Genesis 50:1-14
1 Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him, and kissed him. 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 Forty days were required for him, for such are the days required for those who are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
4 Now when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, 5 My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying; in my grave which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back.’”
6 And Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear.”
7 So Joseph went up to bury his father; and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, 8 as well as all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house. Only their little ones, their flocks, and their herds they left in the land of Goshen. 9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very great gathering.
10 Then they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father. 11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a deep mourning of the Egyptians.” Therefore its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.
12 So his sons did for him just as he had commanded them. 13 For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite as property for a burial place. 14 And after he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers and all who went up with him to bury his father.
The passing of Israel once called Jacob was a sad day of mourning for his family and all of Egypt’s people who were saved from starvation by his son Joseph that was revered next to Pharaoh. Joseph had his father embalmed as the Egyptian rulers had done for centuries as we see in the mummified tombs of them in the pyramids and other nearby royal gravesites today, and which process is crudely imitated in our own western methods of embalming our dead. They did this to keep the body from being completely decomposed with natural decay as if to stay off the effects of death. Of course, we know this is a futile effort as all bodies decay at some rate and death has taken the body but left the eternal soul unaffected by such erasure. When we obtain resurrected incorruptible bodies, this will no longer be needed to try to keep the two together in a sense, for there will be no more separation of body and soul caused by the sin of disbelief and disobedience to God’s word that began this all in Eden’s Garden. God made our body from the elements of the earth he created and breathed His breath of our souls into them. He meant the body and soul to remain together forever but sin brought death to the body and corrupted the rest of the earth (Genesis 6:11-12, Romans 8:21) in the process until all is made new. The whole nation of Egypt mourned the death of Joseph’s father without the hope we have in Christ, a period of just over a month. Then Joseph asked permission to bury Jacob in the land promised to Israel through Abraham and Isaac in Canaan where the first part of that possession lay. This is a reminder that our grave plots are but a foretaste of the heavenly promised land we have to look forward to after death when our souls are reunited with incorruptible bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42, 52-53) in the kingdom of God come (Matthew 6:10, Revelation 11:15, 12:10) to earth at last! When Jacob was buried in the promised land not yet appropriated for the people of God yet, the inhabitants of the land wondered at the sight and named the place “Abel Mizraim,” meaning ‘Mourning of Egypt’ because they assumed Joseph who appeared as an Egyptian was leading a party of his countrymen from there and not knowing the true possessors (Genesis 12:7, 23:20, Exodus 12:25) of the promised land there. Jacob’s sons were faithful to bury their father in the land to come with the hope it would be theirs one day as a picture of the eternal land of God’s kingdom granted through promise by the same faith of Abraham to undo the disbelief and disobedience of the first Adam by the work of obedience of God’s Son as the second Adam for our inheritance as promised in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We bury our dead now in the Lord with this certain hope that does not and cannot (Romans 5:5) ever disappoint. We mourn our dead now in the Lord as we remember them, but have real and lasting joy in the morning (Lamentations 3:22-24) when we recall the promised land of the kingdom to come when we will all be reunited in the presence of our Lord. This is the certain hope of the gospel.
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