Immerse: Beginnings Full Volume - Flipbook - Page 92
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IMMERSE
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BEGINNINGS
49:28–50:15
These are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said as he
told his sons g ood-bye. He blessed each one with an appropriate message.
Then Jacob instructed them, “Soon I will die and join my ancestors. Bury
me with my father and grandfather in the cave in the field of Ephron the
Hittite. This is the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan,
that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a permanent burial site.
There Abraham and his wife Sarah are buried. There Isaac and his wife,
Rebekah, are buried. And there I buried Leah. It is the plot of land and the
cave that my grandfather Abraham bought from the Hittites.”
When Jacob had finished this charge to his sons, he drew his feet into
the bed, breathed his last, and joined his ancestors in death.
Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him.
Then Joseph told the physicians who served him to embalm his father’s
body; so Jacob was embalmed. The embalming process took the usual
forty days. And the Egyptians mourned his death for seventy days.
When the period of mourning was over, Joseph approached Pharaoh’s
advisers and said, “Please do me this favor and speak to Pharaoh on my
behalf. Tell him that my father made me swear an oath. He said to me,
‘Listen, I am about to die. Take my body back to the land of Canaan, and
bury me in the tomb I prepared for myself.’ So please allow me to go and
bury my father. After his burial, I will return without delay.”
Pharaoh agreed to Joseph’s request. “Go and bury your father, as he
made you promise,” he said. So Joseph went up to bury his father. He was
accompanied by all of Pharaoh’s officials, all the senior members of Pharaoh’s household, and all the senior officers of Egypt. Joseph also took his
entire household and his brothers and their households. But they left their
little children and flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. A great number
of chariots and charioteers accompanied Joseph.
When they arrived at the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan River,
they held a very great and solemn memorial service, with a s even-day
period of mourning for Joseph’s father. The local residents, the Canaanites, watched them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad. Then they
renamed that place (which is near the Jordan) A
bel-mizraim, for they said,
“This is a place of deep mourning for these Egyptians.”
So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them. They carried his body
to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah,
near Mamre. This is the cave that Abraham had bought as a permanent
burial site from Ephron the Hittite.
After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all
who had accompanied him to his father’s burial. But now that their father
