GENESIS

Notes on Genesis 50

• Genesis 50:1 And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.

This was heart rending time for they had been apart for so many years. Yet God allowed them to have fellowship 17 years before Jacob went on to his reward. To those that believe, parting in this life is only temporary, there is hope for those that are "In Christ."  We are to be reconciled in another place. We have a hope beyond the grave. Jesus made that way plain and sure. Look how the mercy of God allowed Jacob to spend 17 more years with Joseph before he died.

These in the Old Testament were saved by faith but by looking forward to the savior that was to come. We are saved by faith by looking backward to the time Jesus died, was buried and was resurrected to give us the hope of the resurrection. Before we can have this assurance though we must be willing to forsake our sins and believe in the one that God sent to take our sins away and reconcile us back to God. This person who God sent to us is His own begotten Son, Jesus Christ. No other prophet, priest or teacher has the power to take away our sins and give us eternal life.

We don't even have to wait for heaven before we can have God within us. He gives the Holy Spirit to all who obey Him.

• Acts 5:32 And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him.

God sends the Holy Spirit so that we have God within us. We are then never alone.

• Genesis 50:2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.

This is a process that keeps the body from decaying rapidly.

• Genesis 50:3 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.

We usually have our funeral services in three days or less than a week. They took a long time, 70 days to mourn over someone who died.

I often wonder what the very first funeral was like when Abel was killed by his brother. Having never seen death before, it must have been very grievous.

• Genesis 50:4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke 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.

Joseph still was under the authority of Pharaoh and had to seek his permission to leave temporarily. This was really not the type of freedom that we are accustomed to in the 20 and 21st century. Yet they were not slaves like they would become in later years.

• Genesis 50:7 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 threshing floor 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.
• 11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim, which is beyond Jordan.
• 12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them:
• 13 For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burial place of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.

This obedience to their father's wishes was very commendable. They could have saved a lot to time and money by just burying him in Egypt. This was a testimony though that Egypt was not their final destination. They belonged in the promised land. However the time was not yet ripe for the iniquity (sin) of the Canaanites was not yet full. The Canaanites still had years to repent and get right with God before God would allow any other nation to destroy them. God is merciful and waits, giving us a chance to repent.

In Noah's day, it was the same. Noah was given time to warn and preach before the flood came. Here is an example of that:

• 1Peter 3:20 Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
• 5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Usually those that warn of impending doom are laughed at. It has always been that way. People like people who say what they want to hear, truth or not.

• Genesis 50:14 And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.
• 15 And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him.
• 16 And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying,

This shows us that because of Joseph's position in Egypt, his brothers did not have complete access to him as they did each other.

• Genesis 50:17 So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spoke unto him.

The bible doesn't record Jacob saying anything like this. It would seem as if he knew about what the brothers did from reading his prophecy about Joseph in the previous chapter 49 verse 23. He probably did say something after finding out what they did to Joseph but the bible just doesn't record every conversation people had in that day.

In the previous chapter Jacob mentions the archers that shot at Joseph and hated him but he was made strong and excelled above them all. So Jacob must have known what happened to Joseph. One wonders why Jacob seemed to be silent on the subject. Perhaps it was such a grief to him that he could not speak of it. If one of my children did something so horrible to another one, I would probably not want to talk of it also.

Then too, perhaps Jacob blamed himself in a way because it was his partiality toward Joseph that caused the jealousy in his sons toward Joseph. There are so many things we can learn from the mistakes of those that go before us. That is why the bible is written. It is not written so that we repeat those mistakes and do the same things. We are to copy after the good things they did, not assume all they did was good because they were chosen of God. There is no man that lived perfectly without fault until the coming of Jesus Christ. We have to discern between what was the will of God and what was not the will of God, but was allowed of God. Some things God allowed and it reaped bad consequences but it wasn't His divine will or it wasn't enough to lose being chosen of God to bring forth the coming of His Son into the world.

Some sins are so serious that they separate us from salvation and from God. Some sins are just our stupid wrong decisions and are not sins we desire to continue in. Usually those type of sins are ones we regret and repent of immediately. It is sin that is openly practiced with the attitude that we don't care whether it is right or wrong, we want to continue in it with no desire to repent, that is the serious sins.

Idolatry is very serious because we are actually worshipping devils when we bow down to an image. We are substituting God for something that represents God or that is a nothing. It is very serious and it breaks the very first commandments. Anything that pays homage to something other than God with harm our souls. God knows that only He cares about us and what happens to us. The devil does not. We must have nothing to do with the worship of images. We are not to make anything that represents God or the Son of God, Jesus Christ. First of all, we do not know what He looks like and second of all, there is no way we can make anything good enough to represent God.

• Genesis 50:18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants.
• 19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?
• 20 But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.
• 21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spoke kindly unto them.

Joseph is a good example of one who forgave and treated good to those that treated him evil.

• Genesis 50:22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house: and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years.
• 23 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees.

Some believe this to be his great grandchildren. At the age of 110 though it would be possible to see one's great great grandchildren. It would depend upon how young one's children are when they get married. My dad lived to be 95 and saw his great grand children. I also have great grandchildren, the three oldest ones have graduated high school. If I live to see one of them marry and have children, I would have seen my great great grandchildren. However, I don't worry about that.

• Genesis 50:24 And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

We do not know which of the sons of Jacob died first but this may have been a general speech to all that were living at the time of Joseph's death to make sure he was carried up and taken with them when the time came for them to leave the land of Egypt.

They all most probably knew the word of the Lord that was given to Abraham that they would return to the land of Canaan. Looks like that would have wanted to leave right away though if they understood the rest of the word to Abraham that they would one day be in bondage.
Here is the word spoken to Abraham:

• Genesis 15:13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;
• 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

Why they had to suffer 400 years of bondage is not really spoken of in the bible. Usually bondage and slavery is a result of war or else it is a judgment of God.  So that part remains a mystery.

• Genesis 50:25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.
• 26 So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Here is the Hebrew account of this:

• Hebrews 11:22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.

Faith was powerful then and faith is powerful now. Faith is actually believing the word of God but believing to the point of acting upon the word and being in obedience to the word. We can't say we believe and have saving faith in Jesus Christ, if we do not obey His word or have anything to do with the word of God. That is not true faith. If I believe I'm married and do not act married, do not live with my spouse or acknowledge my spouse in any way, I'm not really married in truth but in name only. It is only on a piece of paper. We can't say we believe in Jesus and then go about our lives having nothing to do with Him or even regard anything He has to say to us and expect to be saved and have eternal life.

He didn't save us from sin for us go right back into the open sin He saved us from. What would be the point of being saved from sin if we can go ahead and sin still expecting to enter heaven because we believe in Jesus. Jesus came to save us from sin. Sin is what is causing us to be lost. Sin is what separates us from God. Sin is why Jesus had to die. If we think we can just believe once years ago and then continue in sin, we are fooling ourselves. That is a false doctrine. We are covered by His righteousness so we must trust in God and He will help us remain faithful and not return to the sin He saved us from.

The children of Israel made a covenant with Joseph. If they would have done this just to appease a dying man and had no intention of passing this word down throughout the generations so that it would be carried out, it would have been a waste of time. They made this agreement and made sure when the time came that it was carried out according to his wishes. It was probably written down. The bible was written so that we would know God's wishes and are then able to carry them out in our lives. If we do not study it diligently, then we will be in ignorance. No true preacher, teacher, priest or rabbi will be afraid of someone diligently studying God's word on their own. No person who speaks or teaches truth will fear anyone who will hold up what he teaches to the light of God's word. DC

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