The end of Act 1, Scene 2 of God’s One Big Story
In our previous episode—The Grand Finale, Part 1 (from Genesis 46-47)—we followed Jacob and his family as they journeyed from their old home in Canaan to their new one in Egypt. Once they arrived, Joseph presented five of his brothers and his father to Pharaoh. To the brothers, Pharaoh gave his permission for them to live in the land of Goshen, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh, not once but twice.
In this episode—The Grand Finale, Part 2—we will be covering Genesis 48-50, wrapping up the stories of both Jacob and Joseph, the book of Genesis itself, as well as Act 1, Scene 2, Israel—the Beloved of God, our introduction to the ancestry and the birth of the nation of Israel.
Episode #7 of Biopic #4
Cast: Narrator God Jacob/Israel Joseph Pharaoh Brothers Egyptians Messengers
When the curtain rises on this episode, seventeen years have passed since Jacob and his family made that momentous journey from Canaan to Egypt. Joseph has provided for their needs since then, they have been growing and multiplying, and enjoying all the good things that Egypt has to offer.
Narrator: Now it came to pass after these things that Joseph was told, ‘Indeed your father is sick’; and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And Jacob was told, “Look, your son Joseph is coming to you”; and Israel strengthened himself and sat up on the bed. Then Jacob said to Joseph…
Jacob/Israel: God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a multitude of people, and give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’ And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. Your offspring whom you beget after them shall be yours; they will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. But as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died beside me in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was but a little distance to go to Ephrath; and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).
Narrator: Then Israel saw Joseph’s sons, and said…
Jacob/Israel: Who are these?
Joseph: They are my sons, whom God has given me in this place.
Jacob/Israel: Please bring them to me, and I will bless them.
Narrator: Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see. Then Joseph brought them near him, and he kissed them and embraced them. And Israel said to Joseph…
Jacob/Israel: I had not thought to see your face; but in fact, God has also shown me your offspring!
Narrator: So Joseph brought them from beside his knees, and he bowed down with his face to the earth. And Joseph took them both, Ephraim with his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh with his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near him. Then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph, and said…
Jacob/Israel: God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life long to this day, the Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; let my name be named upon them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.
Narrator: Now when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; so he took hold of his father’s hand to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. And Joseph said to his father…
Joseph: Not so, my father, for this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head.
Jacob/Israel: I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.
Narrator: So he blessed them that day, saying…
Jacob/Israel: By you Israel will bless, saying, ‘May God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh!’
Narrator: And thus he set Ephraim before Manasseh. Then Israel said to Joseph…
Jacob/Israel: Behold, I am dying, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. Moreover I have given to you one portion above your brothers, which I took from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and my bow.
Narrator: And Jacob called his sons and said…
Jacob/Israel: Gather together, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the last days: gather together and hear, you sons of Jacob, and listen to Israel your father.
Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power. Unstable as water, you shall not excel, because you went up to your father’s bed; then you defiled it—he went up to my couch.
Simeon and Levi are brothers; instruments of cruelty are in their dwelling place. Let not my soul enter their council; let not my honor be united to their assembly; for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they hamstrung an ox. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce; and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel.
Judah, you are he whom your brothers shall praise; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s children shall bow down before you. Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He bows down, he lies down as a lion; and as a lion, who shall rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people. Binding his donkey to the vine, and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes. His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.
Zebulun shall dwell by the haven of the sea; he shall become a haven for ships, and his border shall adjoin Sidon.
Issachar is a strong donkey, lying down between two burdens; he saw that rest was good, and that the land was pleasant; he bowed his shoulder to bear a burden, and became a band of slaves.
Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent by the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider shall fall backward. I have waited for your salvation, O LORD!
Gad, a troop shall tramp upon him, but he shall triumph at last.
Bread from Asher shall be rich, and he shall yield royal dainties.
Naphtali is a deer let loose; he uses beautiful words.
Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; his branches run over the wall. The archers have bitterly grieved him, shot at him and hated him. But his bow remained in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the Mighty God of Jacob (From there is the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel), by the God of your father who will help you, and by the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lies beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your father have excelled the blessings of my ancestors, up to the utmost bound of the everlasting hills. They shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers.
Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.
Narrator: All these are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father spoke to them. And he blessed them; he blessed each one according to his own blessing. Then he charged them and said to them…
Jacob/Israel: I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, 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 as a possession for a burial place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah. The field and the cave that is there were purchased from the sons of Heth.
“La Mort de Jacob” by Henri Joseph de Forestier
Narrator: And when Jacob had finished commanding his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed and breathed his last, and was gathered to his people.
Narrator: Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were required for him, for such are the days required for those who are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days. Now when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying…
Joseph: If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, “My father made me swear, saying, ‘Behold, I am dying; in my grave which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.’ Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back.”
Pharaoh: Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear.
Narrator: So 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, as well as all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house. Only their little ones, their flocks, and their herds they left in the land of Goshen. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very great gathering.
Then they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, and they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, ‘This is a deep mourning of the Egyptians.’ Therefore its name was called Abel Mizraim, which is beyond the Jordan.
So his sons did for him just as he had commanded them. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite as property for a burial place. And after he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers and all who went up with him to bury his father. When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said…
Brothers: Perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.
Narrator: So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying…
Messengers: Before your father died he commanded, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to Joseph: “I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin; for they did evil to you.” ’ Now, please, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.”
Narrator: And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also went and fell down before his face, and they said…
Brothers: Behold, we are your servants.
Joseph: Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. Now therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.
Narrator: And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them. So Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his father’s household. And Joseph lived one hundred and ten years. Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were also brought up on Joseph’s knees. And Joseph said to his brethren…
Joseph: I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land of which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
Narrator: Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying…
Joseph: God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.
Narrator: So Joseph died, being one hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
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Our Review
Our Final Review in this Scene
of
The important points in this episode
— Who are these—When told that his father was sick, Joseph took his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to see Jacob. Since Jacob was nearly blind, he wouldn’t have been able to see that his grandsons had come into the room but sensing their presence in the room, he asked for them to be identified. While there is a tendency to think of these sons as being relatively young boys, given that they were most likely born to Joseph during the first five years after his rise to power, that Joseph was about thirty-seven years old when his family joined him in Egypt, and that Jacob had lived in Egypt for seventeen years at this point, Manasseh and Ephraim would likely have been in their late teens or early twenties.
— Bring them to me and I will bless them—It seems to have always been Jacob’s intention to bestow the birthright and blessing of the firstborn upon Joseph, after all he was the firstborn of his true love and favorite wife, Rachel. So before he blesses his other sons, he pronounces a special blessing on Joseph’s sons. Even though Joseph had positioned them so that Jacob would first bless Manasseh, the elder, Jacob repositioned his hands in order to place the primary blessing upon Ephraim, the younger. We have seen the younger being chosen over the elder before in the stories of Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, and Esau and Jacob. This seems to be an illustration of the principle found in 1 Corinthians 2:14 that…
…the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
— Let my name be named upon them—With this, Jacob announces that he is adopting Joseph’s sons as his own. In the future, Manasseh and Ephraim will be counted as members of the twelve tribes of Israel and be given their own portion in the promised land. In blessing and adopting Joseph’s sons, Jacob is actually bestowing the “double portion” of the firstborn’s inheritance on Joseph—which is why he could say that…
I have given you one portion above your brothers.
— Jacob called his sons and…blessed each one according to his own blessing—As we learned back in Blessing, Cursing, and Big Time Rebellion, the act of pronouncing a blessing—or a curse—upon one’s children was a very serious thing. According to Dictionary.com…
...to bless means to consecrate or sanctify by a religious rite; to make or pronounce holy; or, to request the bestowal of divine favor on something or someone—while to curse is to express a wish that misfortune, evil, doom, etc., befall a particular person or group.
As such, blessings and curses in the Bible often became prophetic utterances about the future welfare and destiny of those who were on the receiving ends of them. Just as Noah’s blessings of Shem and Japheth, and his cursing of Ham’s son, Canaan, became predictions of the future directions of their descendants, Jacob’s blessings on his sons can be seen in the same light.
Having lived with his sons through thick and thin for well over a half century, Jacob would have been intimately acquainted with their unique personalities, and their individual strengths and weaknesses. While some of his sons were seemingly overlooked, those who merited the most attention were Reuben, Simeon and Levi, Judah, and Joseph.
Jacob’s Blessings of His Sons
— Bury me with my fathers—Here, Jacob is not only looking forward to being buried with his ancestors, but he is also looking ahead in faith to the time when his descendants will finally occupy the land that God promised to his ancestor, Abraham. That’s because, when they eventually take possession of the land of Canaan, each tribe will be assigned a specific portion of the land, and each family within that tribe will be given an inheritance of their own and be forbidden to sell it. It is to remain in the family’s possession forever so that when the resurrection of the dead takes place, they will be raised in the land that the Lord had assigned to them.
— Jacob…was gathered to his people—As we learned back in Abraham: Called to Retire, to be gathered to his people was a way of saying that he had gone on into the afterlife to a place called Paradise, where he would join his ancestors who had died in faith before him. From what Jesus revealed in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16:22, one of two destinations awaited those who died in Old Testament times— Sheol/hades and Paradise. The wicked would go to Sheol and remain there until the final judgment at the end of time, and the righteous would go to Paradise—also called Abraham’s Bosom—where they would wait until Christ came for them at the time of His Resurrection…
‘When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gift to men.’ Now this, ‘He ascended’—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above the heavens…(Ephesians 4:8-9)
…Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:15)
— Joseph commanded the physicians to embalm his father—Concerning embalming…
Although it was the usual practice in Egypt for everyone who could afford it, embalming of Israelites is found only in this passage. This was an elaborate and ritual-filled procedure performed by a trained group of mortuary priests. It involving the removing of the internal organs and placing the body in embalming fluid for forty days. The idea behind this is based on the Egyptian belief that the body had to be preserved as a repository for the soul after death.
The bodies of Jacob and Joseph are embalmed, and while this may have been done to soothe the feelings of the Egyptians, it also served the purpose of preserving their bodies for later burial in Canaan.[1]
— Let me go up and bury my father—Rather than just pack up all of his relatives and take off—something which might have conveyed the wrong message and created a lot of concern among the Egyptians—out of respect for the one ruling over him, Joseph sought permission from Pharaoh before leaving.
— It was a very great gathering—By now, Jacob, the humble shepherd, had become such a revered member of Egyptian society that when the time came for Joseph to carry his body back to Canaan for burial, everyone of any importance in Egypt went along on the journey to honor him. This would have been the equivalent of a state funeral held today, one with a military escort ensuring their safety both coming and going—and one taking pretty much the same route that would be followed by Jacob’s descendants hundreds of years later at the time of the Exodus.
— Joseph’s brothers…sent messengers to Joseph— In spite of having been taken care of by Joseph for the previous seventeen years, when Jacob died, his brothers still didn’t trust that his forgiveness of them was genuine. Just as many of us do far too often, they spent years living with guilt and under condemnation instead of living as those whose sins had been forgiven—like those described by David in Psalm 32:1-5, 11…
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; my vitality was turned into the drought of summer.
I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, you righteous; and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!
— Joseph wept…and they fell down before his face—His brothers’ distrust of him really cut Joseph to the quick, prompting him to tears. This seems to have finally convinced them that they had been forgiven and prompted them to do again what they never thought they would do—bow before him.
— God will surely visit you—Just like Jacob had done on his deathbed, Joseph was looking toward the future in faith—to the time when the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would at last possess the land that promised to them by God. Joseph was fifty-six years old when his father died, and he lived another fifty-four years after that. As a member of Egypt’s ruling class, he could have spent those remaining years building a magnificent tomb for himself but instead, he was content for his body to remain a casket until his bones could be carried back to the Promised Land for burial.
— Joseph lived one hundred and ten years—Although examinations of mummies have revealed that most Egyptians only lived to be between forty and fifty years of age, one hundred and ten years was considered to be the ideal age for an Egyptian.[2]
— You shall carry my bones up from here—Joseph’s faith was rewarded hundreds of years later, when God, through Moses, delivered the Israelites from Egyptian bondage and carried his bones to their final resting place in Canaan.
The Death of Joseph
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In Summary
Perhaps the best way to summarize this episode, this scene, and the book of Genesis, is with this insight by Dr. John Phillips…
Thus ends Genesis. It begins with creation and ends with a coffin. It begins with the glory and ends with a grave. It begins with the vastness of eternity and ends with the shortness of time. It begins with the living God and ends with a dead man. It begins with a blaze of brightness in heaven and ends with a box of bones in Egypt. That is the Holy Spirit’s final comment in the book on the nature and tragedy of human sin. That is the final exposure of the devil’s lie, “Thou shalt not surely die.” “So Joseph died…” and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.[3]
We will do a more in-depth summary of what we have learned in Act 1, Scene 2—and be treated to a look at the things to come in Act 1, Scene 3—when we met again for A Review and a Preview of this portion of God’s One Big Story!
[1] Walton, John H. and Matthews, Victor H. The IVP Background Commentary: Genesis—Deuteronomy.1997. InterVarsity Press. p.81.
[2] Walton. p. 81.
[3] Phillips, John. Exploring Genesis. 1980. Loizeaux Brothers, Inc. p. 379.
Original images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.