Genesis 50 Study Notes

50:1-3 Joseph, who was physically closest to his father at the moment of his death, “fell upon” (leaning over) his father’s face, wept and kissed him. The usual Hebrew custom was to practice same-day burial without embalming; however, embalming was necessary to prepare Jacob’s body for the journey to Canaan. Egyptian embalming, which took forty days to complete, was normally a religious practice performed by priests to prepare the person for the afterlife; the fact that Joseph used physicians rather than priests to perform the task may suggest that he had rejected Egyptian afterlife beliefs and wished to avoid giving a different impression.

The seventy days of mourning probably reflected Egyptian customs associated with the deaths of particularly important individuals; normal Hebrew mourning periods were either seven days (1Sm 31:13) or thirty days (one lunar cycle; Dt 34:8).

50:4-9 When the seventy days of mourning were over, Joseph went to Pharaoh’s household, asking permission to bury his father in the land of Canaan. Joseph probably had reduced access to Pharaoh by now, which was about twelve years after the famine ended and the crisis Joseph had handled so well was long past. Even so, Pharaoh granted him permission to go and bury his father, thus fulfilling the oath Joseph had made to his dying parent (47:29-31).

As a sign of Pharaoh’s continuing gratitude for Joseph’s work, he permitted all his servants, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt—a considerable number of high-ranking Egyptian politicians—to accompany all the adult members of the clan of Jacob on the journey to Canaan. Horses and chariots, prestigious transportation used only by members of the Egyptian aristocracy, were part of a very impressive procession to Canaan.

50:10-14 The group camped at the open, level threshing floor of Atad and went through a Hebrew mourning ritual. The presence of a large number of Egyptians publicly displaying solemn mourning so impressed the local Canaanite inhabitants that they renamed the place Abel-mizraim (“The Meadow of Egypt”), a wordplay on a Semitic word for “weeping” (’ebel). Proceeding westward to the cave at Machpelah two miles north of Hebron, Joseph buried his father, thus fulfilling what his father had commanded Joseph and his brothers to do.

50:15-21 Despite having lived under Joseph’s provision and protection for many years, and despite knowing that Joseph had named one son Manasseh (“God has made me forget all my hardship in my father’s house”), the brothers still doubted that Joseph had forgiven them. With Jacob now dead, Joseph’s older brothers feared for their lives and hoped that saying their father called for forgiveness before he died would protect them from Joseph’s wrath. They were so afraid of Joseph that they did not dare at first to come to him personally; instead, they only sent a message entreating him to forgive his brothers’ “rebellion” (transgression) and sin, especially since they were “slaves” (servants) of the God of your father—that is, they worshiped the same God that Joseph did. Perhaps the reason the brothers came to Joseph was that they heard he had wept when he received their message. To maximize their chances of survival they bowed down before him (cp. 37:7,9) and offered themselves as his personal slaves.

Joseph refused their offer. They were slaves of God, not of him, and he would not put himself in the place of God to make them his slaves. He admitted that his older brothers planned evil against him, but with great spiritual insight he also confessed that God planned it for good to bring about . . . the survival of many people (see note at 45:5-8). God had transformed the soot of human sin into a diamond of divine blessing (Rm 8:28; 1Pt 2:24). Far from being embittered, Joseph was emboldened to take care of the very ones who had tried to kill him, along with their children. He spoke kindly to them (lit “spoke upon their heart”; cp. Is 40:2) and comforted them.

50:22-23 God’s blessing on Joseph’s life is apparent as he lived 110 years, 93 of them in Egypt and 80 of them as a ruler there. He lived to see the third generation of descendants through Ephraim, a phrase that could refer either to great-grandsons or great-great-grandsons. A further sign of God’s blessing was the fact that Gilead (Nm 26:29) and other great-grandsons by Machir son of Manasseh “were born on the knees of Joseph,” that is, they were ritually adopted by him (Gn 30:3; Ru 4:16).

50:24-26 As Joseph was about to die, some fifty-four years after his father Jacob’s death, he called his brothers to him for one last time and gave them two prophetic promises. First, that God would certainly come to the aid of their descendants. Second, that God would indeed bring their descendants up from Egypt to the land he swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (12:7; 13:15,17; 15:7,18; 24:7; 26:3; 28:13).

After Joseph died, he was embalmed—one of only two persons in the Bible said to have been embalmed (also Jacob; see v. 2 and note at vv. 1-3). His preserved body was then placed . . . in a coffin, awaiting a future day when it was to be carried by Moses and the Israelites to the promised land (Ex 13:19; Jos 24:32).