Genesis
49:28 ¶ All these are the twelve tribes
of Israel: and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them;
every one according to his blessing he blessed them. 29 And he charged them, and said unto them, I am
to be gathered unto my people: bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in
the field of Ephron the Hittite, 30 In
the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the land
of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a
possession of a buryingplace. 31 There
they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his
wife; and there I buried Leah. 32 The
purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of
Heth. 33 And when Jacob had made an end
of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up
the ghost, and was gathered unto his people.
The
twelve tribes of Israel play a very important part in God’s ministry of
reconciling mankind to Himself as a vehicle, although flawed and more often in
error than not, through which His salvation of mankind from eternal agony and
suffering, it’s natural destination based on the rebellion we inherited from
Adam, comes. Humans are, of all creatures, most miserable if they do not
believe or receive Christ as their Saviour when offered.
Jacob
is going to die now. He ordains where he will be buried, in a cave in the field
that Abraham, his grandfather purchased. See comments on 23:1-20.
Here,
we see an interesting event. Jacob does not suffer a long ordeal of disease
breathing hard in agony on a bed of suffering. He finishes his blessings and
then pulls his feet up into his bed and surrenders his spirit and dies.
I
have already gone over the euphemisms for death as evidenced in verse 33 and
from its usage the phrase gathered unto
his people refers to going to the place where his ancestors went when they
died. Jacob is said to have yielded up
the ghost. This is a reference to his spirit. Here is a reference to
Jesus’s, who was fully man and fully God, human spirit or ghost, lowercase s and g. Here the human spirit belongs to and ascends to God.
Luke
23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a
loud voice, he said, Father, into thy
hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.
Again,
not only the soul leaves the flesh at death but here we see the spirit leaves,
as well. Notice Solomon’s question in Ecclesiastes that suggests mankind
doesn’t know what he thinks he knows.
Ecclesiastes
3:21 Who knoweth the spirit of man that
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
God
uses the spirit of man as one means to examine him from the inside-out.
Proverbs
20:27 The spirit of man is the candle of
the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly.
The
Godhead consists of a soul (God the Father), the seat of self-identity and
will, a Spirit (the Holy Ghost called the Holy Spirit or Spirit of God when
referencing acting on physical reality as the very mind of God), and a body, a
physical presence, (Christ or the Word by which all things were created and are
held together) it is important to understand that only God’s three parts can
act independently although guided by one will. If either our soul or spirit
leave us as humans we physically die. Jesus, being fully man and fully God, was
not only the physical image of the invisible God but, as a human, possessed a
lowercase spirit or ghost which He surrendered when He gave
up his brief temporal existence before rising from the dead.
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