
have supported it with such arguments as appeared to me to render it at least
probable: but I have not pledged Moses to any of my explanations, being fully
convinced that it was necessarily foreign from his design to enter into philosophic
details of any kind, as it was his grand object, as has been already remarked, to give
a history of Creation and Providence in the most abridged form of which it was
capable. And who, in so few words, ever spoke so much? By Creation I mean the
production of every being, animate and inanimate, material and intellectual. And by
Providence, not only the preservation and government of all being, but also the
various and extraordinary provisions made by Divine justice and mercy for the
comfort and final salvation of man. These subjects I have endeavored to trace out
through every chapter of this book, and to exhibit them in such a manner as
appeared to me the best calculated to promote glory to God in the highest, and upon
Earth Peace And Good Will Among Men.
2. Gill, “So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old,.... The exact age
assigned him by Polyhistor (x), from Demetrius an Heathen. The Jewish writers (y)
say, that he died the first of the twelve patriarchs, though he was the youngest of
them; he died, according to Bishop Usher (z), in the year of the world 2369, and
before Christ 1635:
and they embalmed him; his servants, the physicians, according to the manner of
the Egyptians, and as his father Jacob had been embalmed; see Gill on Gen_50:2,
and he was put into a coffin in Egypt; in an ark or chest, very probably into such an
one in which the Egyptians had used to put dead bodies when embalmed; which
Herodotus (a) calls a θηκα, or chest, and which they set up against a wall: in what
part of Egypt this coffin was put is not certain, it was most likely in Goshen, and in
the care and custody of some of Joseph's posterity; so Leo Africanus says (b), that
he was buried in Fioum, the same with the Heracleotic nome, supposed to be
Goshen; See Gill on Gen_47:11, and was dug up by Moses, when the children of

124. Israel departed. The Targum of Jonathan says, it was sunk in the midst of the ile
of Egypt; and an Arabic writer (c) says, the corpse of Joseph was put into a marble
coffin, and cast into the ile: the same thing is said in the Talmud (d), from whence
the story seems to be taken, and where the coffin is said to be a molten one, either of
iron or brass; which might arise, as Bishop Patrick observes, from a mistake of the
place where such bodies were laid; which were let down into deep wells or vaults,
and put into a cave at the bottom of those wells, some of which were not far from the
river ile; and such places have been searched for mummies in late times, where
they have been found, and the coffins and clothes sound and incorrupt. And so some
of the Jewish writers say (e) he was buried on the banks of the river Sihor, that is,
the ile; but others (f) say he was buried in the sepulchre of the kings, which is
much more likely.
3. Henry, “ The death of Joseph, and the reservation of his body for a burial in
Canaan, Gen_50:26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt, but not buried till his children
had received their inheritance in Canaan, Jos_24:32. ote, 1. If the separate soul, at
death, do but return to its rest with God, the matter is not great though the deserted
body find not at all, or not quickly, its rest in the grave. 2. Yet care ought to be
taken of the dead bodies of the saints, in the belief of their resurrection; for there is
a covenant with the dust, which shall be remembered, and a commandment is given
concerning the bones.
4. “This book ends in Egypt where God's chief leader of his people was also a leader
in Egypt. He was an Egyptian, and married an Egyptian, and his people lived in
Egypt for centuries. God's people were greatly influenced by Egypt. Joseph becomes
the second of the only two men embalmed in the Bible. “
4B.Leupold, “26. The initial step in the keeping of that promise is recorded. When
Joseph dies—the age being repeated in the more solemn style of narrative, as is
common in epic poetry also—they embalm him and put him into an ’arôn, a word
whose primary significance is box, used also of the ark of the covenant. Here the
term might mean: coffin, but the type of box or coffin used for mummies is the
familiar painted wooden mummy case.
With this close, which eloquently calls for the continuation provided by Exodus,
Genesis comes to a conclusion, which betrays that it, like the others of the five books
of Moses, from the very outset constituted a finished literary product designed to be
complete in itself but also to be an integral part of a greater work.
5. GUZIK “Joseph was never buried. His coffin laid above ground for the 400 or so
years until it was taken back to Canaan. It was a silent witness for all those years
that Israel was going back to the Promised Land, just as God had said.
All during that time, when a child of Israel saw Joseph's coffin and asked what it

125. was there for and why it was not buried, they could be answered, Because the great
man Joseph did not want to be buried in Egypt, but in the Promised Land God will
one day lead us to.This command to carry up my bones from here was fulfilled
some 400 years later, when Israel left Egypt (Exodus 13:19).
5. Scott Hoezee, “And so the Book of Genesis ends. The people are out of the land of
promise. The great patriarchs of the faith are dead and gone. We close with a coffin
in Egypt, and from the outside looking in, things don't look too hopeful. But Genesis
50:26 is part of a larger biblical narrative that lets us know this is not the end. ot
by a long shot. The road ahead won't be easy, and there will be many more turns
and twists along the way. But in and through the surprises still to come will always
and in the end be that ultimate surprise of grace. God never caved in to the
conventions of human culture, and he never let apparently dead ends prevent him
from moving forward. So a coffin in Egypt won't stop the Lord God, either.
In the beginning. That's what Genesis is all about. It's about the beginning of the
cosmos, the beginning of salvation, the beginning of humanity's long education in
the nature and ways of God. In that sense, Genesis 50 is still as much at the
beginning as when Genesis 1 showed us God hovering over the murkiness of the
cosmic void. In the end as in the beginning, we are still dependent on the voice of
God to bring life.
In fact, we are dependent on the decrees of God's voice right now as we, too, still
live in the midst of death. We, too, are not home yet. We're out of the land of
promise, in between the already and the not yet, between the kingdom that has
dawned in our hearts and the kingdom that has yet to become this universe's all in
all. In the beginning God spoke and there was life. In the end God will speak again
and make all things new. We await that voice even as we hear whispers of it already
now through the Spirit. For in the beginning we find our end; in our Alpha is also
our Omega. Thanks be to God!
6. RO RITCHIE, “As you recall, Joseph arrived in Egypt in l893 BC as a
seventeen-year-old slave. Either Amenemes 1-1V or Senwosret 1-III was ruling in
the Twelfth Dynasty (1990-1775 BC), which was called the Strong Middle Kingdom
of Egypt. And by the time Joseph was thirty years old, the Lord had placed him in
the position of second in command of all of Egypt, below only Pharaoh. God blessed
Joseph in many ways, but the way that is dearest to the heart of a man or woman is
the joy of children and then grandchildren, and for some even great-grandchildren.
Joseph and his wife had the privilege of producing some famous sons in the history
of Israel: Joshua, Gideon, and Samuel to mention a few.
At the age of one hundred and ten years, having served Pharaoh for eighty years,
Joseph realized that his life on earth was drawing to a close. So he gathered his

126. family around him as his father before him had and informed them of his
impending death. He then sought to comfort them with the promises of God and the
reality that they would all be taken back to the promised land. He asked his
family to bury him with his fathers in Canaan as a further symbol of his faith in
God that all the promises of the Abrahamic covenant would be fulfilled to his
fathers and to him and his children. Then Joseph died (1910-1800 BC), and as was
their custom they embalmed him and put him in a coffin in Egypt. Four hundred
years later Moses would take his bones out of Egypt [see Exodus 13:19], and then
after forty years in the wilderness, Joshua would fulfill Joseph's request by taking
Joseph's bones into Canaan and burying him in the promised land at Shechem
(see Joshua 24:32).
We first saw Joseph's faith in God when he shared his dreams with his family (see
Genesis 37:5-10). We then saw his faith in God expressed when Potiphar's wife
sought to seduce him and he cried out, How could I do such a wicked thing and sin
against God? (Genesis 39:9). The next time his faith was expressed was when he
trusted in God to give him an interpretation of the dreams of the Pharaoh's chief
baker and chief cupbearer (see Genesis 40:8). He expressed this same faith in the
presence of Pharaoh when he was brought out of prison to interpret Pharaoh's two
dreams (see Genesis 41:16). His faith was again expressed in the naming of his
children: Manasseh, It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all
my father's household; and Ephraim, It is because God has made me fruitful in
the land of my suffering (see Genesis 41:51-52).
Joseph confessed his relationship with the only living God before his brothers at
their first meeting in Egypt (see Genesis 42:18). When he made himself known to
them after their second journey to Egypt, he said, ...It was to save lives that God
sent me ahead of you...God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on
earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance...[God] made me father to
Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt (Genesis 45:5-8). He
confessed to his father Jacob when Jacob was on his deathbed that his sons were
gifts from God (see Genesis 48:9). And then as we have just seen, he told his
brothers after their father's death that they had nothing to fear; Am I in the place
of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what
is now being done, the saving of many lives.
Finally on his own deathbed Joseph entrusted his brothers and their families into
the hands of God to take them all up into the promised land. The writer to the
Hebrews said (11:22), By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the
exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.
In Joseph the families of all the earth found blessing, and the whole world can place
their hope in Jesus to completely fulfill the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant.
Over and over again we have seen the life of Joseph foreshadow the life of the

127. Messiah to come, Jesus the son of God.
We saw how both men were loved by their father (see Genesis 37:3; Matthew 3:17).
They were both shepherds of their father's sheep (see Genesis 37:2; John 10:11-16).
Both men were sent by their fathers to their brothers, but Joseph's brothers hated
him and sought to kill him and Jesus blood brothers rejected him and his spiritual
brothers sought to kill him (see Genesis 37:13ff; John 7:3; Luke 20:47).
Both men had a personal robe that was taken from them (Genesis 37:23-24; John
19:24).
Both men spent time in Egypt (see Genesis 37:25-28; Matthew 2:14-15).
They were both sold for the price of a slave (see Genesis 37:28; Matthew 26:15).
They were both bound in chains (see Psalm 105:18; Genesis 39:20; Matthew 27:2).
They were both tempted (see Genesis 39;7-10; Matthew 4:1-11).
They were both falsely accused (see Genesis 39:16-17; Matthew 26:59).
They were both placed with two other prisoners, one of whom was saved and the
other lost (see Genesis 40:2-22; Luke 23:32-43).
They both began their ministries at the age of thirty (see Genesis 41:46; Luke 3:23).
Both men were exalted by God after a season of suffering (see Genesis 41:41-43;
Philippians 2:9-11).
They both forgave those who harmed them (see Genesis 45:1-15; Luke 23:34).
Both men were sent by God to save many (Genesis 45:7; Matthew 1:21; Mark
10:45).
And finally, they both understood that God turned evil into good (see Genesis 50:20;
Romans 8:28).
(Some of this listing was suggested by the ew International Version Life
Application Bible.)
7. “And so we come to the end of an era and to the end of a magnificent book. But
two funerals do not seem to be a very bright ending for a book. Man’s origin began
in the garden of perfection and beauty in paradise. It ends in two coffins, one in
Canaan, the other in Egypt. What a dismal conclusion. Moses could never make it
as a writer in our times.
But wait a moment; that is just the point. Genesis chapter 50 is not the end of the
story; it is only the end of the book of Genesis. Moses has yet four books to write,
and God has ordained another 61 before the final chapter is written. And in the
final chapters of the book of the Revelation we once again return to paradise.
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first

128. earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city,
new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride
adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying
“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell among
them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them,
and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer
be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the
first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4).
And he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from
the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street. And on either
side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its
fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the
nations. And there shall no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and
of the Lamb shall be in it, and His bond-servants shall serve Him; and they
shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall
no longer be any night; and they shall not have need of the light of a lamp
nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God shall illumine them; and they
shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:1-5).
Death, Moses would have us learn, is not the end. That was what Jacob had foolishly
believed for many years. That is why he was so eager for it to come. He looked
forward to death as the end of his earthly woes. So do all who choose the way of
suicide to cease from suffering. But the tragedy of such death is that it is not the end
at all. It is really only a beginning of an irreversible eternity.
Some years ago I was given the task of taking a young man to the hospital who had
unsuccessfully attempted to take his life. On the way I asked him what he believed
happened after death. He told me that he believed in reincarnation. I shared with
him the verse which says, “ . . . it is appointed unto men to die once, and after this
comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).
He had to admit that if this verse were true, suicide thrust its victim into irreversible
judgment. Reincarnation is a tempting thought, for it encourages us to end one life
with the hope that a better one may follow.
During those years spent in Egypt, Jacob came to a very different view of death. o
longer did he consider death the end of everything. Even if a man were to lose his
cherished son, as God had commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, God
could raise him again. There was life after death:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; and he who had
received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to
whom it was said, “I ISAAC YOUR SEED SHALL BE CALLED. “ He
considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he
also received him back as a type” (Hebrews 11:17-19).
Jacob had come to see that even if God did not resurrect the dead (in the way
Abraham expected Him to raise Isaac), there was still life after death.
And Abraham breathed his last and died in a ripe old age, an old man and

129. satisfied with life; and he was gathered to his people (Genesis 25:8).
And Isaac breathed his last and died, and was gathered to his people, an old
man of ripe age; and his sons Esau and Jacob buried him (Genesis 35:29).
When Jacob finished charging his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and
breathed his lost, and was gathered to his people (Genesis 49:33).
The expression, “to be gathered to his people” was no mere euphemism for death; it
was an ancient expression of the patriarchs hope of life after death. These men
found little comfort in having their bones in close proximity to those of other
relatives. They viewed their death as the occasion to be rejoined with those whose
death had separated the living from the dead.
When our Lord quoted the statement of God the father, “I am the God of Abraham,
and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Matthew 22:32), He did so to prove
there is life after death. For, otherwise, He would have said “I was the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”!
May I suggest to you that the way you view death makes all the difference in the
world. If it is the end of everything, then there is not any need to seek heaven or to
shun hell. Suicide is a tempting option whenever life doesn’t seem to be going our
way. If there is no life after death, the world is right when it says that we should “. . .
eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”
But if we view death as a beginning rather than the end, then what lies after death
must surely compel us to face eternity squarely, before death. And, once we are
rightly related to God by faith in His Son, we need not fear death. We need not
avoid talking about it. And, in one sense, we can welcome it, for it promises us a
time when we shall be intimately and eternally with God and with those in the faith
who have been separated from us by death.
“let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In my
Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told
you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you
may be also” (John 14:1-3).
Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at
home in the body we are absent from the Lord--for we walk by faith, not by
sight--we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the
body and to be at home with the Lord (II Corinthians 5:6-8).
But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and
be with Christ, for that is very much better; (Philippians 1:23).
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are
asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those
who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the
lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall
not precede those who hove fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend

130. from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the
trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the
Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore
comfort one another with these words (I Thessalonians 4:13-18).
Do you notice how candidly both Jacob and Joseph spoke of their death? That is not
so with unbelievers. They avoid the subject with a passion. All kinds of euphemisms
are employed so that death’s realities need not be faced. We do not speak of the
dead, but of the departed; they are not buried, but interred. People do not die; they
pass away. We do not bury the dead in graveyards, but in memorial parks.
Both Jacob and Joseph called their relatives to them, where they unhesitatingly
spoke of their death and gave clear instructions regarding their burial. Today we do
everything possible to conceal the truth from the dying. When the father of one of
my best friends was dying of cancer, he would persistently ask his son, “Are they
telling me everything?”
A number of years ago I was asked to visit a woman in the hospital. o one told me
she was dying. I just knew it. She and I never avoided the subject of death, and it
was obvious to me that she wished to talk about it. When she died, I was asked to
conduct her funeral. I shall never forget my surprise at hearing the husband repeat
to his wife’s friends and family, “She never knew she was dying.” I never knew she
shouldn’t know. Her husband found comfort in concealing the truth from her.
The tragedy with this effort to deny death is that those last few days or hours are
spent in deception. Rather than say our farewells and use our dying breath to speak
words of lasting import, we dwell on trivia, which seems “safe” and remote from
such unpleasant matters as death. And rather than facing the eternity which lies
only a breath away, we carefully avoid it.
Most believers should not fall into the trap of denying death or avoiding a frank
discussion of it. But there is a way in which we can also lose the joy of those last
moments. There are some Christians who would say that sickness and death need
not be endured if we would only have the faith to be healed.
ow I want to be quick to say that God can and does heal, and I am grateful for it.
But there is no promise of healing or deliverance from suffering for all. I am
inclined to believe that such instances are clearly the exception, rather than the rule.
But there are those who would walk into a hospital room and assure the dying that,
if they have sufficient faith, God will raise them up and restore them, free from
suffering, sickness, and death. Often, the ailing grasp at any hope of deliverance, not
out of faith, but out of fear. Often, there is a bold pronouncement of faith and
assurance of healing. There may be a period of remission. But often, the disease
continues to consume the life of the terminally ill. ow, in the light of the almost
certain approach of death, there can be only one conclusion. If one can be healed if
he or she has sufficient faith, and they are not being healed, that person must not
have sufficient faith.
ow, rather than face death with honesty and acceptance, the ill can only question

131. his faith. And if his faith was inadequate to heal, can it be sufficient to save? The last
days are spent in doubt and despair. There is no testimony, no joy, no worship--only
despair.
Let us look at death as Jacob and Joseph. Let us see it not as the end, but the
beginning. Let us, by faith, look forward to being reunited with those we love (I
Thessalonians 4:13-18) and dwelling with our Savior (John 14:1-3), forever in His
presence and experiencing the things he has prepared for us.
Finally, Joseph’s brothers, like Jacob (until his final days), felt that death was the
end. They believed that God would care for them only so long as Jacob lived. They
came to learn that God’s care was certain when neither Jacob nor Joseph were
around. God’s program will never be contingent upon the presence of any one man,
of any one church or organization. God’s plan and program is as certain as He is
sovereign, as enduring as He is eternal.
Is it possible that you are uncomfortable with the subject of this scripture? Is death
a matter you would prefer to put off? I felt the same way before I came to know
Him who is not only the Way and the Truth, but the Life (John 14:6). I can
remember, as a child, passing by a cemetery on the way to my grandparents. I
always tried to concentrate on something on the other side of the road, hoping I
would not have to be reminded of death. The fear of death is evidence of our
uncertainty as to what lies beyond the grave. That fear can be denied, suppressed,
or camouflaged. But it cannot be avoided indefinitely. The fear of death is overcome
only by the faith of men like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who trusted in the one
Who would eventually overcome it.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me
shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall
never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).
For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last
enemy that will be abolished is death (I Corinthians 15:25-26).
“O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR
STIG?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but
thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding
in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord (I
Corinthians 15:55-58).
And death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second
death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the
book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15).
8. THE DEAD WILL RISE AGAI
What the Torah is alluding to, in essence, is one of the most perplexing and difficult,
albeit fundamental, doctrines and beliefs of the Torah and the Jewish religion -- the

132. belief in the future resurrection of the dead, known in Hebrew as techiyat hameitim.
o, you are not reading the script of an old Twilight Zone episode. The idea of a
future time when our ancestors will once again come alive and be with us, weird as
that seems, has been a part of our faith as Jews for well over 3,000 years.
Way before the Christian faith began preaching the doctrine of the resurrection,
Jews have accepted as part of our great tradition that G-d will ultimately perform
the greatest miracle of all time, that of resurrecting the dead. It is mentioned quite
explicitly in the Book of Daniel in Chapter 12: And many of those who sleep in the
dusty earth shall awaken.… It is recorded in the Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin
90a among other places. And Maimonides lists the belief in resurrection of the dead
as one of the 13 principles of faith that every Jew should believe. And the Men of the
Great Assembly, who created the text of the prayer book that has been used by
virtually all Jews for the past 2,000 years, incorporated the doctrine of resurrection
of the dead into the Shemoneh Esrei, the focal point of the whole prayer service. In
the second blessing of this prayer we recite, And You are trustworthy to resuscitate
the dead, Blessed are You, O G-d, resuscitator of the dead.
ow I am well aware that there are those who have edited out of the prayer book
any reference to this fundamentally spooky, and very nonscientific, doctrine of
resurrection. But it is still mentioned in the Bible and in the Talmud, and has been
accepted on faith by many Jews throughout our long 3,000-year history, and, as
such, it behooves us to make an attempt at understanding a little bit about this most
difficult and unbelievable concept.
BODY AD SOUL: PARTERS FOR (EVERLASTIG) LIFE
A basic teaching of our faith is that man is composed of two parts -- body and soul --
and that these two parts are supposed to be utilized together in the service of G-d.
The body is the vehicle through which the soul can do its job in this world -- for
good or for evil -- hence, it, too, plays a role in earning the reward or punishment.
Divine Providence demands that the body, too, receive its just reward: hence
resurrection.
A Talmudic parable illustrates this. A blind man and a lame man both desired to
raid a certain orchard, but their physical limitations precluded this. The lame man
met the blind man and they formed a partnership. The blind man took the lame
man upon his back, and the lame man directed him to the orchard. They then

133. shared the fruits of their labors. When they were caught by the owner of the
orchard, the lame man protested that he himself could not have plundered the
orchard. The blind man defended himself in the same manner. The owner then took
the lame man and set him upon the blind man and administered punishment to
them together (Tractate Sanhedrin 91b).
Since man is composed of two partners, body and soul, which work together for
both good and evil, it is only proper and just that man's body should once again join
his soul to be enjoy the fruits of their partnership in this world together as one. So
from a traditional Jewish perspective, death and the decomposition of the physical
body is just a temporary state of being -- for in the World to Come our bodies will
be rejoined with our souls in a more perfected state, in which we will be able to
receive the reward (or, G-d forbid, the punishment) for our actions in this world.
But, you ask, how can a rational mind accept such a belief? Great question! I myself
don't have the answers for all the questions that are probably going through your
minds as you read these lines. The way I approach this age-old doctrine of
resurrection is quite simple. I don't quite understand the need for it -- after all, if
my soul is happy and blissful in that great big golf course in heaven, then why
bother coming back to life with my not-too-flattering body? (Talmudic parable and
above explanation notwithstanding.) But I dare not discount this doctrine either
even though my own feeble, rational mind can't accept it or understand it. Hey, how
many people out there understand how a baby is born and comes to life the first
time around? There are simply lots of things that most of us cannot grasp -- like
Einstein's theory of relativity, for example -- yet I never heard anyone going around
saying that they don't believe in relativity.
I would humbly like to recommend for those of you who are curious to learn more
about the concept of techiyat hameitim a wonderful book written by a relatively
unknown genius rabbi and scientist of our time -- Immortality, Resurrection, and
the Age of the Universe by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, published by K'tav Publishing
House. You can pick it up in your local bookstore or online at
http://store.yahoo.com/eichlers/881253456.html.
The entire book is fascinating to read (as fascinating as was the man who wrote it;
see the introduction), and especially the third chapter titled On the Resurrection.
Rabbi Kaplan attempts to explain the doctrine of resurrection in light of recent
scientific discoveries in the field of cloning and genetic engineering. It’s amazing
stuff.

134. 9. James Strahan, “On his deathbed Joseph bound the children of Israel
under an oath to carry his body out of Egypt at their exodus
and bury him in the land of his fathers. In accordance with his
wish his body was embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt (v. 26 ) ;
and after some centuries ' Moses took the bones of Joseph with
him : for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying,
God will surely visit you ; and ye shall carry up my bones away
hence with you.' * One of the Apostles has selected this dying
' commandment concerning his bones ' from among all the inci-dents
of Joseph's career as the outstanding proof of his faith.*
Amid all his Egyptian achievements and successes he kept his
heart humble and his faith simple. Egypt was the scene of his
struggles and temptations, his honours and triumphs ; it was the
1 Emerson. a Professor Butcher. * Ps. 130 8 .
* Ex. ial». 5 Heb. II«2.
FAITH 355
land of his adoption, in which he lived nearly a century, making
history ; but he never ceased to feel himself a stranger in it.
The glamour of Egypt never withdrew his eyes from the glory
of Canaan, and in his dying dreams he saw the land of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. He never ceased to be a true Hebrew.
Sometimes he affected to be more Egyptian than the Egyptians,
— a diviner who swore by the life of Pharaoh — but this was no
more than a light play on the surface of his mind. He spoke
the Egyptian language, married an Egyptian wife, served an
Egyptian king, but he was never Egyptianised. His heart was
'true to the kindred points of heaven and home' ; and if he could
not live in Canaan he was minded at least to sleep his last sleep
in it. We feel that it is characteristic of him that his last recorded
utterance contains the name of God (v. 26 ). His ruling passion is
strong in death. His loyalty to the God of Israel is the outstand-ing
fact in his story. In the wealth of Egypt's commerce, in the
magnificence of her temples, in the learning of her colleges, he saw
nothing to make him swerve from his allegiance to the God whom
he learned to love as a child. He maintained his detachment of
spirit ; he served his God with twice the zeal with which he served
his king. * It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ;
it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is

135. he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the
independence of solitude.' 1 Pure and gentle, noble and generous,
high-minded and true-hearted, Joseph dies as he has lived, in
faith. To think of him is to think of youth, beauty, and victorious
strength, of temptations resisted, of God-given gifts well used and
the crown of earthly glory won. The cities in which he lived and
laboured have disappeared ; the multitudes which filled the air
with the hum of their voices and the din of their industries have
melted away ; and scarcely one stone of Memphis rests upon
another. But his spirit lives on, his virtues and graces silently
passing into the lives of others, and his story bearing fruit
through all succeeding ages.
10. MACLARE, A COFFI I EGYPT
‘They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.’—GEESIS l. 26.
So closes the book of Genesis. All its recorded dealings of God with Israel,
and all the promises and the glories of the patriarchal line, end with ‘a
coffin in Egypt’. Such an ending is the more striking, when we remember that
a space of three hundred years intervenes between the last events in Genesis
and the first in Exodus, or almost as long a time as parts the Old Testament
from the ew. And, during all that period, Israel was left with a mummy and
a hope. The elaborately embalmed body of Joseph lay in its gilded and
pictured case, somewhere in Goshen, and was, no doubt, in the care of the
Israelites, as is plain from the fact that they carried it with them at the
exodus. For three centuries, that silent ‘coffin in Egypt’ preached its
impressive messages. What did it say? It spoke, no doubt, to ears often
deaf, but still some faint whispers of its speechless testimony would sound
in some hearts, and help to keep vivid some hopes.

136. First, it was a silent reminder of mortality. Egyptian consciousness was
much occupied with death. The land was peopled with tombs. But the corpse of
Joseph was perhaps not laid in one of these, but remained housed somewhere
in sight, as it were, of all Israel. Many a passer-by would pause for a
moment, and think; Here is the end of dignity second only to Pharaoh’s, to
this has come that strong brain, that true heart, Israel’s pride and
protection is shut up in that wooden case.
‘The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings.’
Yes, but let us remember that while that silent sarcophagus enforced the
old, old lesson to the successive generations that looked on it and little
heeded its stern, sad teaching of mortality, it had other brighter truths to
tell. For the shrivelled, colourless lips that lay in it, covered with many
a fold of linen, had left as their last utterance, ‘I die, but God will
surely visit you,’ o man is necessary. Israel can survive the loss of the
strongest and wisest. God lives, though a hundred Josephs die. It is pure
gain to lose human helpers, if thereby we become more fully conscious of our

137. need of a divine arm and heart, and more truly feel that we have these for
our all-sufficient stay. Blessed is the fleeting of all that can pass, if
its withdrawal lets the calm light of the Eternal, which cannot pass, stream
in uninterrupted on us! When the leaves fall, we see more clearly the rock
which their short-lived greenness in its pride veiled. When the many-hued
and ever-shifting clouds are swept out of the sky by the wind, the sun that
lent them all their colour shines the more brightly. The message of every
death-bed and grave is meant to be, ‘This and that man dies, but God
lives.’ The last result of our contemplation of mortality, as affecting our
dearest and most needful ones, and as sure to include ourselves in its
far-reaching, close-woven net, ought to be to drive us to God’s breast, that
there we may find a Friend who does not pass, and may dwell in ‘the land of
the living,’ on whose soil the foot of all-conquering Death dare never
tread.
or are these thoughts all the message of that ‘coffin in Egypt.’ In the
first verses of the next book, that of Exodus, there is a remarkable
juxtaposition of ideas, when we read that ‘Joseph died and all his brethren
and all that generation.’ But was that the end of Israel? By no means, for
the narrative goes on immediately to say—linking the two things together by
a simple ‘and’—that ‘the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased
abundantly, and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty.’
So life springs side by side with death. There are cradles as well as
graves.

138. ‘The individual withers,
And the race is more and more.’
Leaves drop and new leaves come. The April days are not darkened, and the
tender green of the fresh leaf-buds is all the more vigorous and luxuriant,
because it is fed from the decaying leaves that litter the roots of the
long-lived oak. Thus through the ages the pathetic alternation goes on.
Penelope’s web is ever being woven and run down and woven again. Joseph
dies; Israel grows. Let us not take half-views, nor either fix our thoughts
on the universal law of dissolution and decay, nor on the other side of the
process—the universal emergence of life from death, reconstruction from
dissolution. In our individual histories and on the wider field of the
world’s history, the same large law is at work, which is expressed in the
simplest terms by these old words, ‘Joseph died, and all his brethren and
all that generation’—and ‘the children of Israel were fruitful and increased
abundantly.’ So the wholesome lesson of mortality is stripped of much of its
sadness, and retains all its pathos, solemnity, and power to purify the
heart.
Again, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a herald of Hope. The reason for Joseph’s
dying injunction that his body should be preserved after the Egyptian
fashion, and laid where it could be lifted and carried away, when the

139. long-expected deliverance was effected, was the dying patriarch’s firm
confidence that, though he died, he had still somehow a share in God’s
faithful promise. We do not know the precise shape which his thought of that
share took. It may have been merely the natural sentiment which desires that
the unconscious frame shall moulder quietly beside the mouldering forms
which once held our dear ones. This naturalised Egyptian did his work
manfully in the land of his adoption, and flung himself eagerly into its
interests, but his heart turned to the cave at Machpelah, and, though he
lived in Egypt, he could not bear to think of lying there for ever when
dead, especially of being left there alone. There may have been some trace
in his wish of the peculiar Egyptian belief that the preservation of the
body contributed in some way to the continuance of personal life, and that a
certain shadowy self hovered about the spot where the mummy was laid. Our
knowledge of the large place filled by a doctrine of a future life in
Egyptian thought makes it most probable that Joseph had at least some
forecast of that hope of immortality, which seems to us to be inseparable
from the consciousness of present communion with God.
But, in any case, Israel had charge of that coffin because the dead man that
lay in it had, on the very edge of the gulf of death, believed that he had
still a portion in Israel’s hope, and that, when he had taken the plunge
into the great darkness, he had not sunk below the reach of God’s power to
give him personal fulfilment of His yet unfulfilled promise. His dying
command was the expression of his unshaken faith that, though he was dead,
God would visit him with His salvation, and give him to see the prosperity

140. of His chosen, that he might rejoice in the gladness of the nation, and
glory with His inheritance. He had lived, trusting in God’s bare promise,
and, as he lived, he died. The Epistle to the Hebrews lays hold of the true
motive power in the incident, when it points to Joseph’s dying ‘commandment
concerning his bones’ as a noble instance of Faith.
Thus, through slow creeping centuries, this silent preacher said—‘Hope on,
though the vision tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come. God is
faithful, and will perform His word.’ There was much to make hope faint. To
bring Israel out of Canaan seemed a strange way of investing it with the
possession of Canaan. As the tardy years trickled away, drop by drop, and
the promise seemed no nearer fulfilment, some film of doubt must have crept
over Hope’s bright eyes. When new dynasties reigned, and Israel slowly sank
into the state of bondage, it must have been still harder to believe that
the shortest road to the inheritance was round by Goshen. But through all
the darkening course of Israel in these sad centuries, there stood the
‘coffin,’ the token of a triumphant faith which had leapt, as a trifle, over
the barrier of death, and grasped as real the good which lay beyond that
frowning wall. We have a better Herald of hope than a mummy-case and a
pyramid built round it. We have an empty grave and an occupied Throne, by
which to nourish our confidence in Immortality and our estimate of the
insignificance of death. Our Joseph does not say—‘I die, but God will surely
visit you,’ but He gives us the wonderful assurance of identification with
Himself, and consequent participation in His glory—‘Because I live, ye shall
live also.’ Therefore our hope should be as much brighter and more confirmed

141. than this ancient one was as that on which it is based is better and more
joyous. But, alas, there is no invariable proportion between food supplied
and strength derived. An orchid can fling out gorgeous blooms, though it
grows on a piece of dry wood, but plants set in rich soil often show poor
flowers. Our hope will be worthy of its foundation, only on condition of our
habitually reflecting on the firmness of that foundation, and cultivating
familiarity with the things hoped for.
There are many ways in which the apostle’s great saying that ‘we are saved
by hope’ approves itself as true. Whatever leads us to grasp the future
rather than the present, even if it is but an earthly future, and to live by
hope rather than by fruition, even if it is but a short-reaching hope, lifts
us in the scale of being, ennobles, dignifies, and in some respects purifies
us. Even men whose expectations have not wing-power enough to cross the
dreadful ravine of Death, are elevated in the degree in which they work
towards a distant goal. Short-sighted hopes are better than blind absorption
in the present. Whatever puts the centre of gravity of our lives in the
future is a gain, and most of all is that hope blessed, which bids us look
forward to an eternal sitting with Jesus at the right hand of God.
If such hope has any solidity in it, it will certainly detach us from the
order of things in which we dwell. The world is always tempting us to
‘forget the imperial palace’ whither we go. The Israelites must have been
swayed by many inducements to settle down for good and all in the low levels
of fertile Goshen, and to think themselves better off there than if going

142. out on a perilous enterprise to win no richer pastures than they already
possessed. In fact, when the deliverance came, it was not particularly
welcome, oven though oppression was embittering the peoples’ lives. But,
when hope had died down in them, and desire had become languid, and ignoble
contentment with their flocks and herds had dulled their spirits, Joseph’s
silent coffin must have pealed in their ears—‘This is not your rest; arise
and claim your inheritance.’ In like manner, the pressure of the apparently
solid realities of to-day, the growth of the ‘scientific’ temper of mind
which confines knowledge to physical facts, the drift of tendency among
religious people to regard Christianity mainly in its aspect of dealing with
social questions and bringing present good, powerfully reinforce our natural
sluggishness of Hope, and have brought it about that the average Christian
of this day has fewer of his thoughts directed to the future life than his
predecessors had, or than it is good for him to have.
Among the many truths which almost need to be rediscovered by their
professed believers, that of the rest that remains for the people of God is
one. For the test of believing a truth is its influence on conduct, and no
one can affirm that the conduct of the average Christian of our times bears
marks of being deeply influenced by that Future, or by the hope of winning
it. Does he live as if he felt that he was an alien among the material
things surrounding him? Does it look as if his true affinities were beyond
the grave and above the stars? If we did thus feel, not at rare intervals,
when ‘in seasons of calm weather, our souls have sight of that immortal
sea,’ which lies glassy before the throne, and on whose banks the minstrels

143. stand singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb, but habitually and with a
vivid realisation, which makes the things hoped for more solid than what we
touch and handle, our lives would be far other than they are. We should not
work less, but more, earnestly at our present duties, whatever these may be,
for they would be seen in new importance as bearing on our place in that
world of consequences. The more our goal and prize are seen gleaming through
the dust of the race-ground, the more strenuous our effort here. othing
ennobles the trifles of our lives in time like the streaming in on these of
the light of eternity. That vision ever present with us will not sadden. The
fact of mortality is grim enough, if forced upon us unaccompanied by the
other fact that Death opens the gate of our Home. But when the else
depressing thought that ‘here we have no continuing city’ is but the obverse
and result of the fact that ‘we seek one to come,’ it is freed from its
sadness, and becomes powerful for good and even for joy. We need, even more
than Israel in its bondage did, to realise that we are strangers and
pilgrims. It concerns the depth of our religion and the reality of our
profiting by the discipline, as well as of our securing the enjoyment of the
blessings, of the fleeting and else trivial present, that we shall keep very
clear in view the great future which dignifies and interprets this
enigmatical earthly life.
Further, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a preacher of patience. As we have seen,
three centuries at least, probably a somewhat longer period, passed between
the time when Joseph’s corpse was laid in it, and the night when it was
lifted out of it by the departing Israelites. o doubt, hope deferred had

144. made many a heart sick, and the weary question, ‘Where is the promise of His
coming?’ had in some cases changed into bitter disbelief that the promise
would ever be fulfilled. But, for all these years, the dumb monitor stood
there proclaiming, ‘If the vision tarry, wait for it.’
Surely we need the same lesson. It is hard for us to acquiesce in the slow
march of the divine purposes. Life is short, and desire would fain see the
great harvests reaped before death seals our eyes. Sometimes the very
prospect of the great things that shall one day be accomplished in the
world, and we not there to see, weighs heavily on us. Reformers,
philanthropists, idealists of all sorts are constitutionally impatient, and
in their generous haste to see their ideals realised, forget that ‘raw
haste’ is ‘half-sister to delay’ and are indignant with man for his
sluggishness and with God for His majestic slowness. ot less do we fret and
fume and think the days drag with intolerable slowness, before some eagerly
expected good rises like a star on our individual lives. But there is deep
truth in Paul’s apparent paradox, that ‘if we hope for that we see not, then
do we with patience wait for it.’ The more sure the confidence, the more
quiet the patient waiting. It is uncertainty which makes earthly hope short
of breath, and impatient of delay.
But since a Christian man’s hope is consolidated into certainty, and when it
is set on God, cannot only say, I trust that it will be so and so, but, I
know that it shall, it may well be content to be patient for the fulfilment,
‘as the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath

145. long patience for it.’ ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years’ in
respect of the magnitude of the changes which may be wrought by the
instantaneous operation of His hand when the appointed hour shall strike,
and therefore it should not strain our patience nor stagger our faith that
‘a thousand years’ should be ‘as one day,’ in respect of the visible
approximation achieved in them, towards the establishment of His purpose.
The world was prepared for man through countless millenniums. Man was
prepared for the advent of Christ through long centuries. ineteen hundred
years have effected comparatively little in incorporating the issues of
Christ’s work in the consciousness and characters of mankind. Much of the
slowness of that progress of Christianity is due to the faithlessness and
sloth of professing Christians. But it still remains true that God lifts His
foot slowly, and plants it firmly, in His march through the world. So, both
in regard to the progress of truth, and the diffusion of the highest, and of
the secondary, blessings of Christianity through the nations, and in respect
to the reception of individual good gifts, we shall do wisely to leave God
to settle the ‘when’ since we are sure that He has bound Himself to
accomplish the fact.
Finally, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a pledge of possession. It lay long
among the Israelites to uphold fainting faith, and at last was carried up
before their host, and reverently guarded during forty years’ wanderings,
till it was deposited in the cave at Machpelah, beside the tombs of the
fathers of the nation. Thus it became to the nation, and remains for us, a
symbol of the truth that no hope based upon God’s bare word is ever finally

146. disappointed. From all other anticipations grounded on anything less solid,
the element of uncertainty is inseparable, and Fear is ever the sister of
Hope. With keen insight Spenser makes these two march side by side, in his
wonderful procession of the attendants of earthly Love. There is always a
lurking sadness in Hope’s smiles, and a nameless dread in her eyes. And all
expectations busied with or based upon the contingencies of this poor life,
whether they are fulfilled or disappointed, prove less sweet in fruition
than in prospect, and often turn to ashes in the eating, instead of the
sweet bread which we had thought them to be. One basis alone is sure, and
that is the foundation on which Joseph rested and risked everything—the
plain promise of God. He who builds on that rock will never be put to shame,
and when floods sweep away every refuge built on sand, he will not need to
‘make haste’ to find, amid darkness and storm, some less precarious shelter,
but will look down serenely on the wildest torrent, and know it to be
impotent to wash away his fortress home.
There is no nobler example of victorious faith which prolonged confident
expectation beyond the insignificant accident of death than Joseph’s dying
‘commandment concerning his bones.’ His confidence, indeed, grasped a far
lower blessing than ours should reach out to clasp. It was evoked by less
clear and full promises and pledges than we have. The magnitude and
loftiness of the Christian hope of Immortality, and the certitude of the
fact on which it reposes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, should result in
a corresponding increase in the firmness and clearness of our hope, and in
its power in our lives. The average Christian of to-day may well be sent to

147. school to Joseph on his death-bed. Is our faith as strong as—I will not ask
if it is stronger than—that of this man who, in the morning twilight of
revelation, and with a hope of an eternal possession of an earthly
inheritance, which, one might have thought, would be shattered by death, was
able to fling his anchor clean across the gulf when he gave injunction,
‘Carry my bones up hence’? We have a better inheritance, and fuller, clearer
promises and facts on which to trust. Shame to us if we have a feebler
faith.
Tonight, I want you to know that Joseph's coffin still has something to say to you
and me. I want to take a listen to the message from this coffin. I want to share with
you some of the statements this coffin makes as it sits there in Egypt. It may have
preached its message many hundreds of centuries ago, but it still speaks loudly
today. Let's listen in to its message as we consider A Coffin In Egypt.
I. IT PREACHES A MESSAGE OF PASSIG
A. Among the dying words of Joseph are words of his own mortality. He knows
that he is going to die! After he does and his body is placed in that coffin, it preaches
a loud message to all who see it that they too are mere mortals and will pass away
into death.
B. That is a message that we need to hear today. Most likely, none of us will live to
be 110. (Ill. Man in California has been certified (August, 2002) as oldest man in
America. He is 112!) The fact of the matter is, we are all slated for death, Heb. 9:27.
(Ill. The following epitaph was placed on a tombstone in California:
Pause, Stranger, when you pass me by,

148. As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be,
So prepare for death and follow me
Someone passing by read those words and scratched this thought into the
tombstone:
To follow you I'm not content,
Until I know which way you went.
C. In light of that truth, two things must be remembered:
1. This life is a time of preparation to meet God in eternity!
2. If you are going to serve the Lord, today is the day to get about it!
The Bible makes it clear that it is foolish to bank on hope of tomorrow, Pro.
27:1. (Ill. This truth is illustrated by the parable of The Rich Fool - Luke 12:16-21.)

149. II. IT PREACHES A MESSAGE OF PROMISE
A. As Joseph lays dying, he impresses upon his hearers the truth that one day,
God Himself will visit the people of Israel and He will deliver them from Egypt and
take them to Canaan. That is their blessed hope! That coffin was a constant
reminder that there is hope and promise for the future.
B. The sad truth of our own mortality bothers many people. They do not like to
think about death and dying. But, have you ever though that a cemetery is merely a
reminder of the promises of God? When we see the places where the bodies of the
departed lie buried, we are reminded that death is not the end! There will come a
day when the Lord will visit those graves and bring those bodies out, 1 Thes. 4:13-
18.
C. For Israel, the coffin of Joseph stood as a constant reminder that Joseph had
died in absolute of hope. In fact, when all the great deeds of this man's life are
considered for mention by the Holy Spirit, the one fact of his life that is mentioned
as his greatest act of faith is his command concerning his bones and his reminder to
them that God would bring them out some day.
D. I would just like to remind you that we have something far better than a coffin
full of bones! We see our own death grow closer with every passing day, we have an
empty tomb to give us hope and comfort. You see, Israel had the hope that they
would one day carry Joseph's bones to the promised land. We have the hope that
our Savior has already conquered death for us. He is preparing a place for us and
one day, He will return again for us, John 14:1-3; 1 Cor. 15:20.
E. He may come for us before we face death, 1 Cor. 15:51-52. But, even if He
doesn't and death's icy finger take hold of us some day, rest in His promise that,
while this body may return to the ground, the soul goes to rest with Him, 2 Cor. 5:8.
So, whether I go by means of the undertaker of the Uppertaker, I am a winner
either way!
III. IT PREACHES A MESSAGE OF PATIECE

150. A. In Joseph's dying words, there is no mention of the fact that the children of
Israel will be forced into slavery. But, this was part of the truth that God had
revealed to Abraham, Gen. 15:7-21. When Joseph died, Israel was in favor in Egypt,
but Exodus chapter 1 relates the story of how Israel was forced into bondage. As the
years piled up, the people of Israel became discouraged and defeated as a result of
their bondage, but the coffin containing the bones of Joseph continued to preach. It
preached them a message of patience. It said, Wait on the Lord! He will come as
He has promised. He will deliver you and take you to Canaan!
B. As you and I live out our lives here in this world, we are also waiting for the
promise of the Lord to be fulfilled. How many of us have entertained thoughts of
being raptured and delivered from this world this week? Probably most of us have!
But, we are still here!
C. Until He comes for us, let me encourage you to wait in patience! This was the
mind set manifested by Job in the midst of his tribulation, Job 14:14. The word
wait has the idea of trust and hope. You see, we do not know where our path
may lead us before we get out of here. We know it's going to get hard, John 16:33,
but not how hard. Until He comes for us, let us patiently wait for Him and trust Him
to guide our paths, Psa. 37:23, and to bring into our lives the things He knows are
best for us, Rom. 8:28.
D. Be patient, Brethren and Sisteren, the Lord is coming soon. That is His
promise to you and me, Rev. 22:20!
IV. IT PREACHES A MESSAGE OF POSSESSIO
A. Joseph's dying words were a reminder of the Lord's promise to give to
Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan, Gen. 15:16. This was a promise
never realized during the life of Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. In fact, the only land they
owned was land Abraham purchased in order to bury Sarah, Gen. 23. Even though
neither they nor Joseph had ever owned that land, it was their's and they were going
there some day! That coffin filled with bones was a constant reminder of that truth.
It preached the message, To Canaan's land I'm on my way!

151. B. As we wait in this world for our Lord to come, let us remember that we are
headed to a blessed homeland! We are citizens of Heaven, Phil. 3:20 and one day, we
will be there with our Lord!
C. I am looking forward to getting home! (Ill. Rev. 21:4; Rev. 21:27) (Ill. The
glories of that city!) (Ill. A pastor was preaching on going to heaven. He said, How
many of you would like to go to heaven tonight? And everybody raised their hands
but a little boy in the balcony. He tried again, How many of you would like to go to
heaven? Everybody but that one little fellow in the balcony. So he said to him,
Son, don't you want to go to heaven? The little boy said, Yeah, someday, but I
thought you were gettin' up a load right now.)
D. For nearly 400 years, that coffin preached a message to Israel that they were
not home yet, but they were going. Tonight, the message has not changed. We are
not home yet, but we are going soon!
(Story: Three friends die in a car accident and they go to an orientation in heaven.
They are all asked, When you are in your casket and friends and family are
mourning you, what would you like to hear them say about you? The first guy says,
I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great
family man. The second guy says, I would like to hear that I was a wonderful
husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in our children of
tomorrow. The last guy replies, I would like to hear them say … 'Look, he's
moving!')
Conc: That old coffin down there in Egypt delivered a message that I can identify
with this evening! Is it a message that speaks to your heart and your situation? Is it
a message that you need to deal with this evening? There is peace, power and
promise in the message of that coffin down in Egypt. It is the same message that our
Savior gives to us this evening. Let it encourage your hearts!
APPEDIX A
In the art of embalming, the Egyptians excelled all nations in the world; with them
it was a common practice. Instances of the perfection to which they carried this art
may be seen in the numerous mummies, as they are called, which are found in

152. different European cabinets, and which have been all brought from Egypt. This
people not only embalmed men and women, and thus kept the bodies of their
beloved relatives from the empire of corruption, but they embalmed useful animals
also. I have seen the body of the Ibris thus preserved; and though the work had been
done for some thousands of years, the very feathers were in complete preservation,
and the colour of the plumage discernible. The account of this curious process, the
articles used, and the manner of applying them, I subjoin from Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus, as also the manner of their mournings and funeral solemnities,
which are highly illustrative of the subjects in this chapter.
When any man of quality dies, says Herodotus, all the women of that family
besmear their heads and faces with dirt; then, leaving the body at home, they go
lamenting up and down the city with all their relations; their apparel being girt
about them, and their breasts left naked. On the other hand the men, having
likewise their clothes girt about them, beat themselves. These things being done,
they carry the dead body to be embalmed; for which there are certain persons
appointed who profess this art. These, when the body is brought to them, show to
those that bring it certain models of dead persons in wood, according to any of
which the deceased may be painted. One of these they say is accurately made like to
one whom, in such a matter, I do not think lawful to name;
τουουκοσιονποιουμαιτοουνομαεπιτοιουτω πρηγματιονομαζειν; (probably Osiris, one
of the principal gods of Egypt, is here intended;) then they show a second inferior to
it, and of an easier price; and next a third, cheaper than the former, and of a very
small value; which being seen, they ask them after which model the deceased shall
be represented. When they have agreed upon the price they depart; and those with
whom the dead corpse is left proceed to embalm it after the following manner: First
of all, they with a crooked iron draw the brain out of the head through the nostrils;
next, with a sharp AEthiopic stone they cut up that part of the abdomen called the
ilia, and that way draw out all the bowels, which, having cleansed and washed with
palm wine, they again rinse and wash with wine perfumed with pounded odours:
then filling up the belly with pure myrrh and cassia grossly powdered, and all other
odours except frankincense, they sew it up again. Having so done, they salt it up
close with nitre seventy days, for longer they may not salt it. After this number of
days are over they wash the corpse again, and then roll it up with fine linen, all
besmeared with a sort of gum, commonly used by the Egyptians instead of glue.
Then is the body restored to its relations, who prepare a wooden coffin for it in the
shape and likeness of a man, and then put the embalmed body into it, and thus
enclosed, place it in a repository in the house, setting it upright against the wall.
After this manner they, with great expense, preserve their dead; whereas those who
to avoid too great a charge desire a mediocrity, thus embalm them: they neither cut
the belly nor pluck out the entrails, but fill it with clysters of oil of cedar injected up
the anus, and then salt it the aforesaid number of days. On the last of these they
press out the cedar clyster by the same way they had injected it, which has such
virtue and efficacy that it brings out along with it the bowels wasted, and the nitre
consumes the flesh, leaving only the skin and bones: having thus done, they restore
the dead body to the relations, doing nothing more. The third way of embalming is
for those of yet meaner circumstances; they with lotions wash the belly, then dry it

153. up with salt for seventy days, and afterwards deliver it to be carried away.
evertheless, beautiful women and ladles of quality were not delivered to be
embalmed till three or four days after they had been dead; for which Herodotus
assigns a sufficient reason, however degrading to human nature: τουτοδε
ποιεουσιουτωτουδεεινεκαιναμησφιοιταριχευταιμισγωνται
τησιγυναιξιλαμφθηναιγαρτιναφασιμισγομενοννεκρωπροσφατω
γυναικοςκατειπαιδετονομοτεχνον. {The original should not be put into a plainer
language; the abomination to which it refers being too gross.} But if any stranger
or Egyptian was either killed by a crocodile or drowned in the river, the city where
he was cast up was to embalm and bury him honourably in the sacred monuments,
whom no one, no, not a relation or friend, but the priests of the ?ile only, might
touch; because they buried one who was something more than a dead man.
-HEROD. Euterpe, p. 120, ed. Gale.
Diodorus Siculus relates the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians more distinctly and
clearly, and with some very remarkable additional circumstances. When any one
among the Egyptians dies, says he, all his relations and friends, putting dirt upon
their heads, go lamenting about the city, till such time as the body shall be buried: in
the meantime, they abstain from baths and wine, and all kinds of delicate meats;
neither do they, during that time, wear any costly apparel. The manner of their
burials is threefold: one very costly, a second sort less chargeable, and a third very
mean. In the first, they say, there is spent a talent of silver; in the second, twenty
minae; but in the last there is very little expense. 'Those who have the care of
ordering the body are such as have been taught that art by their ancestors. These,
showing each kind of burial, ask them after what manner they will have the body
prepared. When they have agreed upon the manner, they deliver the body to such as
are usually appointed for this office. First, he who has the name of scribe, laying it
upon the ground, marks about the flank on the left side how much is to be cut away;
then he who is called παρασχιστης, paraschistes, the cutter or dissector, with an
AEthiopic stone, cuts away as much of the flesh as the law commands, and presently
runs away as fast as he can; those who are present, pursuing him, cast stones at him,
and curse him, hereby turning all the execrations which they imagine due to his
office upon him. For whosoever offers violence, wounds, or does any kind of injury
to a body of the same nature with himself, they think him worthy of hatred: but
those who are ταριχευται, taricheutae, the embalmers, they esteem worthy of honour
and respect; for they are familiar with their priests, and go into the temples as holy
men, without any prohibition. As soon as they come to embalm the dissected body,
one of them thrusts his hand through the wound into the abdomen, and draws forth
all the bowels but the heart and kidneys, which another washes and cleanses with
wine made of palms and aromatic odours. Lastly, having washed the body, they
anoint it with oil of cedar and other things for about thirty days, and afterwards
with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters, which have not only a power to
preserve it a long time, but also give it a sweet smell; after which they deliver it to
the kindred in such manner that every member remains whole and entire, and no
part of it changed, but the beauty and shape of the face seem just as they were
before; and the person may be known, even the eyebrows and eyelids remaining as
they were at first. By this means many of the Egyptians, keeping the dead bodies of

154. their ancestors in magnificent houses, so perfectly see the true visage and
countenance of those that died many ages before they themselves were born, that in
viewing the proportions of every one of them, and the lineaments of their faces, they
take as much delight as if they were still living among them. Moreover, the friends
and nearest relations of the deceased, for the greater pomp of the solemnity,
acquaint the judges and the rest of their friends with the time prefixed for the
funeral or day of sepulture, declaring that such a one (calling the dead by his name)
is such a day to pass the lake; at which time above forty judges appear, and sit
together in a semicircle, in a place prepared on the hither side of the lake, where a
ship, provided beforehand by such as have the care of the business, is haled up to
the shore, and steered by a pilot whom the Egyptians in their language called
Charon. Hence they say Orpheus, upon seeing this ceremony while he was in Egypt,
invented the fable of hell, partly imitating therein the people of Egypt, and partly
adding somewhat of his own. The ship being thus brought to the lake side, before
the coffin is put on board every one is at liberty by the law to accuse the dead of
what he thinks him guilty. If any one proves he was a bad man, the judges give
sentence that the body shall be deprived of sepulture; but in case the informer be
convicted of false accusation, then he is severely punished. If no accuser appear, or
the information prove false, then all the kindred of the deceased leave off mourning,
and begin to set forth his praises, yet say nothing of his birth, (as the custom is
among the Greeks,) because the Egyptians all think themselves equally noble; but
they recount how the deceased was educated from his youth and brought up to
man's estate, exalting his piety towards the gods, and justice towards men, his
chastity, and other virtues wherein he excelled; and lastly pray and call upon the
infernal deities (τουςκατωθεους, the gods below) to receive him into the societies of
the just. The common people take this from the others, and consequently all is said
in his praise by a loud shout, setting forth likewise his virtues in the highest strains
of commendation, as one that is to live for ever with the infernal gods. Then those
that have tombs of their own inter the corpse in places appointed for that purpose;
and they that have none rear up the body in its coffin against some strong wall of
their house. But such as are denied sepulture on account of some crime or debt, are
laid up at home without coffins; yet when it shall afterwards happen that any of
their posterity grows rich, he commonly pays off the deceased person's debts, and
gets his crimes absolved, and so buries him honourably; for the Egyptians are wont
to boast of their parents and ancestors that were honourably buried. It is a custom
likewise among them to pawn the dead bodies of their parents to their creditors; but
then those that do not redeem them fall under the greatest disgrace imaginable, and
are denied burial themselves at their deaths.-Diod. Sic. Biblioth., lib. i., cap. 91-93.,
edit. Bipont. See also the ?ecrokedia, or Art of Embalming, by Greenhill, 4to., p. 241,
who endeavoured in vain to recommend and restore the art But he could not give
his countrymen Egyptian manners; for a dead carcass is to the British an object of
horror, and scarcely any, except a surgeon or an undertaker, cares to touch it.

155. All of my own poems, books, commentaries and other writings can be found at
1. 68 FREE BOOKS http://www.scribd.com/doc/21800308/Free-Christian-Books
2. ALL WRITIGS http://www.scribd.com/glennpease/documents?
page=139
3. JUST POETRY http://www.scribd.com/doc/21858076/Poems-and-
Lyrics