Genesis 50:26

One cannot close the book of Genesis without being struck by the last four words. It opens with a couple created in innocence and placed in a garden of delights. It closes with a coffin in Egypt, and in that coffin a dead man, though he was an eminent saint. Sin had come in, and death by sin.

The pleasures of this world are only for a season, and all the treasures of Egypt end in a grave. Joseph found this in an earlier day, for he had occupied a great place in Egypt. Next to the king he had wielded a power that no mortal man before or since had ever wielded in this world. Still, it all ended in a coffin. The last words of the Book of Genesis are these: "Joseph died … and he was put in a coffin in Egypt." So much for Egypt's pleasures and Egypt's treasures. All the glory of this world at last sinks down to a coffin. Pharaoh's mighty empire contracts to a narrow grave.

Joseph's coffin was made in Egypt for an embalmed body, so it probably looked like the ancient mummy cases. These were ornamental cases, larger than European coffins.

He also charged his sons not to bury him with his fathers, as Jacob had asked and received. They were to embalm him instead, as the pledge that they would leave Egypt in God's time for the land of promise. No splendour in Egypt dimmed the light of promise to his faith. He stood nearest to the throne of the world, yet he is a stranger. He looks for resurrection, and he expects God to bring Israel back to the land, as He swore to their fathers.

So in the power of faith's vision of the living God he gives directions concerning his bones. They are not to be left in Egypt. What a witness to the Israelites the coffin of Joseph must have been through the long centuries! It reminded them always that not even death itself can stop the living God from doing all He pleases, and carrying out His purpose for His people. So, in keeping with the oath made to Joseph, when at last they leave the land of Egypt, "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him" (Ex. 13:19). The coffin still witnessed to faith in God through the forty years of wilderness journeys. And when at last they reach the land of promise, his body is buried in "the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor" (Joshua 24:32). There he sleeps in the dust of the earth until he awakes to everlasting life and stands in his lot at the end of days.

To the natural eye there was little likelihood, when Joseph was dying, that his people would ever leave Egypt. But this dying saint rested on the sure word and promise of God. So with confidence he "gave directions concerning his bones." Years passed away — nearly four hundred. Then God did visit His people, and they remembered the oath, so the bones of the patriarch went with them in their exodus.

No doubt he looked further ahead still. He wanted his body to be in the land of Israel, looking to the day of resurrection, and to the day when God would carry out His promises to Abraham in full. At that time the truth that resurrection happens at the coming of the Lord for His saints was not known. Christ had not yet come in flesh. But there is no doubt that Joseph believed in the God of resurrection, and in the coming of the promised Messiah.

This deeply interesting book of Genesis is the book of life and of origins. It ends in great contrast to its beginning — "in a coffin in Egypt." For it is only the beginning of God's revelation. How much more wonderful and beautiful is the last word from God in the book of Revelation: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen."