Jacob is embalmed, mourned seventy days by Egypt, and carried in a state procession back to the cave Abraham bought. Then the brothers panic: with their father gone, they are sure Joseph has only been waiting to take his revenge. They send word begging forgiveness and offer themselves as his slaves. Joseph weeps, and gives them the sentence the whole book has been leading to: ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good. He dies at a hundred and ten, leaving a coffin in Egypt and a promise attached to it.
A study in Genesis 50 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 8 min read
Bury Me With My Fathers
“And Joseph fell upon his father’s face, and wept upon him, and kissed him… 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.”
Genesis 50:1, 3
Jacob is embalmed like an Egyptian and mourned like an Egyptian king — seventy days. But he is not buried like one. Joseph gets Pharaoh’s leave to carry the body up to Canaan, and the caravan that goes is enormous: chariots, horsemen, the elders of Egypt, all the house of Joseph. They lay him in the cave of Machpelah, the field Abraham bought from the Hittites — the one piece of the promised land the family actually owns, and now the grave of three patriarchs and their wives. Every burial there is a stake driven into the ground: we are not staying in Egypt.
Joseph Will Peradventure Hate Us
“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.”
Genesis 50:15
Seventeen years of Joseph feeding them, housing them, weeping on their necks — and the moment their father dies they assume it was all a performance held up only by Jacob’s presence. They invent a deathbed message from Jacob asking Joseph to forgive them; the text never records Jacob saying it. Then they come in person: “Behold, we be thy servants” — the bowing sheaves of the old dream, offered now as a plea. Guilt that has never been fully believed-away keeps expecting the bill.
“Notwithstanding his kindness toward them, conscious guilt made them distrustful and suspicious.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 239
Am I In The Place Of God?
“And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?”
Genesis 50:19
“Joseph wept when they spake unto him” — it wounds him that after all this they still think he is keeping a ledger. His answer is a question: am I in the place of God? Judgment is not his job. He is not the one who settles accounts, and he has no intention of appointing himself to the role. It is the same posture as “it is not in me” before Pharaoh (Genesis 41) — a man who keeps declining to stand where only God stands.
Ye Thought Evil; But God Meant It Unto Good
“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. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.”
Genesis 50:20-21
This is the thesis of the Joseph story, stated for the second time (Genesis 45:8) and now over their father’s fresh grave. Both things are true at once and Joseph holds them both: ye thought evil — the crime was real, chosen, theirs — and God meant it unto good. The sale did not become good; God aimed it, against its own intent, at a rescue “to save much people alive.” Ellen White reads Joseph’s life as a preview: sold by his own, condemned though innocent, raised to save the ones who wanted him gone.
“The life of Joseph illustrates the life of Christ. It was envy that moved the brothers of Joseph to sell him as a slave; they hoped to prevent him from becoming greater than themselves.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 239
God Will Surely Visit You
“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… So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”
Genesis 50:24, 26
Genesis ends not on a throne but on a coffin, and a promise it does not live to see kept. Joseph will not be carried to Machpelah now; he makes the sons of Israel swear to take his bones when God brings them out. And they do — Moses carries them at the Exodus (Exodus 13:19), and Joshua buries them at Shechem, in Jacob’s field (Joshua 24:32). For four hundred years that unburied coffin sits in Egypt as a sermon: this is not home. The last word of the book of beginnings is Egypt, and the whole weight of it leans forward — toward a land promised to Abraham, and a deliverance not yet come.
“And through the centuries of toil which followed, the coffin, a reminder of the dying words of Joseph, testified to Israel that they were only sojourners in Egypt.”
Ellen G. White · Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 240
