1. And Joseph flung himself on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him. These three gestures by now are strongly associated with Joseph’s character. In the great recognition scene in chapter 45, he flings himself on Benjamin’s neck, embraces and kisses him, and then does the same with his ten half brothers, and before this he has wept three times over the encounter with his brothers. Joseph is at once the intellectual, dispassionate interpreter of dreams and central economic planner, and the man of powerful spontaneous feeling. At his father’s deathbed, he only weeps, he does not speak.

2. his servants the physicians. Although the Hebrew term means “healer,” these are obviously experts in the intricate process of mummification, and the wording indicates that Joseph had such specialists on his personal staff. Mummification would be dictated by Jacob’s status as father of the viceroy of Egypt and also by the practical necessity of carrying the body on the long trek to central Canaan.

3. forty full days. A Hebrew formulaic number is used rather than the number of days prescribed by Egyptian practice.

seventy days. Evidently, the Egyptian period of mourning for a royal personage, seventy-two days, has been rounded off to the Hebrew formulaic seventy.

4. Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh. It is a little puzzling that Joseph, as Pharaoh’s right-hand man, is compelled to approach him through intermediaries. Some commentators have explained this by invoking Joseph’s condition as mourner, which, it is claimed, would prohibit him from coming directly into Pharaoh’s presence. A more reliable key to his recourse to go-betweens may be provided by the language of imploring deference with which he introduces his message to Pharaoh—“If, pray, I have found favor in your eyes, speak, pray. . . .” Joseph is aware that he is requesting something extraordinary in asking permission to go up to Canaan with his entire clan, for Pharaoh might be apprehensive that the real aim was repatriation, which would cost him his indispensable viceroy and a whole guild of valued shepherds. Joseph consequently decides to send his petition through the channel of Pharaoh’s trusted courtiers, to whom he turns in deferential court language.

5. In the grave I readied me. The usual meaning of the Hebrew verb karah is “to dig,” though it can also mean “to purchase.” The latter sense is unlikely here because it would be confusing to use karah for buying a grave, when it is so naturally applied to digging the grave. But since the burial site in question is actually a cave, one must assume an extrapolation from the primary meaning of the verb to any preparation of a place for burial.

and come back. This final verb is of course a crucial consideration for Pharaoh.

7. and all Pharaoh’s servants, the elders of his household, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, went up with him. This vast entourage of Egyptian dignitaries betokens Pharaoh’s desire to accord royal honors to Jacob. The presence of chariots and horsemen (verse 9) might also serve as protection against hostile Canaanites, but the whole grand Egyptian procession is surely an effective means for ensuring that Joseph and his father’s clan will return to Egypt.

8. Only their little ones. The children and flocks are left behind as a guarantee of the adults’ return.

10. Goren ha-Atad. The place name means “threshing floor of the bramble.”

across the Jordan. The logical route from Egypt would be along the Mediterranean coast, which would necessitate construing this phrase from the perspective of someone standing to the east of the Jordan. That, however, is implausible because “across the Jordan” in biblical usage generally means just what we mean by trans-Jordan in modern usage—the territory east of the Jordan. Perhaps a circuitous route through the Sinai to the east and then back across the Jordan is intended to prefigure the itinerary of the future exodus and return to Canaan. Perhaps local traditions for the etiology of a place-name Abel-Mizraim in trans-Jordan led to the intimation of this unlikely route.

11. Abel-Mizraim. This is construed in the folk etymology as “mourning of Egypt,” though ʾabel is actually a watercourse. Mizraim means “Egypt.”

16. And they charged Joseph. The verb, which most commonly refers either to giving instructions or delivering the terms of a last will and testament, is a little peculiar. If the received text is reliable here, the choice of verb would be influenced by the fact that the brothers are conveying to Joseph the terms of what they claim (perhaps dubiously) is their father’s “charge” before his death. In any case, they send this message through an intermediary, for only in verse 18 are they represented as coming before Joseph—“And his brothers then [gam] came”—so perhaps the odd use of the verb indicates indirection here.

17. the servants of your father’s God. In the imploring language of their plea for forgiveness, they conclude by calling themselves not his brothers but the faithful servants of the God of Jacob. Rashi nicely observes, “If your father is dead, his God exists, and they are his servants.”

20. While you meant evil toward me, God meant it for good. This whole final scene between Joseph and his brothers is a recapitulation, after Jacob’s death, of the recognition scene in Egypt. Once more the brothers feel guilt and fear. Once more Joseph weeps because of them. Once more they offer to become his slaves. (The physical act of prostration, as the early-twentieth-century German scholar Hermann Gunkel observes, carries us back full circle to Joseph’s two dreams at the beginning of the story.) And once more Joseph assures them that it has been God’s purpose all along to turn evil into good, for the end of “keeping many people alive,” with Joseph continuing in his role as sustainer of the entire clan.

23. were born on Joseph’s knees. This gesture serves as a ritual either of adoption or of legitimation.

24. God will surely single you out and take you up from this land. The ground is laid at the end of Genesis for the great movement out of Egypt in Exodus.

25. take up my bones. Although Joseph knows that Egyptian science will turn his body into a mummy, he still thinks of his remains in Hebrew terms as he invokes his eventual restoration to the land of the Hebrews.

26. a hundred and ten years. This is a last Egyptian touch, since this is the ideal Egyptian life span, as against 120 in the Hebrew tradition.

and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. The book that began with an image of God’s breath moving across the vast expanses of the primordial deep to bring the world and all life into being ends with this image of a body in a box, a mummy in a coffin. (The Hebrews in Canaan appear not to have used coffins, and the term occurs only here.) Out of the contraction of this moment of mortuary enclosure, a new expansion, and new births, will follow. Exodus begins with a proliferation of births, a pointed repetition of the primeval blessing to be fruitful and multiply, and just as the survival of the Flood was represented as a second creation, the leader who is to forge the creation of the nation will be borne on the water in a little box—not the ʾaron, “the coffin,” of the end of Genesis but the tevah, “the ark,” that keeps Noah and his seed alive.