A Grave With a View: The Geography of Hope
Introduction: Where Do You Plant Your Dead?
We live in a sentimental age, which is to say, we live in a faithless age. When it comes to death, our culture is deeply confused. We either try to deny it with euphemisms and Botox, or we try to spiritualize it away into a disembodied ether. We scatter ashes over the ocean as though the person has dissolved into the cosmos. We hold "celebrations of life" that studiously avoid the jagged reality of death and the grim necessity of a tomb. We have become modern Egyptians, obsessed with preserving the present, memorializing the past, and terrified of the future. The Egyptian way was to embalm, to build pyramids, to cling desperately to the body in the land of the living. It was a magnificent testimony to a people who had no forward-looking promise from the one true God.
The patriarchs were not Egyptians. They lived in Egypt, they prospered in Egypt, and they held high office in Egypt. But they refused to be defined by Egypt. They knew that Egypt, for all its grain and glory, was a temporary arrangement. It was a hotel, not a home. And the ultimate test of where you believe your home is, is the question of where you are willing to be buried. A man's bones are his last and most stubborn confession of faith. Jacob's final command, and his sons' faithful execution of it, is a profound theological act. It is a stake driven into the ground. It is a map of the future. It is a defiant sermon preached by a corpse, declaring that the promises of God are more real than the power of Pharaoh.
This short passage is not a mere epilogue to the life of Jacob. It is the hinge upon which the hope of Israel swings as they await the exodus. It is a lesson in covenant geography. It teaches us that faith is not an abstract feeling in your heart; it is a conviction that leads you to haul a casket for hundreds of miles to plant it in a specific plot of ground, because God attached a promise to that dirt. It is a declaration that our hope is not in the world we see, but in the world God has sworn to give us.
The Text
Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them.
Indeed, his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field for his possession as a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.
After he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers, and all who had gone up with him to bury his father.
(Genesis 50:12-14 LSB)
Covenant Obedience (v. 12)
The account begins with a simple, powerful statement of faithfulness.
"Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them." (Genesis 50:12)
This is more than just filial piety. This is not simply sons honoring their father's last wish. This is the second generation of the promise binding themselves to the oath of the first. Jacob had made Joseph swear a solemn oath, placing his hand under his thigh, the place from which descendants come. It was a generational oath. Now, all the sons participate. They are collectively shouldering the responsibility, and in so doing, they are collectively identifying with the promise.
Their obedience was costly. It involved securing Pharaoh's permission, a massive funeral procession, a long and difficult journey, and a formal period of mourning in Canaan. It would have been far easier, far more practical, to bury Jacob in some honored tomb in Egypt, the land that had saved them from famine. But the command was not about convenience; it was about covenant. By obeying their father's command, they were declaring that they were their father's sons not just by blood, but by faith. They were testifying that they too were looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. This act of obedience was their signature on the covenant documents. They were saying, "His hope is our hope. His future is our future. We are not Egyptians."
The Down Payment of Dirt (v. 13)
Verse 13 is dense with theological geography. Every phrase is significant.
"Indeed, his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre, which Abraham had bought along with the field for his possession as a burial site from Ephron the Hittite." (Genesis 50:13 LSB)
First, they carried him "to the land of Canaan." This was an act of deliberate pilgrimage. They were leaving the land of temporary provision for the land of permanent promise. Their feet were treading the path of their future inheritance. This journey was a prophetic act, a preview of the Exodus to come. They go into the land to bury their father, and then they return to Egypt, awaiting the day when God would call them all to come out for good.
Second, the location is specific: "the cave of the field of Machpelah." This was not just any cave. This was the only piece of the Promised Land that the patriarchs actually owned. Abraham had insisted on buying it, paying an exorbitant price, as a statement of faith. He didn't want it as a gift that could be taken back; he wanted a title deed. That cave was the anchor of their hope. It was the first small foothold of the promise. It was where Abraham and Sarah were buried. It was where Isaac and Rebekah were buried. It was where Leah was buried. It was the family plot. To be buried there was to be gathered to your people in the most literal sense. It was to plant your body in the soil of the resurrection, waiting for the harvest.
This is a profound polemic against the Egyptian worldview. The Egyptians mummified their dead to preserve the body for this life, in this place. The Hebrews buried their dead as a seed, planted in the land of promise, in expectation of a future life. The Egyptian tomb faces backward; the patriarchal tomb faces forward. It is a grave with a view. It looks out over the hills of Canaan and waits for the day of inheritance and resurrection.
The text reminds us that Abraham "had bought" it from Ephron the Hittite. This emphasizes the legitimacy of their claim. This is our land. We have the receipt. This small act of commerce by Abraham was an act of conquering faith. He was claiming the land, not by sword, but by purchase, in full confidence that God would one day give his descendants the rest of it.
The Sojourn Continues (v. 14)
After this great act of faith, we see the reality of their present situation.
"After he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers, and all who had gone up with him to bury his father." (Genesis 50:14 LSB)
They go back. They have planted their father in the land of hope, and now they return to the land of their exile. This is the tension of the "already and not yet" that defines the life of God's people in every age. They had the promise. They had the title deed in the ground at Machpelah. But they did not yet have the possession of the land. Their hope was in Canaan, but their work was still in Egypt.
This is precisely our situation. As Christians, we are citizens of a heavenly country (Phil. 3:20). Our inheritance is secured for us. Our hope is anchored beyond the veil. We have been raised with Christ and are seated with Him in the heavenly places (Eph. 2:6). That is the "already." But we are still living here, in this world, this Egypt. We have not yet entered into our full inheritance. That is the "not yet."
Their return to Egypt was not a failure of faith. It was an acknowledgment of God's sovereign timing. The time for the Exodus had not yet come. But their trip to Canaan had fortified their hope. They had seen the land. They had reaffirmed their claim to it. They returned to Egypt not as Egyptians, but as pilgrims with a clearer vision of home. And this experience is what fuels Joseph's own final command at the end of this chapter, that when God does visit them, they must carry his bones up from Egypt as well. The hope is contagious. The hope is generational.
Conclusion: Our Hope Is Planted in a Borrowed Tomb
Why does Scripture pay such careful attention to these burials? Because the Christian faith is an earthy faith. It is not a Gnostic escape from the body, but a faith in the resurrection of the body. The patriarchs were not looking for a ghostly existence in the clouds; they were waiting for God to fulfill His promises on the ground, in history, with their bodies.
Their hope, anchored in the dirt of Machpelah, finds its ultimate fulfillment in another tomb, just a few miles away. Centuries later, another Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea, would take the body of our Lord Jesus and lay it in his own new tomb. Like Machpelah, it was a stake in the ground. Jesus was planted like a seed (John 12:24). And on the third day, the firstfruits of the resurrection harvest broke forth from the ground. Christ's empty tomb is our Machpelah. It is the title deed to our own resurrection. It is the first acre of the New Creation, purchased not with silver from a Hittite, but with the precious blood of the Son of God.
Because He was buried, our burials are not acts of despair but confessions of hope. As our burial service says, the Lord "by His rest in the tomb has sanctified the graves of the saints." We are planted in the ground "in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life." We, like the sons of Jacob, live in a temporary Egypt. But we do not grieve as those who have no hope. Our hearts, our treasure, and our future are buried in a garden outside Jerusalem. And because He got up, we will too. We are just waiting for the great homecoming, the final Exodus into the promised land of the New Heavens and the New Earth, where we will see our Redeemer, not as disembodied spirits, but in our flesh, with our own eyes.