[1] And Joseph fell upon
his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.
And Joseph fell upon his father's face and wept upon
him, and kissed him - Joseph shewed his faith in God, and love to his father,
by kissing his pale and cold lips, and so giving an affectionate farewell.
Probably the rest of Jacob's sons did the same, much moved, no doubt, with
his dying words.
[2] And Joseph commanded his
servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed
Israel.
He ordered the body to be embalmed, not only because
he died in Egypt, and that was the manner of the Egyptians, but because
he was to be carried to Canaan, which would be a work of time.
[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,
He observed the ceremony of solemn mourning for him.
Forty days were taken up in embalming the body, which the Egyptians had
an art of doing so curiously, as to preserve the very features of the face
unchanged. All this time, and thirty days more, seventy in all, they either
confined themselves and sat solitary, or when they went out, appeared in
the habit of close mourners, according to the decent custom of the country.
Even the Egyptians, many of them, out of the respect they had for Joseph,
put themselves into mourning for his father.
[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. [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.
He asked and obtained leave of Pharaoh to go to Canaan,
to attend the funeral of his father. It was a piece of necessary respect
to Pharaoh, that he would not go without leave; for we may suppose, though
his charge about the corn was long since over, yet he continued a prime
minister of state, and therefore would not be so long absent from his business
without license.
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