Genesis 50

The Voice

50 As his father passed on, Joseph threw himself onto his father’s face, crying and kissing him. ² Then Joseph told the physicians in his service to embalm his father and prepare him for the journey. So the physicians embalmed Israel. ³ It took 40 days to embalm him because that’s how long it takes to embalm a body properly. And the Egyptians paid their respects by mourning and weeping for him for 70 days.

⁴ When the time of mourning had passed, Joseph addressed Pharaoh’s household.

⁷ So Joseph went up to Canaan to bury his father. And all of Pharaoh’s servants went with him in a long procession that included the elders of Pharaoh’s household and the land of Egypt. ⁸ Joseph’s own household, his brothers, and his father’s household joined in the solemn march. Only their children, flocks, and herds were left in the land of Goshen. ⁹ Both chariots and charioteers accompanied him as well. It was a grand procession. ¹⁰ When they came to the threshing floor of Atad near Canaan but still beyond the Jordan River, the great company of mourners paused to observe seven days of mourning for Joseph’s father. The weeping and lamentation grew so loud that ¹¹ the people who lived there, the Canaanites, could not help but notice the profound grief expressed on the threshing floor of Atad.

This is why this place of mourning that lies beyond the Jordan was renamed Abel-mizraim.

¹² So Jacob’s sons carried out his last instructions as he had directed. ¹³ They carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field at Machpelah near Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field from Ephron the Hittite so he could have a place to bury his family. ¹⁴ After he had buried his father, Joseph gathered his brothers and the vast company of mourners who had journeyed with him to bury his father, and they all returned to Egypt.

¹⁵ When Joseph’s brothers began to realize the implications of their father’s death, Joseph’s brothers began to worry.

¹⁶ So they sent a message to Joseph.

Joseph cried when they spoke these words to him. ¹⁸ And his brothers approached and fell at his feet.

So Joseph reassured them and continued to speak kindly to them.

²² Now Joseph remained in Egypt for the rest of his life—he and all of his father’s household. He lived to be 110 years old, ²³ long enough to see Ephraim’s children down to the third generation. Joseph adopted the children of Machir (Manasseh’s son) and brought them up as his own. ²⁴ One day, Joseph told his brothers,

²⁵ At that, Joseph made the rest of Israel’s sons swear to him an oath.

²⁶ Then Joseph died. He was 110 years old, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.