Or, Joseph’s Place in God’s Plan for Israel
Scripture: Genesis 50:1-26
Date: June 4, 2017
Speaker: Sean Higgins
We have made it to the final chapter of the First Book of Moses. Genesis 50 covers about 60 years, even though the previous thirteen chapters have only covered about 40. Genesis 50 is also the last word on Israel for about 280 years until Moses is born and Second Book of Moses picks up the story in Exodus 1. It’s taken us 90 previous messages to get here, and there will be one more in the series next Lord’s day as a summary of our study. For this morning there is much to appreciate in these twenty-six verses leading up to The End.
The blessing baton has been passed. Jacob blessed Pharaoh in Genesis 47, then Jacob blessed Joseph through Ephraim and Manasseh in Genesis 48, and then Jacob blessed all his twelve sons in Genesis 49. After gathering his sons around him to give his prophetic testament, Jacob gathered up his feet into his bed and was gathered to his people.
In this chapter Joseph will carry on the family work of blessing. He recognizes that God put him in place to save his family, even though it was the sinful bitterness and rage of his brothers that got him into Egypt. We will see that Joseph fulfills his promise to his father (1-14), he fulfills his promise to his brothers (15-21), and he believes that God will fulfill his promise to Israel (22-26).
Jacob was concerned about where he was going to be buried. He’s recorded as having talked about it on three different occasions, going so far as to make Joseph swear about it (Genesis 47:29-31) and commanding his sons to it (Genesis 49:29-32). Now Joseph buries his dad in Canaan as he promised he would.
At least the first verse of chapter 50 could have been included in chapter 49. Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him . Jacob had “breathed his last” (Genesis 49:33) and Joseph was there, along with all the other sons, to see it.
Then Joseph takes charge of the arrangements. Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father . Embalming was an Egyptian practice, not a Hebrew one. They embalmed their dead to preserve the body and prepare the way for the afterlife. The Hebrews buried without embalming, but Joseph knew that it would be a while before he could carry his father’s body to Canaan. It took forty days to do it, removing the bowels and adding spices and salts and wrapping the corpse with strips of protective material; they were making a mummy. While mummification happened and for another month, the Egyptians wept for him seventy days . This was a national mourning, with all the figurative flags at half-mast, and the time for the mourning approached the time of mourning for a Pharaoh (72 days, whether they liked him or not).
Perhaps because of the unclean nature of mourning, Joseph did not approach Pharaoh directly but he spoke to the household of Pharaoh and asked for permission to fulfill his word to his father. ”If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh saying, My father made me swear, saying, ‘I am about to die: in my tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.’ Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father. Then I will return.” There is no offense in this request. It is his father’s idea, and it involves no insult toward the land of Egypt, it is based on Jacob’s previous preparations in Canaan. Joseph is also not looking to leave. And Pharaoh lets him go.
Joseph does not go alone. Mostly to show honor to Jacob, but perhaps also to discourage Joseph from staying away too long, a very great company goes with them. He went up with all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, as well as all the household of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s household . What more impressive funeral procession is recorded in Scripture? This is everyone who is anyone, except, it seems, for Pharaoh himself and the women and children and animals (someone had to watch the kids). It meant there were significant people to return to. There went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company . They have a military escort.
The location of Atad is not known, but it was beyond the Jordan , so somewhere in Canaan. The group stopped and lamented with very great and grievous lamentation for seven days . The mourning was so significant that the Canaanites renamed the place Abel-mizraim meaning “mourning of Egypt.”
Joseph got the job done and fulfilled his promise to his father. Moses names the “double cave” and the field that Abraham bought because this is part of God’s fulfilling His promise to plant His people in the land. Abraham possessed this property; it belonged to his offspring. When the burial was done, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him to bury his father . It was not time for them to leave Egypt, “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (see Genesis 15:13-16).
Now that Jacob’s burial is settled, Jacob’s sons are concerned that Joseph might settle accounts with them. Joseph provides for his brothers just as he promised (Genesis 45:4-11).
It had been seventeen years since Jacob and family had moved to Egypt. During that time Joseph had abundantly provided for all of them, even during the bleakest years of famine. We don’t read much about their interaction, but there’s no reason to believe that anything was tense. The family was reconciled. But the brothers forget.
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead , not to say that they just got the message but rather that they were coming to grips with the implications, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” This is not their first confession, but their sin has not been completely wiped off their consciences. They are concerned that Joseph only treated them kindly because he didn’t want to upset Jacob, sort of like Esau’s plan to murder Jacob after their father died. They had hated him (Genesis 37:4, 5, 8), now they think he hates them.
So they sent a message to Joseph saying, “Your father gave this command before he died. ‘Say to Joseph, Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Who knows if Jacob actually said this. I tend to think it’s a fabrication by the brothers. First, we don’t know for sure that Jacob knew what they had done. I presume they told their dad in Genesis 44, but maybe not. Second, if Jacob did know, then why wouldn’t he call for Joseph to swear to the reconciliation before he died? Why leave a message with his sons for Joseph rather than speaking directly to Joseph? Regardless, they admit their sin, both by putting words in Jacob’s mouth and by asking for forgiveness.
Joseph wept when they spoke to him . He responds to the messengers with sadness that his brothers had such a negative view of him. Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” They fulfill his dreams, but he is not holding it over them.
This is one of the most mature, most hopeful, and most Calvinistic declarations in all the Bible.
“Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.”
The first thing Joseph acknowledges is his place: he is not in God’s place. He means that he is not the judge; he isn’t the President of the payback business, he’s not even an employee. It’s interesting that the serpent offered something similar to Eve, she didn’t even know how good it would feel to be god over someone else.
Joseph responded this way not because what they did didn’t matter or wasn’t actually wrong. They admitted their sin and transgression and evil. Joseph could see it; he was the target. In order to process what happened and move on Joseph didn’t ignore or redefine their evil.
What enabled this response was his perspective on God’s providence. He knew that God sovereignly put him in place to preserve Israel, the man and the nation. He already had this perspective when he revealed himself to his brothers in Genesis 45. He’s saying it again now because his brothers aren’t sure, either that he meant it in the first place or that he didn’t pick up a grudge along the way. He not only didn’t learn to play the victim, he learned to see God’s use of it for good. Joseph loves them and is committed to provide for them. They have noting to fear. Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
This is one of the clearest passages in Scripture that shows both man’s responsibility and God’s sovereignty. It’s a typical prooftext, but here we are actually covering it in its place.
I’m struck by 1) how personal it was (Job’s difficulties affected him personally, but they weren’t hateful relational attacks in the same way), 2) how long and painful it was, and 3) how a very great company were affected by it—for generations. We’re often just trying to endure for ourselves, let alone on behalf of others, and least likely on behalf of those who are the ones sinning against us.
His brothers did not sell him because God made them do it against their will. They hated him and wanted him dead. What they didn’t realize is that their hatred against Joseph was God’s will to get Joseph into place for their own benefit. God was gracious to them even through their sin. “[W]hile they are contriving the destruction of their brother, God is effecting their deliverance from on high” (Calvin).
The final paragraph in the chapter records Joseph’s death. Here he prophesies of his burial in Canaan as God promised and refers to the key pieces: offspring and land.
Joseph lived 110 years. Approximately 60 years pass between verse 21 and verse 22. It may seem as if reading Genesis 50 Jacob died and then soon after Joseph died, but that’s not accurate. Joseph provided for Israel in Egypt for almost eight decades.
He Ephraim’s children of the third generation , see this as a sign of the LORD’s blessing in Psalm 128:6.
Though Joseph lived his final 93 years in Egypt he hadn’t forgotten about the family inheritance to the north. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” The book ends expecting an Exodus to the Promised Land.
Similar to his father, Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” He prophecies that God will come and help. It may seem as if they are without His help currently, which is not actually true, but a day will arrive when God arrives to take them all home. This won’t happen for about 360 years, but it will happen, and Moses will bring his bones (Exodus 13:19) until he is buried at Shechem (Joshua 24:23).
So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. The only two people embalmed in the Bible are Jacob and Joseph. Joseph is not buried in Egypt, he was put in a casket (ʾārôn) and carried around until buried in Canaan (Joshua). The two tablets of the law were also put in an “ark” (also ʾārôn)(Deuteronomy 10:5).
I am not only surprised, I am let down at the end of so many commentaries that finish Genesis 50 and then offer no final thoughts. Shouldn’t we have learned something from the book? I am planning for one more message next Lord’s day to give an overview of thoughts from our time in Genesis.
As Moses wrote almost four centuries later, he wrote Genesis for God’s people to know who they are, who their people are, where they came from. They know who made them, who they give an account to, and who to trust for help. It is a story to remind them of what God meant for good.
What have you learned from the book of Genesis? We’ll consider some summary thoughts next Sunday.