1.
And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.
2.
And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.
3.
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.
4.
And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying,
5.
My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again.
6.
And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.
7.
And Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt,
8.
And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen.
9.
And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.
10.
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.
11.
And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan.
12.
And his sons did unto him according 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 for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.
14.
And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
15.
And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.
16.
And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying,
17.
So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.
18.
And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants.
19.
And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?
20.
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
21.
Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.
22.
And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.
23.
And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees.
24.
And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
25.
And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.
26.
So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
JOSEPH’S DEATH
‘So Joseph died.’
Genesis 50:26
Death is an unescapable experience alike for prince and for peasant. Joseph was great and good, but he was mortal, and, in God’s appointed time, went the way of all the earth. Death is always impressive whether it be the decease of an exalted ruler, or of an obscure day-labourer. Its lessons are essentially the same for every age, whether the soul takes its flight from under the shadow of the pyramids, or from amid the bustling scenes of a great modern metropolis.
I. When his long life task was complete, Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten, after ninety years of varied experience in Egypt. Apparently he continued to be held in honour until the day of his death. There are characters that seem to have their allotted amount of trial early in life, and after that enjoy comparative immunity from care or trouble. Nearly eighty per cent (or fourscore years) of Joseph’s life has been prosperous. In other lives this order appears to be inverted, for after an earlier season of prosperity, misfortune and tribulation cloud life’s afternoon and evening. Yet in every case God ‘means it for good.’
II. Gifted to the last with the prophetic instinct, Joseph foretold on his dying bed the subsequent exodus of God’s people from the school life of Egypt, and their entrance upon the covenanted blessings of the Promised Land. It has been given to few to read history before it happens, but Joseph was one of these favoured seers. In his dying visions he looked backward to Abraham’s time and onward to the stirring scenes attending the return to Canaan, and he loved in all to trace the guiding wisdom of the Lord. With calm faith he gave direction that his embalmed body should be left unburied in Egypt until such a time, years afterward, as the people of Israel should form in line for the great desert march Canaanwards, and his bones be finally laid away in the soil of the land of promise.
III. So Joseph died, calmly, peacefully, full of faith and hope. His taking off was like the harvesting of a full sheaf of grain from the fertile Nile delta whose stores he had gathered in in the years of plenty. Joseph had been tried for a time, but he was triumphant at last. His faith and faithfulness gave him favour both with God and man. Only so can life be made worth living for anyone, and death, robbed of its terrors, appear at last, as the herald of immortal blessedness.
Illustration
(1) ‘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 which he had been content to live. He too confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. Dying, he said, “Carry my bones up from hence.” Living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but upon its blessed soil. Faith will produce just such effects. 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? 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 fellowship with Christ and joy in the heavens.’
(2)‘We’ve no abiding city here;
Sad truth, were this to be our home!
But let this thought our spirits cheer,
We seek a city yet to come.
We’ve no abiding city here,
We seek a city out of sight;
Zion, its name; the Lord is there,
It shines with everlasting light.’