49:28–33 With Jacob’s blessings on his children concluded,697 he reiterates his request to be buried in the land of Canaan, at the ancestral tomb in the cave of Machpelah (vv. 29–30; cf. 23:17–19). In that cave are the mortal remains of Abraham and Sarah, along with Isaac and Rebekah (49:31). Moreover, in the ultimate irony, there too lie the remains of Leah, Jacob’s “unloved” wife (49:31; cf. 29:31). Rachel had to be buried elsewhere, as Jacob recalls with sadness in 48:7, but in death Jacob is reunited with his first wife. In this sense Jacob will be “gathered to [his] people” (49:29). Yet Jacob’s motivation is not a sentimental attachment to the people buried there; it is an act of faith in the promise of God that the land of Canaan will ultimately belong to his descendants. After his death he will foreshadow the journey that he fervently believes his descendants will make when their time in Egypt is complete and they return to the land. Indeed, Jacob’s wish to be “gathered to his people” is recorded as being complete in the last verse of the chapter, well before his body is transferred to the family tomb. His final words are thus a powerful testimony to his faith in the Lord and the promise that transcends the very best this world has to offer.

50:1–6 Although Jacob made it clear that he would rather be buried simply in Canaan than with all state honors in Egypt, his funeral is nothing less than a state occasion as a mark of the honor in which Pharaoh holds Joseph and his aged father. The experts are summoned to preserve Jacob’s corpse (50:2), not out of respect for the Egyptian beliefs about death and the afterlife but to ease the transportation of his body to its final resting place.698 The process takes forty days and is doubtless very expensive. Meanwhile, the formal period of mourning for Jacob goes on for a total of seventy days (v. 3), only two fewer than the length of time prescribed for the death of a Pharaoh.699

Despite his elevated position Joseph must still defer to Pharaoh on matters of importance, such as his request to take his father’s body to the land of Canaan and bury it there. His approach is suitably deferential, made through the members of Pharaoh’s household rather than directly,700 and he omits his father’s negative requests not to be buried in Egypt (47:29–30), framing the issue positively as a desire to be buried in his own personal tomb (50:5).701 He also adds a necessary commitment that he will return to his responsibilities in Egypt after the journey to bury his father is complete (v. 5). A key element of Joseph’s case is the fact that his father forced him to swear an oath to that effect prior to his death (v. 5; cf. 47:29–31). Joseph therefore asks Pharaoh to let him go up (ʿalah) from Egypt to Canaan, introducing one of the key verbs in this chapter, a verb that will later be used for Israel’s own exodus from Egypt. Pharaoh responds using the same verb: “Go up, and bury your father” (50:6).

50:7–14 Joseph’s journey to bury his father is recorded in considerable detail, highlighting the importance of the event. As well as by Joseph, his household, and his brothers, the body is accompanied by a very large party of prominent Egyptians (vv. 7–8).702 However, the Israelites’ children, flocks, and herds are left behind in the land of Goshen, ensuring that Joseph and his family will have to return to Egypt (v. 8).703 The natural route to follow from Goshen to Canaan would be along the coastal road, but in verse 10 we are told that the party is lamenting at the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan River. No reason is given in the text for the apparent decision to go around the eastern side of the Dead Sea and then cross the Jordan in order to enter the Promised Land. Commentators have speculated about various plausible political and historical reasons that might have favored that eastern route over the more direct one. However, it would hardly have escaped the notice of Moses’ original audience that this was exactly the same route they were following from Egypt to the Promised Land. Jacob’s corpse is prefiguring what would happen to his descendants some four hundred years later.704

This prefiguring of the exodus also explains the rather curious reference to the Egyptian chariots and horsemen among the procession (v. 9). They seem rather unnecessary at a funeral, but they will have a key part to play in the later exodus, albeit on that occasion in pursuit of the Israelites. Indeed, in the first four books of the Bible this is the only reference to chariots and horsemen apart from those in the later exodus account (Exodus 14–15). Even the Canaanites notice the dramatic lamentation of the Egyptians, memorializing it as a place name. However, the central point is the fact that Jacob’s sons do exactly as he instructed them, laying him to rest in the family tomb, alongside his father and grandfather (Gen. 50:12–13). This is the initial fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob in Genesis 46:3–4: “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up (ʿalah) again.” Jacob’s exodus is what the NT would call the “firstfruits” of the promise of Israel’s exodus out of Egypt (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20).

50:15–21 Upon the brothers’ return to Egypt they are immediately concerned for their own future. They are worried that Joseph has merely been delaying his revenge out of concern for his father but, now that Jacob had died, will now destroy them (as Esau had planned to do with Jacob; cf. Gen. 27:41). It is to their credit that they acknowledge that they committed evil against Joseph (50:15). However, their strategy in response to their fears is less than ideal. They send Joseph a message that purportedly came from Jacob prior to his death: “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” (v. 17). This message is likely a fabrication, since, if he had intended to communicate anything like this to Joseph, he would have had plenty of opportunity to do so personally prior to his death.705

Joseph’s response to his brothers’ fear is to weep afresh, just as he had done when they were finally reconciled (v. 17; cf. 45:2). Their doubts about his intentions reopen old wounds. Even then the brothers are still fearful, prostrating themselves before him and offering themselves as his slaves, fulfilling Joseph’s boyhood dreams one final time (50:18). Yet Joseph has no desire for vengeance, for the same reason that he had no desire to sin with Potiphar’s wife: his faith in God takes priority over personal desires (v. 19; cf. 39:9). He acknowledges the reality of a divine judge, which frees him from needing to pursue vengeance for himself (Lev. 19:18; Rom. 12:19, quoting Deut. 32:35). As a result, because he is not God, he can say to his brothers what God often says to his people: “Do not fear” (Hb. ʾal-tiraʾu; Gen. 50:19).

Not only does Joseph not need to exact vengeance from his brothers; he has learned to recognize the good hand of God in his sufferings and losses. He too does not minimize his brothers’ sin; they genuinely meant to do evil against him, and they carried that evil plan through. However, God’s plan has triumphed over theirs, bringing good out of their evil (v. 20).706 God’s purpose in permitting the brothers to do evil was to save lives—the lives of the brothers, as well as many innocent men, women and children, both within the family of promise and outside it (v. 20). This plan has now successfully been carried out, so who is Joseph to hold a grudge against his brothers?

Joseph’s response goes much further than a refusal to exact vengeance against his brothers. On the contrary, he himself (the “I” is emphatic in Hebrew) will continue to provide for them and for their little ones, repaying evil with good (v. 21; cf. Luke 6:27–31).707 The famine has been over for many years at this point, but Joseph’s position of power means he can still help his family in many ways. The contrast would be sharp for the original readers of Genesis, who had grown up under an oppressive Egyptian regime that had forgotten Joseph and his many contributions to its welfare (Ex. 1:8). The result had been oppression and bondage for Israel, precisely the judgment that Joseph has chosen not to execute on his brothers.

50:22–26 The book of Genesis closes with another good death, bracketing the reiterated forgiveness of Joseph’s brothers. In this case it is the death of Joseph at 110 years old, the ideal lifetime in Egyptian thinking (vv. 22). Joseph not only sees his children’s children—a great blessing in a context of generally short life expectancy—but the third generation as well (v. 23).708 The children of Machir, Manasseh’s son, are (Hb.) “born on Joseph’s knees,” (v. 23; cf. ESV mg.). In context this may mean no more than that the children are placed in Joseph’s lap when they are born, so that he might see them (cf. NIV), or it may have a more formal sense of adoption into special rights of inheritance (ESV: “counted as Joseph’s own”; cf. 30:3; 48:12). Given Jacob’s favoring of the younger son, Ephraim, over Manasseh (48:18–19), it would be striking for Joseph to single out one of Manasseh’s grandsons for special treatment.

Joseph’s final words are delivered to “his brothers” (50:24), which here likely has the sense of his kinsmen of the next generation, since Joseph’s actual brothers are mostly older than him and he lives an unusually long life. They are the same group as the “sons of Israel” mentioned in verse 25. To the next generation Joseph passes on his own assurance of faith that God will continue to be with them in Egypt after his death (v. 24). For God to “visit” his people (Hb. paqad; vv. 24, 25) means a significant intervention in their lives for blessing or judgment.709 In context this suggests either that their situation in Egypt has already worsened710 or that Joseph anticipates that their future situation will not be as favorable after his death as it once had been, necessitating divine deliverance. God has already told Abraham that his offspring would be servants in another land for four hundred years (15:13), so Joseph’s words may simply reflect that oracle. Either way, Joseph has faith that God will not abandon Israel but will at the right time bring them back to the Land of Promise.

Jacob had expressed his faith in the promise by insisting that his sons swear that his corpse will be repatriated to the land of Canaan upon his death and buried there (47:29–31). Joseph exhibits his faith in a different way, making his descendants swear to bury him in a portable coffin so that, when the Israelites make their journey to the Promised Land, they might bring his bones with them (50:25; cf. Heb. 11:22).711 In some respects this is an act of even greater faith than Jacob’s, since he is quite literally staking his permanent resting place on the realization of the Lord’s promise. If Israel remains in Egypt forever, then Joseph’s bones will do likewise.

So Joseph dies at a good old age surrounded by his family, as Jacob had done (Gen. 50:26). He too is embalmed, as Jacob had been, not out of Egyptian superstition but in order to prepare his body for its final journey, when God fulfills his word to his people. Genesis thus ends on a slightly anticlimactic note; the end of this book is simply the introduction to the next chapter in the story, which will relate Israel’s exodus out of Egypt and the journey of Joseph’s bones to their homeland. Exodus begins by listing those who make the journey to Egypt with Jacob and Joseph’s death (Ex. 1:1–6). It recounts God’s affirmation that he has “observed” (paqad) his people (Ex. 3:16). And it notes the presence of Joseph’s bones alongside Moses and the people on their journey out of the land of Egypt (Ex. 13:19). The book of Genesis is a book of beginnings, but its end is very far from the end of the story of God’s work among his people.