‘My father made me swear, saying, “I am about to die: in my tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there shall you bury me.” Now therefore, let me please go up and bury my father. Then I will return.’”
Joseph rules Egypt. Yet after his father dies, his first move is to ask leave to carry the body out of the country, to a grave Jacob had dug for himself in Canaan. Why did a burial plot matter so much to a dying man? And why did Joseph ask so carefully?
The oath behind the request
Joseph is keeping a promise his father pressed on him hard. Jacob stayed calm about how he lived in Egypt. He was not calm about where he would lie.
J. G. BellettWe never find him urgent about the conditions of his life in Egypt; he seems willing to take what they give him and to be what they make him. But as to his burial, he is now all urgency and decision. He wants it confirmed by an oath: his son will carry his dead body to the land that saw God's promise to him. He is earnest and firm now, as he was indifferent before. For faith likes to read its title clear, full, and secure.
The oath tied Jacob's body to a promise he would not live to see kept.
Numerical Bible NotesHere we have the vow which Jacob exacts from Joseph — that he shall be buried in Canaan, in the tomb of his fathers. He thus links himself with them as waiting, even in death, for the promise to be fulfilled. So the promise is a promise of life which death cannot defeat or undo.
A dug grave, not a shadowy place
Jacob dug this grave himself. The word he uses for it marks it off from Sheol, the unseen world of the dead.
A. J. PollockQeber can be dug or made. "In my grave which I have dug for me" (Gen. 50:5); "I will make your grave." Sheol is never said to be dug or made.
(The ESV reads, "in my tomb that I hewed out for myself.")
Egyptian honours, a Canaanite tomb
Egypt gave Jacob its funeral customs. It did not keep his body.
F. B. HoleBeing in Egypt, the burial customs of that land were observed up to a certain point, but Jacob's body was not to lie embalmed in an Egyptian tomb. By Jacob's desire, as well as Joseph's, it was to lie in the land of promise. The promise of God was a reality to their faith, since "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for." The things hoped for are real, and faith makes them real to us.
The whole family followed this pattern. They owned nothing in Canaan while they lived, yet they would lie nowhere else.
J. G. BellettWhile they lived, they were content to live as strangers in Canaan without owning so much as a foot of ground. But "they died in faith." The promise of God had made over that land, that very land, to them, though they themselves would be gathered to their fathers. That was the ground of their dying in faith, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection to enjoy it. They would link their dead, though not their living, bodies with that land.
Why Joseph asked with care
Joseph does not take this straight to Pharaoh. One writer sees real hesitation in that.
J. G. BellettWhen Joseph comes to act on his oath, he seems to me to feel that he was about to venture on a serious and risky matter. He plainly treats it as a task with its own special difficulties… Yet he hesitates over burying his father in Canaan, and gets help from Pharaoh's close relatives, who speak for him.
The risk lay in what Joseph's plea said about Egypt.
J. G. BellettWhy all this? Was it not a small thing for so great a man to do? Yes; but a request to be buried in Canaan was, in a sense, putting a reproach on Egypt. It seemed to say that, after all, the Canaan of degradation and poverty was better than the Egypt of honour and wealth.
What Pharaoh's "yes" produced
Pharaoh agreed. The funeral that followed was unlike anything in the family's story.
L. M. GrantThere was nothing like this at the funerals of Abraham or Isaac. Here God is showing us the sovereignty of His great power and grace in producing sympathy among the Gentiles for His people Israel. Israel's own father dies, but his descendants remain, and God gives them favour among the Gentiles.
Summary
- Oath — Jacob made Joseph swear, not just promise. Faith wants its claim on God's promise clear and secure.
- Grave — Jacob dug the tomb himself in Canaan. It was a real plot of ground, not a picture of the unseen world.
- Land — Egypt embalmed the body. Faith sent it to the land of promise, tying their dead bodies to a country they never owned while alive.
- Reproach — choosing Canaan over Egypt said Canaan was worth more than Egypt's wealth. That is why Joseph asked with care.
- Favour — Pharaoh's yes turned a private oath into a national procession. God produced sympathy among the Gentiles for His people.