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Genesis 49b and 50:

Reading #158  The deaths of Jacob and Joseph

Now we carry on with the contrast between the deaths of Jacob and Joseph in those last days.

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Genesis 49: 

29 And he [Jacob] charged 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 of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a buryingplace. 31 There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah [he was not to be buried with Rachel]. 32 The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth [not God-given].”

33 And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed [laid down], and yielded up the ghost [the spirit or breath God had given him at birth], and was gathered to his people [in the prison house, waiting the resurrection, Isaiah 42:6-7.] 

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Jacob, like so many others, temporarily left the God of the living [Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living”, Matthew 22:32], and gave up his life because he thought that this was what was supposed to happen.  From the beginning, the thoughts of God’s people had been artfully focused on resurrection after death, rather than translation before.  Only Enoch (and later Elijah) enquired of the LORD and accepted His word that He is the life as well as the resurrection.  John 11:25-26. 

One of the earliest patriarchs cried out:

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Job 19:

23 Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book!

24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead [cut] in the rock for ever!

25 For I know that my Redeemer lives [right now], and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth [at the third advent, Zechariah 14:4-5].

26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body [after my skin is destroyed by worms], yet in my flesh shall I see God: 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me [my heart yearns for that meeting now].

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But because of his misunderstanding of God’s “way”, Job’s yearning was suppressed and he never asked the question!

In the same way, the last act of Jacob’s life showed his faith in only one of God's promises.

But his last years brought a “Sabbath” of tranquility and rest after a troubled and weary “week”.  Clouds had gathered dark above his path, yet his sun set clear, and the radiance of heaven illumined his parting hours (see Malachi 4:1-2), something the Son of God wants for all of us as early in our lives as possible. Thus we are told

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Hebrews 4:

1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into His [Sabbath] “rest”, any of you should seem to come short of it. 2 For to us [New Testament people] was the gospel preached, as well as to them [Old Testament people]: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. 

3 For we which have believed do enter into “rest”, as He said, “As I have sworn in My wrath, if they shall [would only] enter into My rest”: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 

4 For He [the Spirit of God] spoke in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, “And God did rest the seventh day from all His works.” 5 And in this place again, “If they shall enter into My rest.”

6 Seeing therefore it remains that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief: 7 again, He limits a certain day, saying in David [in the Psalms], “Today, after so long a time”; as it is said, “Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” 8 For if Jesus [Joshua at the exodus] had given them “rest”, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day [of opportunity].  

9 There remains [to this day] therefore a “rest” to the people of God. 10 For he that is entered into His “rest”, he also has ceased from his own works [in trying to be righteous], as God did from His [works, Genesis 2:1-3]. 11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. 

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Jacob had sinned, and had deeply suffered. Many years of toil, care, and sorrow had been his since the day when his great sin caused him to flee from his father's tents. A homeless fugitive, separated from his mother, whom he never saw again; laboring seven years for her whom he loved, only to be basely cheated; toiling twenty years in the service of a covetous and grasping kinsman; seeing his wealth increasing, and sons rising around him, but finding little joy in the contentious and divided household; distressed by his daughter's shame, by her brothers' revenge, by the death of Rachel, by the unnatural crime of Reuben, by Judah's sin, by the cruel deception and malice practiced toward Joseph - how long and dark is the catalogue of evils spread out to view!

Again and again he had reaped the fruit of that first wrong deed. Over and over he saw repeated among his sons the sins of which he himself had been guilty.  See Numbers 14:18.  But bitter as had been the discipline, it had accomplished its work. The chastening, though grievous, had yielded "the peaceable fruit of righteousness", and he was now fit to live in an everlasting universe. Hebrews 12:11.

The Bible faithfully records the faults of good men, those who were distinguished by the grace of God, the new birth.  Indeed, often their faults are more fully presented than their virtues.  But that does not stop them from being Christians!  Says the Scripture, "Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace [even if it is the quiet of the grave!]" Psalm 37:37.

And so we come to the end of the saga of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the three men who set the pattern of Christianity for us long before there was a Christ on earth.  Now we pass on to Joseph.

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Genesis 50:

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 [made him into a mummy]. 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 [70] days.

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The people of Egypt, in order to supply themselves with food during the famine, had sold their cattle and lands to the crown, and had finally bound themselves to perpetual slavery. But Joseph wisely provided for their release; he permitted them to become royal tenants, holding their lands from the king, and paying an annual tribute of one fifth of the products of their labour. 

However, the children of Jacob did not have to do this. On account of the service that Joseph had rendered the Egyptian nation, they were not only granted a part of the country as a home, but were exempted from taxation, and liberally supplied with food during the continuance of the famine. A grateful king said to his rulers, “Are we not indebted to the God of Joseph, and to him, for this liberal supply of food? Was it not because of his wisdom that we laid in so abundantly? While other lands are perishing, we have enough! His management has greatly enriched the kingdom.  We owe a lot to him.”

This was shown particularly at the death of Jacob.  His body was treated to all the pomp and ceremony which would normally have been given to a Pharaoh. 

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Genesis 50:

4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to 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 dug for me in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.” Now therefore let me go up, I pray you, and bury my father, and I will come again’.” [He did not forget that he was a slave and needed permission to leave the country!  As a Christian he would return to his physical slavery till the Son of God persuaded the Egyptians to set him free.  See the story of Onesimus in the book of Philemon for a parallel.]

6 And Pharaoh said, “Go up, and bury your father, according as he made you 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 brothers, 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.

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So many people went up from Egypt for the burial that the cavalcade took on the look of a royal procession, especially with the chariots. 

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Genesis 50: 

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 “Abelmizraim” [the mourning of the Egyptians], which is beyond Jordan. 

12 And his sons did to 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.

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So we see that neither Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob received any portion of the earthly promised land from the Son of God.  All they ever owned they bought with earthly money.

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Genesis 50:

14 And 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 And when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us [pay us back] all the evil which we did to him.”

16 And they sent a messenger to Joseph, saying, “Your father did command before he died, saying, 17 ‘So shall you say to Joseph, Forgive, I pray you now, the trespass of your brothers, and their sin; for they did to you evil’: and now, we pray you, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.”

And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 

18 And his brothers also went and fell down before his face; and they said, “Behold, we be your servants.” 19 And Joseph said to them, “Fear not: for am I in the place of God? 20 But as for you, you thought evil against me; but God meant it to good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

21 Now therefore fear you not: I will nourish you, and your little ones.” And he comforted them, and spoke kindly to them. 

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After the burial of Jacob fear again filled the hearts of Joseph's brothers. Notwithstanding his kindness toward them, conscious guilt made them distrustful and suspicious. It might be that he had delayed his revenge out of regard to their father, and that he would now visit upon them the long-deferred punishment for their crime. They dared not appear before him in person, but sent a message by the hand of another.

This message affected Joseph to tears, and, encouraged by this, his brothers came and fell down before him, with the words, "Behold, we be your servants." Joseph's love for his brothers was deep and unselfish, and he was pained at the thought that they could regard him as cherishing a spirit of revenge toward them. How often we do this to God!

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Genesis 50:

22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived [to be] a hundred and ten years. 23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees.

24 And Joseph said to his brethren, “I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land which He swore 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 you shall carry up my bones from here.” 26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. 

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Joseph outlived his father by over fifty years and became a great-grandfather.  During that time he witnessed the increase and prosperity of his people, and through all the years his faith in God's restoration of Israel to the Land of Promise was unshaken. 

When he saw that his end was near, he summoned his kinsmen about him. Honoured as he had been in the land of the Pharaohs, Egypt was to him still the place of his exile, therefore his last act was to signify that his lot was cast with Israel. His final words were, "God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."  As a slave even his body must remain in Egypt, for he never asked to be relieved of that situation, but he intended to go out with the Israelites, in the meantime standing in his lot until released at last from his post.

To this end he took a solemn oath of the children of Israel that they would carry up his mummy with them to the land of Canaan.  This they did during the exodus under Moses and Joshua.

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Joshua 24:

32 And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem [where he had grown up], in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph. [Genesis 33:18-20.  Note that he was not buried with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.]

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But through the years of toil which followed his death, the coffin containing his mummy became a reminder of his dying words and testified to Israel that they were only sojourners in Egypt, and bade them keep their hopes fixed upon the Land of Promise, for the time of deliverance would surely come.  They needed this, for a new era had begun.

Next week, as we begin the book of the exodus, we we will see how God’s representative family degenerated into a religious organisation, a “church”.

Bye,

RonP

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