Genesis
50:1 ¶ 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.
Remember
God’s promise to Jacob earlier. Joseph would see his father die and cover his
eyes with Joseph’s own hand.
Genesis
46:4 I will go down with thee into
Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his
hand upon thine eyes.
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.”[1]
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.
[1]
“Process of Embalming,” http://www.ancientegyptianfacts.com/ancient-egyptian-process-of-embalming.html.
(accessed 7.1.2017).
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