Two burials, and a coffin in Egypt
29 He instructed them, and said to them, “I am to be gathered to my people. Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place. 31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah, his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah, his wife, and there I buried Leah: 32 the field and the cave that is therein, which was purchased from the children of Heth.” 33 When Jacob finished charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, breathed his last breath, and was gathered to his people. Genesis 50 1 Joseph fell on his father’s face, wept on him, and kissed him. 2 Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 Forty days were used for him, for that is how many days it takes to embalm. The Egyptians wept for Israel for seventy days. 4 When the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to Pharaoh’s staff, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 5 ‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying. Bury me in my grave which I have dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come again.’” 6 Pharaoh said, “Go up, and bury your father, just like he made you swear.” 7 Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8 all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house. Only their little ones, their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen. 9 Both chariots and horsemen went up with him. It was a very great company. 10 They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and there they lamented with a very great and severe lamentation. He mourned for his father seven days. 11 When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, “This is a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.” Therefore its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan. 12 His sons did to him just as he commanded them, 13 for his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field, as a possession for a burial site, from Ephron the Hittite, near Mamre. 14 Joseph returned into Egypt—he, and his brothers, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father. 15 When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us, and will fully pay us back for all the evil which we did to him.” 16 They sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father commanded before he died, saying, 17 ‘You shall tell Joseph, “Now please forgive the disobedience of your brothers, and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ Now, please forgive the disobedience of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18 His brothers also went and fell down before his face; and they said, “Behold, we are your servants.” 19 Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for am I in the place of God? 20 As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today. 21 Now therefore don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.” He comforted them, and spoke kindly to them. 22 Joseph lived in Egypt, he, and his father’s house. Joseph lived one hundred ten years. 23 Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees. 24 Joseph said to his brothers, “I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” 25 Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” 26 So Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
The book ends with the deepest sentence in it about God and evil, and then with a body waiting in a box for a promise not yet kept.
Jacob's last instruction is about a cave, and he recites the deed: the field of Ephron, at Machpelah, before Mamre, bought from the children of Heth. He lists who is in it — Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and there I buried Leah.
Leah. The wife he did not choose and did not love, whom he married by a trick and lived with for decades, is the one lying in the family grave, and he is asking to be laid beside her. Rachel is by a road near Bethlehem. He never says why, and the arrangement says it for him.
He gathered up his feet into the bed, breathed his last breath, and was gathered to his people. The description is of a man composing himself and stopping, and the phrase for what follows is the same one used of Abraham and Isaac.
What Egypt does with him is remarkable. Forty days of embalming and seventy days of mourning — a period approaching what was given to a Pharaoh — and then a state funeral procession: the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, all the elders of Egypt, chariots and horsemen. The Canaanites who watch it pass name the place after what they see, a grievous mourning by the Egyptians.
An empire buries a shepherd in a foreign country because his son asked.
Then the brothers panic, and their fear is entirely in character: It may be that Joseph will hate us, and will fully pay us back for all the evil which we did to him. Seventeen years of provision and kindness have not convinced them, because they have been reading his conduct as forbearance in their father's presence.
They send a message rather than coming, and they attribute it to Jacob — Your father commanded before he died — which may be true and is not recorded anywhere, and then they come anyway and fall down: Behold, we are your servants.
It is the dream again, one last time, and it is the last thing Joseph wants.
Joseph wept when they spoke to him. After twenty-two years apart and seventeen together, they still think he is waiting for a chance. That is what the weeping is about.
And then the sentence the whole book has been building toward, and there is nothing else quite like it in Scripture: As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today.
Both verbs are the same word, and both subjects are meant. They intended evil — it is called evil, to their faces, by the man they did it to, at the end of his life, with nothing softened. And God intended the identical event for good, and the good is stated in numbers of people fed.
What the sentence refuses to do is choose. It does not say the brothers were tools without wills, and it does not say the outcome makes the crime acceptable. It says one act had two authors with opposite intentions, and God's held. That is the answer this book gives to the problem of a world where the promise runs through pits, prisons, famines and betrayals — and it is given by a man who lost thirteen years to it.
His question before it is the other half: am I in the place of God? Vengeance would require a standing he does not have. He is not the judge of these men, and having declined the office, he can feed them.
The last paragraph is quiet and unfinished on purpose. Joseph sees great-grandchildren, and then: I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. He is certain of a return he will not see, and he binds them by oath to carry his bones.
And the final words of the book are five: a coffin in Egypt.
The man who was carried down as a slave is left in a box, above ground, unburied, waiting. Genesis ends with a promise outstanding and a body that refuses to be at home. Four centuries later a man leading a nation out of that country stops to collect it Exodus 13:19, and Joshua buries it at Shechem in the plot Jacob bought Joshua 24:32.
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