Genesis 50: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joseph weeps over his dead father, has him embalmed, and after the days of mourning asks Pharaoh's court for leave to bury Jacob in Canaan, as Jacob had made him swear. A large company goes up with him; they mourn at the threshing floor of Atad, and his sons bury him in the cave at Machpelah, and Joseph returns to Egypt. His brothers, seeing their father dead, send word asking forgiveness and present themselves as his servants; Joseph weeps, says they meant evil against him but God meant it for good, and promises to provide for them. Joseph lives to a hundred and ten, sees his descendants, tells his brothers God will surely come to them and bring them to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, makes them swear to carry his bones up, and dies and is placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Claim by Claim

1. 50:1
   • Joseph fell upon his father's face.
   • Joseph wept over his father.
   • Joseph kissed his father.
2. 50:2
   • Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father.
   • The physicians embalmed Israel.
3. 50:3
   • Forty days were completed for the embalming of Jacob.
   • Forty days is the standard period for embalming.
   • The Egyptians wept for him seventy days.
4. 50:4
   • The days of weeping for Jacob passed.
   • Joseph spoke to the house of Pharaoh.
   • Joseph said that if he had found favor in their eyes, they should speak in Pharaoh's ears.
5. 50:5
   • Joseph said his father made him swear an oath.
   • Joseph reported that his father said he was about to die.
   • Joseph reported that his father said he had dug a grave for himself in the land of Canaan.
   • Joseph reported that his father commanded that he be buried in that grave.
   • Joseph asked to go up and bury his father.
   • Joseph said he would return.
6. 50:6
   • Pharaoh said to go up and bury his father.
   • Pharaoh said this was according to the oath his father made him swear.
7. 50:7
   • Joseph went up to bury his father.
   • All the servants of Pharaoh went up with him.
   • The elders of Pharaoh's house went up with him.
   • All the elders of the land of Egypt went up with him.
8. 50:8
   • All the house of Joseph went up.
   • Joseph's brothers went up.
   • His father's house went up.
   • They left only their little ones in the land of Goshen.
   • They left their flocks and their herds in the land of Goshen.
9. 50:9
   • Chariots went up with him.
   • Horsemen went up with him.
   • The company was very great.
10. 50:10
    • They came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan.
    • They lamented there with a great and very heavy lamentation.
    • He made a mourning of seven days for his father.
11. 50:11
    • The inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad.
    • They said this was a heavy mourning for the Egyptians.
    • The place was therefore named Abel-mizraim.
    • Abel-mizraim is beyond the Jordan.
12. 50:12
    • Jacob's sons did for him as he had commanded them.
13. 50:13
    • His sons carried him into the land of Canaan.
    • They buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah.
    • Abraham bought that field along with the cave as a burial possession.
    • Abraham bought it from Ephron the Hittite.
    • The field is before Mamre.
14. 50:14
    • Joseph returned to Egypt.
    • His brothers returned with him.
    • All who had gone up with him to bury his father returned.
    • This was after he had buried his father.
15. 50:15
    • Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead.
    • They said Joseph might hate them.
    • They said Joseph would surely repay them all the evil they had done to him.
16. 50:16
    • They sent word to Joseph.
    • They said their father had given a command before he died.
17. 50:17
    • They reported the father's instruction: say this to Joseph.
    • The instruction asked Joseph to forgive the transgression of his brothers and their sin.
    • The instruction stated that they had done evil to him.
    • The brothers asked Joseph to forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of his father.
    • Joseph wept when they spoke to him.
18. 50:18
    • His brothers went and fell down before him.
    • They said they were his servants.
19. 50:19
    • Joseph said to them not to fear.
    • Joseph asked whether he was in the place of God.
20. 50:20
    • Joseph said they had intended evil against him.
    • Joseph said God intended it for good.
    • Joseph said the purpose was to bring about what has happened this day.
    • Joseph said the purpose was to keep many people alive.
21. 50:21
    • Joseph told them not to fear.
    • Joseph said he would provide for them.
    • Joseph said he would provide for their little ones.
    • Joseph comforted them.
    • Joseph spoke kindly to them.
22. 50:22
    • Joseph dwelt in Egypt.
    • His father's house dwelt in Egypt.
    • Joseph lived one hundred and ten years.
23. 50:23
    • Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation.
    • The children of Machir, son of Manasseh, were born upon Joseph's knees.
24. 50:24
    • Joseph said to his brothers that he was about to die.
    • Joseph said God would surely visit them.
    • Joseph said God would bring them up out of this land to the land he swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
25. 50:25
    • Joseph made the children of Israel swear an oath.
    • Joseph said God would surely visit them.
    • Joseph said they must carry up his bones from there.
26. 50:26
    • Joseph died at one hundred and ten years old.
    • They embalmed him.
    • He was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

50:1

Weeping over the body and kissing it was the normal way to say goodbye to a parent then. Joseph is not doing anything strange.

50:2

Embalming was an Egyptian practice, not an Israelite one; Israelites normally buried their dead quickly and without preserving the body. The Hebrew calls the men "physicians" because Egyptian embalmers were a specialist branch of the medical trade. "Israel" is Jacob's other name, given to him earlier in the book.

50:3

Forty days for the embalming and seventy days of public mourning match what is known of Egyptian practice for a person of high rank; seventy days was close to the mourning given a member of the royal house. The honor paid to Jacob is Egyptian honor, measured in Egyptian time.

50:4

"The house of Pharaoh" means the royal court and its officials, not the building. "If I have found favour in your eyes" is the standard polite formula for opening a request to a superior. Joseph, second in command in Egypt, asks the court to speak for him rather than approaching Pharaoh himself; the text does not say why, though a person in mourning was unshaven and so not fit to appear before the king.

50:5

The oath is the one Jacob made Joseph swear earlier, with Joseph's hand under his thigh. "Go up" is the ordinary way of speaking of travel from Egypt to Canaan, which is higher ground; the reverse journey is always "going down." The verb repeats through the chapter.

50:7

The King James calls them "elders." Elders were older men who were leaders and helped decide things.

50:8

Goshen was the district of the eastern Nile delta given to Jacob's family as grazing land when they came to Egypt. Leaving the children and livestock behind kept them in Egypt as an unspoken guarantee that the party would return.

50:9

Chariots and horsemen were the Egyptian army's elite arm. They served here as an escort of honor and as protection for a large party crossing open country, not as an invading force.

50:10

A threshing floor was a flat, hard, open patch of ground, usually on a windy rise, where grain was beaten out and winnowed; because it was the one large clear space near a settlement, it was also used for public gatherings. "Beyond Jordan" normally means the east side of the Jordan River, which is a strange route for a party coming from Egypt; the phrase may instead be written from the standpoint of someone east of the river. The site has never been identified.

50:11

The name Abel-mizraim plays on two Hebrew words that sound alike: 'abel, "mourning," and 'abel, "meadow." Mizraim is the Hebrew name for Egypt. So the name means both "the mourning of Egypt" and "the meadow of Egypt."

50:13

Machpelah was the field and cave near Hebron that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a family burial plot, the one piece of land in Canaan the family actually owned. Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah were already buried there. Mamre was the nearby place where Abraham had camped. The Hittites here are a local Canaanite group, not the empire of the same name in Asia Minor.

50:15

The brothers' words can be read either as a statement or as a question, "what if Joseph is still holding it against us?" The evil they did was selling Joseph into slavery and telling their father he had been killed by an animal.

50:17

The brothers report a command from Jacob that the narrative never records him giving; the reader is left to decide whether Jacob said it privately or the brothers invented it. Calling themselves "the servants of the God of your father" appeals to the family's shared religious loyalty rather than to Joseph's goodwill.

50:18

The word translated "servants" is the ordinary word for slaves. Bowing face to the ground was the gesture of a subject before a ruler, and the brothers are offering themselves as Joseph's property.

50:19

The question is open in Hebrew and can be taken two ways: "am I in God's place, to punish you?" or "am I standing in for God?" Either way it declines the role of judge.

50:20

The same Hebrew verb is used of the brothers and of God: it means to plan, calculate or weave a design. The sentence sets the two intentions side by side, using one word for both.

50:21

"Nourish" in the King James English means to provide for and support, cover food and everything else needed, not simply to feed.

50:22

A hundred and ten years was the Egyptian ideal lifespan, the round number an Egyptian text would use to say a man's life had been complete and blessed. Joseph's age is recorded in Egyptian terms.

50:23

Ephraim and Manasseh are Joseph's own sons, born in Egypt. To have a child "brought up on" or "born on" someone's knees was a formal gesture of acknowledging the child as belonging to the family line, a recognition, not a description of the birth itself. Machir's descendants later hold territory east of the Jordan.

50:24

"Visit" translates a Hebrew verb meaning to attend to, look in on, or take action about someone, here in the sense of coming to their aid. The same phrase opens the exodus story generations later.

50:25

Unlike Jacob, Joseph is not to be buried in Canaan now; his body is to wait in Egypt until the whole family leaves. Moses takes Joseph's bones out of Egypt at the exodus, and they are buried at Shechem after the land is settled.

50:26

The coffin is an Egyptian mummy case; the Hebrew word is used of a chest or box, and this is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where it refers to a coffin. The book of Genesis ends with an embalmed Israelite in an Egyptian box, unburied.