The Long Defeat of Death Text: Genesis 50:1-3
Introduction: The Certainty of a Tomb
We come now to the end of Jacob's life, but not to the end of his story. The book of Genesis, which begins with the creation of the cosmos, ends with a coffin in Egypt. But this is not a story of despair. It is a story of profound and forward-looking faith. The final chapters of Genesis are dominated by the subject of burial. Jacob makes Joseph swear an oath to bury him not in the glories of Egypt, but in a dusty cave in Canaan. Joseph, at the end of his own life, will do the same. Why this fixation on gravesites? Because the patriarchs understood something that our modern, sentimental Christianity often forgets: faith is not an abstract feeling in the heart. It is a rugged, earthy, tangible confidence in the promises of God that lays claim to real dirt.
The patriarchs were promised a land, and though they lived as sojourners and pilgrims, they made sure to purchase their burial plots there. Abraham bought the first parcel of the promised land, and it was a tomb. This was their down payment. This was their stake in the ground. This was their declaration, against all the apparent power of Egypt and the evidence of their senses, that God keeps His word. They knew that the resurrection was coming, and they wanted to be buried in the land where the promises of God would find their ultimate fulfillment. Their bodies were seeds of hope, planted in the soil of the covenant, awaiting the great harvest at the end of the age.
In these opening verses of Genesis 50, we see the collision of two worlds. We see the raw, personal grief of a son for his father, a grief that is right and good. We see the customs of the most powerful empire on earth, the Egyptians, with all their elaborate rituals concerning death. And running underneath it all, we see the quiet, steady, and unshakeable current of covenant faithfulness. Joseph is the second most powerful man in the world, but his ultimate loyalty is not to Pharaoh, but to the God of his fathers, and the oath he swore to a dying man.
This passage teaches us how to grieve, how to lead, and how to hope. It shows us that true faith does not deny the bitterness of death, but it refuses to give death the final word. Death gets a ceremony, but God gets the glory. Death gets a season of weeping, but God's promise gets the final amen.
The Text
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.
Then the forty days to do this were fulfilled, because in this manner the days of embalming are fulfilled. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.
(Genesis 50:1-3 LSB)
Grief and Filial Piety (v. 1)
We begin with the immediate aftermath of Jacob's death, and Joseph's very personal reaction.
"Then Joseph fell on his father’s face and wept over him and kissed him." (Genesis 50:1)
The first thing to note here is the profound humanity of the scene. Joseph, the great vizier of Egypt, the man who held the fate of nations in his hands, is here simply a son. His father is gone. The last breath has left the patriarch Israel, and Joseph's response is one of unrestrained grief. He falls upon his father's face, he weeps, he kisses him. This is not a sign of weak faith. It is a sign of deep love. The Stoics were wrong; godliness is not the absence of emotion. Godliness is having the right emotions, for the right reasons, in the right measure.
Death is an enemy. It is the last enemy to be destroyed (1 Cor. 15:26). It is an unnatural intruder into God's good creation, the wages of sin. Therefore, it is right to weep in the face of it. Jesus Himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus. Our tears in the face of death are not a denial of the resurrection; they are an affirmation that something is terribly wrong with the world as it is. We weep because we were made for life, not for decay and separation. Joseph's tears are a testimony to the goodness of the life God had given his father, and the bitterness of its earthly end.
This is also an act of filial piety. Joseph is honoring his father, even in death. He is fulfilling the fifth commandment. This tender act of kissing his father's face is a final act of affection and respect. In a world that increasingly despises age and treats the elderly as a burden, Joseph's example here is a sharp rebuke. He loved his father, he honored his father, and he grieved his father's passing with a whole heart.
Faithfulness in a Foreign Land (v. 2)
Next, Joseph moves from personal grief to public responsibility. He must now care for his father's body, and he does so using the means available to him in Egypt.
"And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel." (Genesis 50:2 LSB)
Here we see Joseph acting in his official capacity. He commands "his servants the physicians." This was not a task for just anyone; these were the royal physicians, part of his own household as a high official. He is using the resources of Egypt to fulfill his duty to his father. And what is that duty? To prepare his body for the long journey back to Canaan.
Now, some might get nervous here. Embalming was a thoroughly Egyptian practice, deeply intertwined with their pagan theology of the afterlife. The Egyptians preserved the body because they believed the soul would need to recognize and return to it. Was Joseph compromising his faith by engaging in this pagan ritual? Not at all. We must learn to distinguish between the form of a cultural practice and its underlying religious meaning. Joseph is not adopting Egyptian eschatology. He is employing Egyptian technology for a covenantal purpose.
The reason for the embalming was practical. Jacob's body had to be preserved for a long and arduous journey from Egypt to the cave of Machpelah in Hebron. This was not about preparing Jacob for the Egyptian underworld; it was about getting him to the Promised Land. Joseph is commandeering an Egyptian custom and bending it to the purposes of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is a pattern for Christians in every age. We live in the midst of cultures with their own customs and technologies. Our task is not to flee from them entirely, but to wisely and discerningly use what is good and useful for the advancement of God's kingdom, while rejecting the pagan worldview that may have produced it. Joseph used Egyptian science to keep a Hebrew promise.
Notice also who was embalmed: "So the physicians embalmed Israel." The text uses his covenant name. This is not just the body of a man named Jacob; it is the body of Israel, the father of the twelve tribes, the bearer of the covenant promise. The preservation of this body is a matter of covenant significance.
Public Mourning and Covenant Time (v. 3)
The process of embalming and the subsequent mourning period are described with specific time frames.
"Then the forty days to do this were fulfilled, because in this manner the days of embalming are fulfilled. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days." (Genesis 50:3 LSB)
The forty days for embalming was the standard Egyptian custom. This period of preparation was a public affair. But then we are told that "the Egyptians wept for him seventy days." This was an extraordinary period of national mourning. According to the historian Herodotus, the customary mourning period for a king in Egypt was seventy-two days. Jacob, the father of the prime minister, is given a funeral honor that is nearly equivalent to that of a Pharaoh. This shows the immense respect and honor in which Joseph was held. His faithfulness to God had resulted in such blessing and wisdom that the entire nation of Egypt recognized the greatness of his family and honored his father in this way.
This is a picture of the cultural influence that God's people can have when they are faithful. Joseph did not compromise his convictions to gain favor in Egypt. He stood firm, interpreted dreams, saved the nation, and governed with integrity. The result was that the Egyptians themselves were brought in to mourn the passing of a patriarch of God's chosen people. They are participating, perhaps unknowingly, in a covenant event.
But we should also see the hand of God in these numbers. The number forty in Scripture is consistently associated with periods of testing, trial, and preparation. Noah was in the ark for forty days. Moses was on the mountain for forty days. Israel wandered for forty years. Jesus was tempted for forty days. This forty-day period of embalming is a preparation for the journey that is a foreshadowing of the great exodus to come. The body of Israel is being prepared to leave Egypt, just as the nation of Israel will one day be prepared to leave.
The seventy days of mourning is also significant. Seventy is the number of the nations in the table of nations in Genesis 10. It is also the number of Jacob's household that went down into Egypt (Gen. 46:27). Here, at the end of Jacob's life, all of Egypt, representing the nations, mourns for him for a period of time that echoes the fullness of the nations and the fullness of Israel. It is a beautiful, providential picture of the future reality that the blessings given to Abraham and his seed would one day extend to all the families of the earth.
Conclusion: A Coffin Pointing Home
In these three verses, a world of theology is packed in. We see that godly grief is not faithless. We see that godly wisdom can make use of the tools of a pagan culture without adopting its worldview. And we see that a life of faithfulness can command the respect of the watching world.
But the central point is this: Jacob's body is being prepared for a journey home. Joseph's grief is real, but it is not the grief of those who have no hope. His actions are all oriented toward a future promise. The embalming, the mourning, the great funeral procession that is to come, all of it points in one direction: north, to Canaan. It points to a piece of land that God swore to give them.
This is the nature of the Christian life. We live here, in this world, in our Egypt. We may, like Joseph, rise to positions of influence. We utilize the technology and customs of our day. We weep when our loved ones die. But all of it must be oriented toward our true home. Our lives, like Jacob's coffin, should be aimed squarely at the promise of the resurrection and the new heavens and the new earth. We are pilgrims here, and we await a city whose builder and maker is God. The patriarchs died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar. Because of their faith, their very bones were a prophecy, a silent sermon declaring that God is faithful, and that death does not get the last word.