1
¶ And Joseph fell upon his father’s
face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. 2
And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father:
and the physicians embalmed Israel. 3
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of
those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten
days. 4 And when the days of his
mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I
have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh,
saying, 5 My father made me swear,
saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of
Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and
bury my father, and I will come again. 6
And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee
swear.
Most of us have heard about the ancient Egyptian’s
practice of embalming the dead through news stories of mummies uncovered. We have a forty day period of embalming and a
seventy day period of mourning.
From one authority we have this information as part of
their description on the Egyptian embalming process. “The process lasted for a
period of 70 days…The corpse was to be dried for a period of 40 days.”(49)
Here we have God’s man being subjected to the death
and funerary customs of the land in which he lived. No one is saying that if
Jacob’s body is disposed of in the Egyptian manner that he cannot go to be with
God.
The Pharaoh, this Pharaoh, whom I said before was, in
my estimation, not a native Egyptian, was quite sympathetic to Joseph’s
mourning of his father and his father’s insistence that he be buried in the land of Canaan.
(49) “Process of Embalming,” http://www.ancientegyptianfacts.com/ancient-egyptian-process-of-embalming.html.
(accessed 7.1.2017).
7 ¶
And 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 And all the house of Joseph, and his
brethren, and his father’s house: only their little ones, and 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 company. 10 And they came to the
threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a
great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven
days. 11 And when the inhabitants of the
land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is
a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called
Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 12
And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 13 For his sons carried him into the land of
Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham
bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite,
before Mamre. 14 And Joseph returned
into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his
father, after he had buried his father.
Joseph took quite an entourage of officialdom with him
to Jacob’s burial. The respect and gratitude this Egyptian Pharaoh and his
government had for Joseph was immense and justifiably so. He literally had been
their savior and deliverer, although only on a temporal level. This is also an
expression of power, an extension of power that the Egyptians displayed in the
land of Canaan. Once can imagine that there were Egyptian garrisons already in
the land and with a sort of Egyptian peace that ensured trade and travel could
go on safely. It is easy to picture how dependent the kings of Canaan would be
on Egyptian power and how in awe they would be of this assembly.
The phrase chariots
and horsemen will play a very important part in places in the Old Testament
and be a source of contention. One thing missing in scholarship and Bible
exposition is the common sense understanding of chariot warfare. A chariot was
a mobile fighting platform as well as a ceremonial vehicle whose weak link was
also how it was delivered to the forefront of the battle so quickly; its
horses. Logic tells us, logic and common sense, that the horses would be what
the infantry would go after first. Kill the horses and the chariot cannot move
and respond to the battle. So, with chariots there needed to be a string of
horses and horsemen to accompany them. Like the pit crew at a NASCAR event
these teams needed to be able to replace dead and injured horses or, in a
fierce battle, the chariot would have been rendered useless and even helpless
quite quickly, as the driver would not be able to remove to safety in the event
of being overwhelmed, with dead horses.
1Kings
4:26 And Solomon had forty thousand
stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.
2Chronicles
9:25 And Solomon had four thousand
stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed
in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.
So, in these two verses which have been the source of
much disagreement it is very obvious to me that Solomon had 40,000 stalls for
chariot horses and 4,000 stalls that were big enough for the chariot and the
horse team that drew it. This would be necessary for maintenance and
preparation before training and battle. This also implies a string of 10 horses
per chariot as the primary team and backup. These backup teams would have not
only needed protection by cavalry but perhaps were a capable fighting force all
their own. There is no contradiction, just common sense and reading
comprehension needed here.
In verse 11 we have something very interesting. The
phrase Abelmizraim combines the name Abel with the name Mizraim. We were not told Abel’s name’s meaning early in Genesis
but here, with the founder of Egypt, Mizraim, (see comments on 10:6) we have
the meaning of the phrase as grievous
mourning to the Egyptians. As Mizraim refers to Egypt so Abel refers to
sorrow or mourning. Define your words by the context or you will be hopelessly
lost in the maize of scholars debating over root words, meanings, and usages in
documents outside of the Bible.
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