Hey, thanks for being with us today.
Hope it’s a good Wednesday.
If you’re paying attention or maybe Michael told you on the front end, we’re recording
this a day early.
I’m at a family funeral today,
and so I appreciate the flexibility of being able to do events
like that.
Appreciate Michael for covering while I’m gone,
but we are continuing through Genesis
here and we move into the last chapter as we get close to the end of the book.
And if you were with us yesterday,
you remember that the 49th chapter kind of culminated in Jacob’s death
and he gave instructions to his sons where he wanted to be buried,
not in Egypt but back with his family in his land.
And today we pick up the story really just in the aftermath of the verse that said that
he breathed his last,
that he joined his people and has passed away.
So, we enter in verse 1 of chapter 50 today,
“Then Joseph threw himself on his father’s
face and he wept over him and kissed him.
Joseph commanded the physicians in his service to embalm his father,
so the physicians embalmed Israel.
They spent 40 days doing this,
for that’s the time required for embalming,
and the Egyptians wept for him 70 days.
When the days of weeping for him were passed,
Joseph addressed the household of Pharaoh.
If I found any favor with you,
please speak to Pharaoh as follows.
My father made me swear an oath.
He said, I’m about to die.
In the tomb that I hewed out
for myself in the land of Canaan,
there you shall bury me.
Now therefore let me go up,
that I may bury my father,
then I will return.
Pharaoh answered, “Go up and bury your father,
as he made you swear to do.”
So let me just jump in here, Michael.
Again, we see here, and we’ll see it more in the text that follows this,
the second half of this text,
we continue to see the partnership of
Israel and Egypt really kind
of brought together by Joseph.
It is Egyptian physicians that care for the body.
We also see this outpouring of emotion from Joseph,
which is a beautiful tribute to his father.
Joseph here,
as we’ve seen, he wept with his brothers,
he wept in private over his brothers.
Now he weeps openly over his father’s death,
but it is the Egyptians who help him get ready,
who care for the body, takes 40 days.
And they are with him,
and he goes to the Pharaoh,
he says, “I’ve made my father this
promise,” and Pharaoh said,
“Go do that.” And knowing where the story is going,
I think it’s important to point out that at this point
in the story of Israel,
Israel and Egypt are on good terms.
In fact, we’ll continue to see this as this text plays out,
but things are very good between them.
Yeah, and in fact,
not only are they good,
it’s a sign of the way that
Joseph really represents a strange kind of discord while there’s also a unity here, because fundamentally,
you can’t avoid the fact that Joseph is in a secular or not what you would call secular
in the Old Testament context,
but a non-God-fearing nation,
a nation that has other gods,
and his own sons have been raised in that place.
He’s calling upon the very physicians of Pharaoh’s household of this other place where that work
with the body is actually also religious in its overtone and intentionality and in its meaning,
and yet
Genesis the text,
which later on, it’s not going to take long in the
biblical text for us to see some very harsh words for Egypt for understandable reasons,
and that is completely missing from the text here.
The narrator’s offering really no kind of moralizing or sort of value judgment.
We honestly get the sense that this is a wholehearted,
truly a meant kind of grief that the Pharaoh
is not only joining voice in,
but is ultimately going to encourage as we go on this text.
This is a really interesting story,
if not for its content,
for where it sits,
because it’s very much a kind of bridge for stuff that’s going to come later.
Yeah, we don’t want to overdo this,
but let me continue as this only gets more obvious.
So Joseph went up to bury his father with him,
went up all the servants of Pharaoh,
the elders of his household,
and all the elders of the land of Egypt,
as well as the household of Joseph,
his brothers, and his father’s household.
Only their children and flocks and herds were left in the land of Goshen.
Both chariots and charioteers went with them.
It was a great company.
“When they came to the threshing floor at Etad,
which was beyond the Jordan,
they held there a very great and sorrowful lamentation,
and he observed a time of mourning for his
father for seven days.
When the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land,
saw the mourning on the threshing floor at Etad,
they said, ‘This is a grievous mourning on the part of the Egyptians.’
Therefore, the place was named ‘Abel Mizrayim,’ as it is beyond the Jordan.
Thus, his sons did for him,
as it was instructed.
They carried him into the land of Canaan.
They buried him there in the cave of Macphila near Mamre,
which Abraham bought as a burial
site for me from the Hittite.
After he had buried his father,
Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had
gone with him to bury his father.”
So very interesting here.
You know,
we were already told early in this chapter,
the Egyptians wept for him for 70 days.
Now,
a significant contingent of the who’s who of Egypt,
the stewards of the Pharaoh,
some of the servants of the Pharaoh,
the elders of Egypt,
they go with them.
They take this trip with Joseph and his brothers to bury Jacob, to bury Israel,
which is,
you know,
I don’t want to say it’s poetic license,
but in the way that the story is being told,
it is a celebration of Jacob’s role,
not only in Israel, which is obvious,
but in Egypt.
It is a sign of respect.
It is a sign of reverence that this company would go with Joseph,
that they would have
70 days of mourning in Egypt,
that they would do these things and be a part of this service,
speaks a great deal to what they thought of Joseph,
what they thought of Jacob.
And I think to some extent of the relationship between Egypt and what is becoming Israel.
Now, that’s all about to change if we flip over,
and we will talk about this next week,
but when we flip over to the first chapter of Exodus,
it all gets rewritten.
But as of now,
there’s a wonderful partnership here that,
though is not going to last, should be celebrated.
A few other things to note here, specifically verse 11,
notice that the place is beyond
the Jordan.
If you know the Old Testament text,
you know that the Jordan River is going to be substantial
and important at numerous times throughout the story that is to come.
It’s associated with the Promised Land as the entry place to God’s best and what God
has ultimately promised to Abram.
So the fact that he is buried there is symbolic of ending in the place of the ancestors being
reunited to the very hope and promise that this will one day be the land.
That will be fleshed out in future books in the Old Testament.
Then notice this very,
and I think almost critical, wording here,
verse 14,
Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father.
Note that neither Joseph nor any of his brothers stay back in that land.
They all return to Egypt.
This is both important for the telling of the stories that are to come.
In other words, that the people of Israel continue to take up residence in the land
of Egypt, even though ostensibly we would have reason to believe that the famine is
likely done at this point.
The cause for which they move to Egypt is likely no longer there.
So the fact that they all return when they maybe didn’t necessarily need to is unto itself
a thing of note,
because it sets up some of the things that will happen in the book
of Exodus as you point out,
Clint.
But just note that this whole company goes and the whole company returns.
That’s a striking thing that Jacob is returned,
but the family doesn’t go and return to the land themselves.
Right.
And we’re used to,
in our context, the large-scale geography.
But keep in mind that
the markers of the Middle East are relatively constant in the story.
So as Michael points out,
the Jordan River becomes important.
It is the Jordan River that Israel will cross to get into the Promised Land when they flee Egypt.
It’s the Jordan River in which John the Baptist is baptizing people.
This all happens in a relatively consistent geographical area,
and that land is rich with
the stories of the Old Testament and the New Testament.
And so we do always see some foreshadowing when we read those kind of things in the scripture.
So this brings us then really to kind of an interesting moment in the book of Genesis.
Essentially,
in many ways, the story is kind of over.
We have Jacob has now died.
He’s now buried.
He’s entombed in the land that his ancestors will one day plan to inherit,
though not yet.
The Egyptians and Israelites stand together in grieving his loss,
and at least for the short-term future,
they stand together going forward.
Now really,
there are just two parts of the story left,
and tomorrow I hope you can be
with us, because in some ways,
part of the text that we’ll look at tomorrow I think is
a pinnacle of the Joseph story.
And because the Joseph story comes last in the book of Genesis,
really in some ways that
makes it a pinnacle of the book of Genesis.
So I hope you can be with us,
because there is a little bit of unraveling and revisiting
that needs to happen in the text,
and it goes to a very interesting place,
and I think it
makes for kind of a profound last word.
So we are not quite done yet,
and some of what we have yet to cover I think has a lot
of depth to it.
So without spoiling what’s going to come,
don’t miss tomorrow, I do just want to point
out that you can look ahead in your Bible here,
and you’ll see that chapter 50 verse 15,
and then suddenly we end up at the end of Genesis here by verse 26.
We’re essentially to the end of the story,
and note that though Joseph has been very
much a part of,
a substantial part of the ending part of Genesis,
is striking.
His story doesn’t extend very far beyond his father.
When Jacob dies,
Joseph’s story almost rushes to an end,
which I think as readers that should
help us see that Joseph was never the key character in that.
I’m not saying he’s not important,
but he was an essential character that was underneath
the umbrella of Jacob and the other tribes.
Even though Joseph was singled out and he was indeed favored,
that favor doesn’t extend
to him occupying the same kind of position as like an Abram or as like a Jacob.
So interestingly,
he is very much instrumental to God’s faithfulness in the plan moving forward,
but unlike some of the other characters,
though he has a lot of his story told,
he doesn’t extend very far beyond.
Maybe you would even say a little bit like Isaac.
Isaac, we didn’t hear a lot about him after his father died.
It’s a little bit of that same case here with Joseph.
Check me here, Michael.
I might go so far as to say that what we will see tomorrow is in some ways the best of Joseph’s
story.
His story has largely been told in relation to Jacob,
to Egypt,
to his brothers.
And I think the last words we have on his life give us in some ways our best and clearest
look at Joseph himself.
We’ve seen him be a man of integrity.
We’ve seen his capability,
his skill set.
He’s served faithfully.
He’s trustworthy.
He’s worked with his brothers.
He’s reached out to his father.
But I think in some ways,
as well as we’ve seen him do,
I think it is in these last couple
of stories that we really see him shine.
Yeah.
Not only do I think that you’re right,
and I agree with you,
it gets me excited for the
conversation that’s going to happen tomorrow.
So I’m not going to jump into it because I think that that does lead us directly into
the heart of some of what is the beauty to come in the next section.
And I’m not going to say more than that because that just seems like we’re fishing.
But I think it’s going to be good.
I hope you will join us.
You’re going to want to hear how Joseph and his brothers interact with one another after
the passing of their father.
It not only will show us something about the future promise,
but it shows us something
about, I think, a lesson that Genesis has to teach us.
And Genesis isn’t particularly a book that’s full of lessons.
It teaches things often indirectly,
this,
there’s some real substance and almost devotional
reading in it.
So hope you’ll join us.
We’re certainly glad that you’ve been with us today.
Hope there’s been something of value,
and we look forward to seeing you again really soon.
Thanks, everybody.