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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