Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Genesis 50:26
So Joseph died, [being] a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
26. they embalmed him ] See Gen 50:2. Lat. conditus aromatibus.
in a coffin ] LXX ; Lat. in loculo. The Hebrew word rn is the same as that rendered “ark” (of the covenant). Here it undoubtedly means the mummy case, or sarcophagus, in which the body, having been embalmed, was deposited. Joseph’s mummy was carried up out of Egypt by Moses, Exo 13:19.
The peaceful death of Joseph and the preparation of his body for removal to Canaan close the Narrative of the Patriarchs.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Gen 50:26
So Joseph died
The death of Joseph:
I.
JOSEPHS DEATH WAS THAT OF EMINENTLY GOOD MAN. Perhaps the best man of the Old Testament. He was not surprised by death, nor dismayed at its coming. He had lived to meet it–lived for the life beyond death–not for present indulgence, nor in heedless disregard of his highest good–but with wise and faithful reference to the will of God and the monitions of the Holy Spirit.
II. JOSEPHS DEATH WAS THE DEATH OF A GREAT PROPHET. (P. Whitehead, D. D.)
Joseph died:
Joseph died! Then after all, he was but mortal, like ourselves I It is important to remember this, lest we should let any of the great lessons slip away under the delusion that Joseph was more than man. We have seen fidelity so constant, heroism so enduring, magnanimity so–I had almost said–divine, that we are apt to think there must have been something more than human about this man. No. He was mortal, like ourselves. His days were consumed as are our days; little by little his life ebbed out; and he was found, as we shall be found, dead. So, then, if he was but mortal, why cant we be as great in our degree? If he was only a man, why cant we emulate his virtue, so far as our circumstances will enable us to do so? We cant all be equally heroic and sublime. We can all be, by the grace of God, equally holy, patient, and trustful in our labour. Joseph died! Thus the best, wisest, and most useful men are withdrawn from their ministry! This is always a mystery in life: That the good man should be taken away in the very prime of his usefulness; that the eloquent tongue should be smitten with death; that a kind father should be withdrawn from his family circle; and that wretches who never have a noble thought, who do not know what it is to have a brave heavenly impulse, should seem to have a tenacity of life that is unconquerable; that drunken men and hard-hearted individuals should live on and on–while the good, and the true, and the wise, and the beautiful, and the tender, are snapped off in the midst of their days and translated to higher climes. The old proverb says, Whom the gods love die young. Sirs! There is another side to this life, otherwise these things would be inexplicable–would be chief of the mysteries of Gods ways. We must wait, therefore, until we see the circle completed before we sit in judgment upon God. Joseph died! Then the world can get on without its greatest and best men. This is very humiliating to some persons. Here is, for example, a man who has never been absent from his business for twenty years. You ask him to take a days holiday, go to a church opening or to a religious festival. He says, My dear sir! Why, the very idea! The place would go to rack and ruin if I was away four-and-twenty hours. It comes to pass that God sends a most grievous disease upon the man–imprisons him in the darkened chamber for six months. When he gets up, at the end of six months, he finds the business has gone on pretty much as well as if he had been wearing out his body and soul for it all the time. Very humiliating to go and find things getting on without us! Who are we? The preacher may die, but the truth will be preached still. The minister perishes–the ministry is immortal. This ought to teach us, therefore, that we are not so important, after all; that our business is to work all the little hour that we have; and to remember that God can do quite as well without us as with us, and that He puts an honour upon us in asking us to touch the very lowest work in any province of the infinite empire of His truth and light. (J. Parker, D. D.)
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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 26. Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old] ben meah vaeser shanim; literally, the son of a hundred and ten years. Here the period of time he lived is personified, all the years of which it was composed being represented as a nurse or father, feeding, nourishing, and supporting him to the end. This figure, which is termed by rhetoricians prosopopaeia, is very frequent in Scripture; and by this virtues, vices, forms, attributes, and qualities, with every part of inanimate nature, are represented as endued with reason and speech, and performing all the actions of intelligent beings.
They embalmed him] See Clarke on Ge 50:2. The same precautions were taken to preserve his body as to preserve that of his father Jacob; and this was particularly necessary in his case, ‘because his body was to be carried to Canaan a hundred and forty-four years after; which was the duration of the Israelites’ bondage after the death of Joseph.
And he was put in a coffin in Egypt.] On this subject I shall subjoin some useful remarks from Harmer’s Observations, which several have borrowed without acknowledgment. I quoted my own edition of this Work, vol. iii., p. 69, c. Lond. 1808.
“There were some methods of honouring the dead which demand our attention the being put into a coffin has been in particular considered as a mark of distinction.
“With us the poorest people have their coffins; if the relations cannot afford them, the parish is at the expense. In the east, on the contrary, they are not always used, even in our times. The ancient Jews probably buried their dead in the same manner: neither was the body of our Lord put in a coffin, nor that of Elisha, whose bones were touched by the corpse that was let down a little after into his sepulchre, 2Kg 13:21. That coffins were anciently used in Egypt, all agree; and antique coffins of stone and of sycamore wood are still to be seen in that country, not to mention those said to be made of a sort of pasteboard, formed by folding and gluing cloth together a great number of times, curiously plastered, and then painted with hieroglyphics.
“As it was an ancient Egyptian custom, and was not used in the neighbouring countries, on these accounts the sacred historian was doubtless led to observe of Joseph that he was not only embalmed, but was also put in a coffin, both being practices almost peculiar to the Egyptians.
“Mr. Maillet conjectures that all were not inclosed in coffins which were laid in the Egyptian repositories of the dead, but that it was an honour appropriated to persons of distinction; for after having given an account of several niches which are found in those chambers of death, he adds: ‘But it must not be imagined that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all inclosed in chests, and placed in niches. The greater part were simply embalmed and swathed, after which they laid them one by the side of the other, without any ceremony. Some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or with such a slight one that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and these half rotten. It is probable that each considerable family had one of these burial-places to themselves; that the niches were designed for the bodies of the heads of the family; and that those of their domestics and slaves had no other care taken of them than merely laying them in the ground after being slightly embalmed, and sometimes even without that; which was probably all that was done to heads of families of less distinction.’ – Lett. 7, p. 281. The same author gives an account of a mode of burial anciently practised in that country, which has been but recently discovered: it consisted in placing the bodies, after they were swathed up, on a layer of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, under a bed of sand seven or eight feet deep.
“Hence it seems evident that coffins were not universally used in Egypt, and were only used for persons of eminence and distinction. It is also reasonable to believe that in times so remote as those of Joseph they might have been much less common than afterwards, and that consequently Joseph’s being put in a coffin in Egypt might be mentioned with a design to express the great honours the Egyptians did him in death, as well as in life; being treated after the most sumptuous manner, embalmed, and put into a coffin.”
It is no objection to this account that the widow of Nain’s son is represented as carried forth to be buried in a or bier; for the present inhabitants of the Levant, who are well known to lay their dead in the earth uninclosed, carry them frequently out to burial in a kind of coffin, which is not deposited in the grave, the body being taken out of it, and placed in the grave in a reclining posture. It is probable that the coffins used at Nain were of the same kind, being intended for no other purpose but to carry the body to the place of interment, the body itself being buried without them.
It is very probable that the chief difference was not in being with or without a coffin, but in the expensiveness of the coffin itself; some of the Egyptian coffins being made of granite, and covered all over with hieroglyphics, the cutting of which must have been done at a prodigious expense, both of time and money; the stone being so hard that we have no tools by which we can make any impression on it. Two of these are now in the British Museum, that appear to have belonged to some of the nobles of Egypt. They are dug out of the solid stone, and adorned with almost innumerable hieroglyphics. One of these, vulgarly called Alexander’s tomb, is ten feet three inches and a quarter long, ten inches thick in the sides, in breadth at top five feet three inches and a half, in breadth at bottom four feet two inches and a half, and three feet ten in depth, and weighs about ten tons. In such a coffin I suppose the body of Joseph was deposited; and such a one could not have been made and transported to Canaan at an expense that any private individual could bear. It was with incredible labour and at an extraordinary expense that the coffin in question was removed the distance of but a few miles, from the ship that brought it from Egypt, to its present residence in the British Museum. Judge, then, at what an expense such a coffin must have been digged, engraved, and transported over the desert from Egypt to Canaan, a distance of three hundred miles! We need not be surprised to hear of carriages and horsemen, a very great company, when such a coffin was to be carried so far, with a suitable company to attend it.
Joseph’s life was the shortest of all the patriarchs, for which Bishop Patrick gives a sound physical reason – he was the son of his father’s old age. It appears from Archbishop Usher’s Chronology that Joseph governed Egypt under four kings, Mephramuthosis, Thmosis, Amenophis, and Orus. His government, we know, lasted eighty years; for when he stood before Pharaoh he was thirty years of age, Ge 41:46, and he died when he was one hundred and ten.
On the character and conduct of Joseph many remarks have already been made in the preceding notes. On the subject of his piety there can be but one opinion. It was truly exemplary, and certainly was tried in cases in which few instances occur of persevering fidelity. His high sense of the holiness of God, the strong claims of justice, and the rights of hospitality and gratitude, led him, in the instance of the solicitations of his master’s wife, to act a part which, though absolutely just and proper, can never be sufficiently praised. Heathen authors boast of some persons of such singular constancy; but the intelligent reader will recollect that these relations stand in general in their fabulous histories, and are destitute of those characteristics which truth essentially requires; such, I mean, as the story of Hippolytus and Phaedra, Bellerophon and Antea or Sthenobaea, Peleus and Astydamia, and others of this complexion, which appear to be marred pictures, taken from this highly finished original which the inspired writer has fairly drawn from life.
His fidelity to his master is not less evident, and God’s approbation of his conduct is strongly marked; for he caused whatsoever he did to prosper, whether a slave in the house of his master, a prisoner in the dungeon, or a prime minister by the throne, which is a full proof that his ways pleased him; and this is more clearly seen in the providential deliverances by which he was favoured.
On the political conduct of Joseph there are conflicting opinions. On the one hand it is asserted that “he found the Egyptians a free people, and that he availed himself of a most afflicting providence of God to reduce them all to a state of slavery, destroyed their political consequence, and made their king despotic.” In all these respects his political measures have been strongly vindicated, not only as being directed by God, but as being obviously the best, every thing considered, for the safety, honour, and welfare of his sovereign and the kingdom. It is true he bought the lands of the people for the king, but he farmed them to the original occupiers again, at the moderate and fixed crown rent of one-fifth part of the produce. “Thus did he provide for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the authority of the king by making him sole proprietor of the lands. And to secure the people from farther exaction, Joseph made it a law over all the land of Egypt, that Pharaoh (i. e. the king) should have only the fifth part; which law subsisted to the time of Moses, Ge 47:21-26. By this wise regulation,” continues Dr. Hales, “the people had four-fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were exempted from any farther taxes, the king being bound to support his civil and military establishment out of the crown rents.” By the original constitution of Egypt established by Menes, and Thoth or Hermes his prime minister, the lands were divided into three portions, between the king, the priests, and the military, each party being bound to support its respective establishment by the produce. See the quotations from Diodorus Siculus, in the note on Ge 47:23. See Clarke on Ge 47:23. It is certain, therefore, that the constitution of Egypt was considerably altered by Joseph, and there can be no doubt that much additional power was, by this alteration, vested in the hands of the king; but as we do not find that any improper use was made of this power, we may rest assured that it was so qualified and restricted by wholesome regulations, though they are not here particularized, as completely to prevent all abuse of the regal power, and all tyrannical usurpation of popular rights. That the people were nothing but slaves to the king, the military, and the priests before, appears from the account given by Diodorus; each of the three estates probably allowing them a certain portion of land for their own use, while cultivating the rest for the use and emolument of their masters. Matters, however, became more regular under the administration of Joseph; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that, previously to this, Egypt was without a fixed regular constitution, and that it was not the least of the blessings that it owed to the wisdom and prudence of Joseph, that he reduced it to a regular form of government, giving the people such an interest in the safety of the state as was well calculated to insure their exertions to defend the nation, and render the constitution fixed and permanent.
It is well known that Justin, one of the Roman historians, has made particular and indeed honourable mention of Joseph’s administration in Egypt, in the account he gives of Jewish affairs, lib. xxxvi. cap. 2. How the relation may have stood in Trogus Pompeius, from whose voluminous works in forty-four books or volumes Justin abridged his history, we cannot tell, as the work of Trogus is irrecoverably lost; but it is evident that the account was taken in the main from the Mosaic history, and it is written with as much candour as can be expected from a prejudiced and unprincipled heathen.
Minimus aetate inter fratres Joseph fruit, c. “Joseph was the youngest of his brethren, who, being envious of his excellent endowments, stole him and privately sold him to a company of foreign merchants, by whom he was carried into Egypt where, having diligently cultivated magic arts, he became, in a short time, a prime favourite with the king himself. For he was the most sagacious of men in explaining prodigies; and he was the first who constructed the science of interpreting dreams. Nor was there any thing relative to laws human or Divine with which he seemed unacquainted; for he predicted a failure of the crops many years before it took place; and the inhabitants of Egypt must have been famished had not the king, through his counsel, made an edict to preserve the fruits for several years. And his experiments were so powerful, that the responses appear to have been given, not by man, but by God.” Tantaque experimenta ejus fuerunt, ut non ab homine, sed a Deo, responsa dari viderentur. I believe Justin refers here in the word experimenta, to his figment of magical incantations eliciting oracular answers. Others have translated the words: “So excellent were his regulations that they seemed rather to be oracular responses, not given by man, but by God.”
I have already compared Joseph with his father Jacob, See Clarke on Ge 48:12, and shall make no apology for having given the latter a most decided superiority. Joseph was great; but his greatness came through the interposition of especial providences. Jacob was great, mentally and practically great, under the ordinary workings of Providence; and, towards the close of his life, not less distinguished for piety towards God than his son Joseph was in the holiest period of his life.
THUS terminates the Book of GENESIS, the most ancient record in the world; including the history of two grand subjects, CREATION and PROVIDENCE, of each of which it gives a summary, but astonishingly minute, and detailed account. From this book almost all the ancient philosophers, astronomers, chronologists, and historians have taken their respective data; and all the modern improvements and accurate discoveries in different arts and sciences have only served to confirm the facts detailed by Moses; and to show that all the ancient writers on these subjects have approached to or receded from TRUTH and the phenomena of nature, in proportion as they have followed the Mosaic history.
In this book the Creative Power and Energy of God are first introduced to the reader’s notice, and the mind is overwhelmed with those grand creative acts by which the universe was brought into being. When this account is completed, and the introduction of Sin, and its awful consequences in the destruction of the earth by a flood, noticed, then the Almighty Creator is next introduced as the Restorer and Preserver of the world; and thus the history of Providence commences: a history in which the mind of man is alternately delighted and confounded with the infinitely varied plans of wisdom and mercy in preserving the human species, counteracting the evil propensities of men and devils by means of gracious influences conveyed through religious institutions, planting and watering the seeds of righteousness which himself had sowed in the hearts of men, and leading forward and maturing the grand purposes of his grace in the final salvation of the human race.
After giving a minutely detailed account of the peopling of the earth, ascertaining and settling the bounds of the different nations of mankind, the sacred writer proceeds with the history of one family only; but he chooses that one through which, as from an ever-during fountain, the streams of justice, grace, goodness, wisdom, and truth, should emanate. Here we see a pure well of living water, springing up into eternal life, restrained in its particular influence to one people till, in the fullness of time, the fountain should be opened in the house of David for sin and for uncleanness in general, and the earth filled with the knowledge and salvation of God; thus by means of one family, as extensive a view of the economy of providence and grace is afforded as it is possible for the human mind to comprehend.
In this epitome how wonderful do the workings of Providence appear! An astonishing concatenated train of stupendous and minute events is laid before us; and every transaction is so distinctly marked as everywhere to exhibit the finger, the hand, or the arm of God! But did God lavish his providential cares and attention on this one family, exclusive of the rest of his intelligent offspring? No: for the same superintendence, providential direction, and influence, would be equally seen in all the concerns of human life, in the preservation of individuals, the rise and fall of kingdoms and states, and in all the mighty Revolutions, natural, moral, and political, in the universe, were God, as in the preceding instances, to give us the detailed history; but what was done in the family of Abraham, was done in behalf of the whole human race. This specimen is intended to show us that God does work, and that against him and the operations of his hand, no might, no counsel, no cunning of men or devils, can prevail; that he who walks uprightly walks securely; and that all things work together for good to them who love God; that none is so ignorant, low, or lost, that God cannot instruct, raise up, and save. In a word, he shows himself by this history to be the invariable friend of mankind, embracing every opportunity to do them good, and, to speak after the manner of men, rejoicing in the frequent recurrence of such opportunities; that every man, considering the subject, may be led to exclaim in behalf of all his fellows, Behold How He Loveth Them!
On the character of Moses as a Historian and Philosopher (for in his legislative character he does not yet appear) much might be said, did the nature of this work admit. But as brevity has been everywhere studied, and minute details rarely admitted, and only where absolutely necessary, the candid reader will excuse any deficiencies of this kind which he may have already noticed.
Of the accuracy and impartiality of Moses as a historian, many examples are given in the course of the notes, with such observations and reflections as the subjects themselves suggested; and the succeeding books will afford many opportunities for farther remarks on these topics.
The character of Moses as a philosopher and chronologist, has undergone the severest scrutiny. A class of philosophers, professedly infidels, have assailed the Mosaic account of the formation of the universe, and that of the general deluge, with such repeated attacks as sufficiently prove that, in their apprehension, the pillars of their system must be shaken into ruin if those accounts could not be proved to be false. Traditions, supporting accounts different from those in the sacred history, have been borrowed from the most barbarous as well as the most civilized nations, in order to bear on this argument. These, backed by various geologic observations made in extensive travels, experiments on the formation of different strata or beds of earth, either by inundations or volcanic eruption, have been all condensed into one apparently strong but strange argument, intended to overthrow the Mosaic account of the creation. The argument may be stated thus: “The account given by Moses of the time when God commenced his creative acts is too recent; for, according to his Genesis, six thousand years have not yet elapsed since the formation of the universe; whereas a variety of phenomena prove that the earth itself must have existed, if not from eternity, yet at least fourteen if not twenty thousand years.” This I call a strange argument, because it is well known that all the ancient nations in the world, the Jews excepted, have, to secure their honor and respectability, assigned to themselves a duration of the most improbable length; and have multiplied months, weeks, and even days, into years, in order to support their pretensions to the most remote antiquity. The millions of years which have been assumed by the Chinese and the Hindoos have been ridiculed for their manifest absurdity, even by those philosophers who have brought the contrary charge against the Mosaic account. So notorious are the pretensions to remote ancestry and remote eras, in every false and fabricated system of family pedigree and national antiquity, as to produce doubt at the very first view of their subjects, and to cause the impartial inquirer after truth to take every step with the extreme of caution, knowing that in going over such accounts he everywhere treads on a kind of enchanted ground.
When in the midst of these a writer is found who, without saying a word of the systems of other nations, professes to give a simple account of the creation and peopling of the earth, and to show the very conspicuous part that his own people acted among the various nations of the world, and who assigns to the earth and to its inhabitants a duration comparatively but as of yesterday, he comes forward with such a variety of claims to be heard, read, and considered, as no other writer can pretend to. And as he departs from the universal custom of all writers on similar subjects, in assigning a comparatively recent date, not only to his own nation, but to the universe itself, he must have been actuated by motives essentially different from those which have governed all other ancient historians and chronologists.
The generally acknowledged extravagance and absurdity of all the chronological systems of ancient times, the great simplicity and harmony of that of Moses, its facts evidently borrowed by others, though disgraced by the fables they have intermixed with them, and the very late invention of arts and sciences, all tend to prove, at the very first view, that the Mosaic account, which assigns the shortest duration to the earth, is the most ancient and the most likely to be true. But all this reasoning has been supposed to be annihilated by an argument brought against the Mosaic account of the creation by Mr. Patrick Brydone, F.R.S., drawn from the evidence of different eruptions of Mount Etna. The reader may find this in his “Tour through Sicily and Malta,” letter vii., where, speaking of his acquaintance with the Canonico Recupero at Catania, who was then employed on writing a natural history of Mount Etna, he says: “Near to a vault which is now thirty feet below ground, and has probably been a burying-place, there is a draw-well where there are several strata of lavas, (i. e., the liquid matter formed of stones, etc., which is discharged from the mountain in its eruptions), with earth to a considerable thickness over each stratum. Recupero has made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of the eruptions of this mountain. For if it requires two thousand years and upwards to form but a scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have been more than that space of time between each of the eruptions which have formed these strata. But what shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci, of a great depth? They pierced through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the surfaces of which were parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth. Now, says he, the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago! Recupero tells me, he is exceedingly embarrassed by these discoveries, in writing the history of the mountain; that Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him, and blunts all his zeal for inquiry, for that he really has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world.
“The bishop, who is strenuously orthodox, (for it is an excellent see), has already warned him to be upon his guard; and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses, nor to presume to urge any thing that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory to his sacred authority.”
Though Mr. Brydone produces this as a sneer against revelation, bishops, and orthodoxy, yet the sequel will prove that it was good advice, and that the bishop was much better instructed than either Recupero or Brydone, and that it would have been much to their credit had they taken his advice.
I have given, however, this argument at length; and even in the insidious dress of Mr. Brydone, whose faith in Divine revelation appears to have been upon a par with that of Signior Recupero, both being built nearly on the same foundation; to show from the answer how slight the strongest arguments are, produced from insulated facts by prejudice and partiality, when brought to the test of sober, candid, philosophical investigation, aided by an increased knowledge of the phenomena of nature. “In answer to this argument,” says Bishop Watson, (Letters to Gibbon), “It might be urged that the time necessary for converting lavas into fertile fields must be very different, according to the different consistencies of the lavas, and their different situations with respect to elevation and depression, or their being exposed to winds, rains, and other circumstances; as for instance, the quantity of ashes deposited over them, after they had cooled, etc., etc., just as the time in which heaps of iron slag, which resembles lava, are covered with verdure, is different at different furnaces, according to the nature of the slag and situation of the furnace; and something of this kind is deducible from the account of the canon (Recupero) himself, since the crevices in the strata are often full of rich good soil, and have pretty large trees growing upon them. But should not all this be thought sufficient to remove the objection, I will produce the canon an analogy in opposition to his analogy, and which is grounded on more certain facts.
“Etna and Vesuvius resemble each other in the causes which produce their eruptions, in the nature of their lavas, and in the time necessary to mellow them into soil fit for vegetation; or, if there be any slight difference in this respect, it is probably not greater than what subsists between different lavas of the same mountain. This being admitted, which no philosopher will deny, the canon’s (Recupero’s) analogy will prove just nothing at all if we can produce an instance of seven different lavas, with interjacent strata of vegetable earth, which have flowed from Mount Vesuvius within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of somewhat less than one thousand seven hundred years; for then, according to our analogy, a stratum of lava may be covered with vegetable soil in about two hundred and fifty years, instead of requiring two thousand for that purpose.
“The eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, is rendered still more famous by the death of Pliny, recorded by his nephew in his letter to Tacitus. This event happened a. d. 79; but we are informed by unquestionable authority, (Remarks on the nature of the soil of Naples and its vicinity, by Sir William Hamilton, Philos. Transact., vol. lxi., p. 7), that the matter which covers the ancient town of Herculaneum is not the produce of one eruption only, for there are evident marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken its course over that which lies immediately over the town, and was the cause of its destruction. The strata are either of lava or burnt matter with veins of good soil between them. You perceive,” says the bishop, “with what ease a little attention and increase of knowledge may remove a great difficulty; but had we been able to say nothing in explanation of this phenomenon, we should not have acted a very rational part in making our ignorance the foundation of our infidelity, or suffering a minute philosopher to rob us of our religion.” In this, as well as in all other cases, the foundation stands sure, being deeply and legibly impressed with God’s seal. See also Dr. Greaves’s Lectures on the Pentateuch.
There is a very sensible paper written by Don Joseph Gioeni (The Chevalier Gioeni was an inhabitant of the first region of Etna). on the eruption of Etna in 1781; in which, among many other valuable observations, I find the following note: “I was obliged to traverse the current of lava made by the eruption of 1766, the most ancient of any that took this direction, viz., Bronte. I saw several streams of lava which had crossed others, and which afforded me evident proofs of the fallacy of the conclusions of those who seek to estimate the period of the formation of the beds of lava from the change they have undergone. Some lava of earlier date than others still resist the weather, and present a vitreous and unaltered surface, while the lava of later date already begin to be covered with vegetation.” – See Pinkerton on Rock, vol. ii., p. 395.
On the geology and astronomy of the book of Genesis, much has been written, both by the enemies and friends of revelation; but as Moses has said but very little on these subjects, and nothing in a systematic way, it is unfair to invent a system pretendedly collected out of his words, and thus make him accountable for what he never wrote. There are systems of this kind, the preconceived fictions of their authors, for which they have sought support and credit by tortured meanings extracted from a few Hebrew roots, and then dignified them with the title of The Mosaic System of the Universe. This has afforded infidelity a handle which it has been careful to turn to its own advantage. On the first chapter of Genesis, I have given a general view of the solar system, without pretending that I had found it there. I have also ventured to apply the comparatively recent doctrine of caloric to the Mosaic account of the creation of light previous to the formation of the sun, and have supported it with such arguments as appeared to me to render it at least probable: but I have not pledged Moses to any of my explanations, being fully convinced that it was necessarily foreign from his design to enter into philosophic details of any kind, as it was his grand object, as has been already remarked, to give a history of Creation and Providence in the most abridged form of which it was capable. And who, in so few words, ever spoke so much? By Creation I mean the production of every being, animate and inanimate, material and intellectual. And by Providence, not only the preservation and government of all being, but also the various and extraordinary provisions made by Divine justice and mercy for the comfort and final salvation of man. These subjects I have endeavored to trace out through every chapter of this book, and to exhibit them in such a manner as appeared to me the best calculated to promote glory to God in the highest, and upon Earth Peace And Good Will Among Men.
Observations on the Jewish manner of DIVIDING and READING the LAW and the PROPHETS.
The ancient Jews divided the whole law of Moses into fifty-four sections, which they read in their synagogues in the course of the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, joining two of the shortest twice together, that the whole might be finished in one year’s space; but in their intercalated years, in which they added a month, they had fifty-four Sabbaths, and then they had a section for each Sabbath: and it was to meet the exigency of the intercalated years that they divided the law into fifty-four sections at first. When Antiochus Epiphanes forbade the Jews on pain of death to read their law, they divided the prophets into the same number of sections, and read them in their synagogues in place of the law; and when, under the Asmoneans, they recovered their liberty, and with it the free exercise of their religion, though the reading of the law was resumed, they continued the use of the prophetic sections, reading them conjointly with those in the law. To this first division and mode of reading the law there is a reference, Ac 15:21: For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being READ IN THE SYNAGOGUES EVERY SABBATH DAY. To the second division and conjoint reading of the law and the prophets we also find a reference, Ac 13:15; And after the reading of the LAW AND THE PROPHETS, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, &c. And that the prophets were read in this way in our Lord’s time, we have a proof, Lu 4:16, &c., where, going into the synagogue to read on the Sabbath day, as was his custom, there was delivered unto him the book of the Prophet Isaiah: and it appears that the prophetical section for that Sabbath was taken from the sixty-first chapter of his prophecies.
Of these sections the book of Genesis contains twelve:
The FIRST, called bereshith, begins Ge 1:1, and ends Ge 6:8.
The SECOND, called Noach, begins Ge 6:9, and ends Ge 11:32.
The THIRD, called lech lecha, begins Ge 12:1, and ends Ge 18:1.
The FOURTH, called vaiyera, begins Ge 18:1, and ends Ge 22:24.
The FIFTH, called chaiyey Sarah, begins Ge 23:1, and ends Ge 25:18.
The SIXTH, called toledoth, begins Ge 25:19, and ends Ge 28:9.
The SEVENTH, called vaiyetse, begins Ge 28:10, and ends Ge 32:3.
The EIGHTH, called vaiyishlach, begins Ge 32:4, and ends Ge 36:43.
The NINTH, called vaiysheb, begins Ge 37:1, and ends Ge 40:23.
The TENTH, called mikkets, begins Ge 41:1, and ends Ge 14:17.
The ELEVENTH, called vaiyiggash, begins Ge 44:18, and ends Ge 47:27.
The TWELFTH, called vayechi, begins Ge 47:28, and ends Ge 50:26.
These sections have their technical names, from the words with which they commence; and are marked in the Hebrew Bibles with three pe’s, which are an abbreviation for parashah, a section or division; and sometimes with three samech’s, which are an abbreviation for the word seder, or sidra, an order, a full and absolute division. The former are generally called parashioth, distinctions, divisions, sections; the latter sedarim, orders, arrangements; as it is supposed that the sense is more full and complete in these than in the parashioth. See the Tables, &c., at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, where all these matters, and others connected with them, are considered in great detail.
MASORETIC Notes on the Book of GENESIS.
At the end of all the books in the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretes have affixed certain notes, ascertaining the number of greater and smaller sections, chapters, verses, and letters. These they deemed of the greatest importance, in order to preserve the integrity of their law, and the purity of their prophets. And to this end they not only numbered every verse, word, and letter, but even went so far as to ascertain how often each letter of the alphabet occurred in the whole Bible! Thus sacredly did they watch over their records in order to prevent every species of corruption.
The sum of all the VERSES in Bereshith (Genesis) is 1534. And the memorial sign of this sum is – aleph signifying 1000; final caph 500; lamed 30, and daleth 4. is = 1534.
The middle verse of Genesis is the fortieth of chap. xxvii.: By thy sword shalt thou live.
The PARASHIOTH, or greater sections; are twelve. The symbol of which is the word zeh, THIS, Ex 3:15: And THIS is my memorial to all generations. Where zain stands for 7, and he , for 5.=12.
The SEDARIM, or orders, (see above) are forty-three. The symbol of which is the word gam. Ge 27:33: YEA ( gam) and he shall be blessed. Where gimel stands for 3, and mem for 40.=43.
The PERAKIM, or modern division of chapters, are fifty; the symbol of which is lecha, Isa 33:2: We have waited FOR THEE. Where lamed stands for 30, and caph for 20.=50.
The open sections are 43, the close sections 48, total 91: the numerical sign of which is tse, GET THEE OUT, Ex 11:8, where tsaddi stands for 90, and aleph for 1.=91.
The number of letters is about 52,740; but this last is more a matter of conjecture and computation than of certainty, and on it no dependence can safely be placed, it being a mere multiplication by twelve, the number of sections, of 4395, the known number of letters in the last or twelfth section of the book. On this subject see Buxtorf’s Tiberias, p. 181.
A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
OF THE PRINCIPAL TRANSACTIONS RELATED IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS,
ACCORDING TO THE COMPILATION OF ARCHBISHOP USHER, WHICH IS CHIEFLY
FOLLOWED IN THE PRECEDING NOTES; SHOWING IN WHAT YEAR OF THE
WORLD, AND WHAT YEAR BEFORE CHRIST, EACH EVENT HAPPENED.
THE reader will observe, from the chronological notes in the margin of the preceding work, that in a few instances I have departed from the Usherian computation, for which he will find my reasons in the notes.
This table I have considerably enlarged by inserting the Edomitish kings and dukes, and a few other transactions of profane history contemporary with the facts mentioned by Moses, by which the reader will have a synopsis or general view of all the transactions of the first two thousand four hundred years of the world, which stand upon any authentic records.
The first year of the world, answering to the 710th year of the Julian period, and supposed to be 4004 before the vulgar era of the birth of Christ.
| A.M. |
| B.C. |
| 1 | First day’s work: Creation of the heavens and earth; of light, with the distinction of day and night, Ge 1:1-5.
Second day: Creation of the firmament, and separation of the superior and inferior waters, Ge 1:6-8.
Third day: The earth drained, the seas, lakes, &c., formed; trees, plants, and vegetables produced, Ge 1:9-13.
Fourth day: The sun, moon, planets, and stars produced, Ge 1:14-19.
Fifth day: All kinds of fowls and fishes created, Ge 1:20-23.
Sixth day: Beasts wild and tame, reptiles, insects, and man, Ge 1:24-28.
Seventh day: Set apart and hallowed to be a Sabbath, or day of rest for ever, Ge 2:2-3.
Tenth day: The first woman sins, leads her husband into the transgression, is called Eve, Ge 3:1-20.
They are both expelled from Paradise, Ge 3:22-24. N. B. This opinion, though rendered respectable by great names, is very doubtful, and should be received with very great caution. I think it wholly inadmissible; and though I insert it as the generally received opinion, yet judge it best to form no guesses and indulge no conjectures on such an obscure point. | 4004 |
| 2 | Cain and Abel born, Ge 4:1-2. | 4002 |
| 129 | Abel killed by his brother Cain, Ge 4:8. | 3875 |
| 130 | Birth of Seth, Ge 4:25. | 3874 |
| 235 | Enos son of Seth born, Ge 4:26. Hence followed the distinction between the descendants of Cain and those of Seth; the former being called sons of men, the latter sons of God, Ge 6:1-4. | 3769 |
| 325 | Birth of Cainan, son of Enos, Ge 5:9. | 3679 |
| 395 | ) ) ) ) of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, Ge 5:12. | 3609 |
| 460 | ) ) ) ) of Jared, son of Mahalaleel, Ge 5:15. | 3544 |
| 622 | ) ) ) ) of Enoch, son of Jared, Ge 5:18. | 3382 |
| 687 | Birth of Methuselah, son of Enoch, Ge 5:21. | 3317 |
| 874 | ) ) ) ) of Lamech, son of Methuselah, Ge 5:25. | 3130 |
| 930 | Death of Adam, aged 930 years, Ge 5:5. | 3074 |
| 987 | Enoch is translated in the 365 year of his age, Ge 5:24. | 3017 |
| 1042 | Seth dies, aged 912 years, Ge 5:8. | 2962 |
| 1056 | Birth of Noah, son of Lamech, Ge 5:29. | 2948 |
| 1140 | Enos dies, aged 905 years, Ge 5:11. | 2864 |
| 1235 | Cainan dies, aged 910 years, Ge 5:14. | 2769 |
| 1290 | Mahalaleel dies, aged 895 years, Ge 5:17. | 2714 |
| 1422 | Jared dies, aged 962 years, Ge 5:20. | 2562 |
| 1536 | God commissions Noah to preach repentance to the guilty world, and to announce the deluge. He commands him also to build an ark for the safety of himself and his family. This commission was given 120 years before the flood came, 1Pe 3:20; 2Pe 2:5; Ge 6:17. | 2468 |
| 1556 | Birth of Japheth, son of Noah, Ge 5:32, compared with Ge 10:21. | 2448 |
| 1558 | ) ) ) ) of Shem. | 2446 |
| 1560 | ) ) ) ) of Ham. | 2444 |
| 1651 | Death of Lamech, aged 777 years, Ge 5:31. | 2353 |
| 1656 | ) ) ) ) of Methuselah, aged 969 years, Ge 5:27. | 2348 |
|
| The general DELUGE, Ge 7 |
|
|
| Noah, his family, and the animals to be preserved, enter the ark the 17th day of the 2d month of this year, vii. 11. The rain commences, and continues 40 days and nights, and the waters continue without decreasing 150 days; they afterwards begin to abate, and the ark rests on Mount Ararat, Ge 8:4. |
|
|
| Noah sends out a raven, Ge 8:7. |
|
|
| Seven days after he sends out a dove, which returns the same day; after seven days he sends out the dove a second time, which returns no more, Ge 8:8-12. |
|
| 1657 | Noah, his family, &c., leave the ark. He offers sacrifices to God, Ge 8 and Ge 9. | 2347 |
| 1658 | Birth of Arphaxad, son of Shem, Ge 11:10-11. | 2346 |
| 1693 | ))))of Salah, son of Arphaxad, Ge 11:12. | 2311 |
| 1723 | ))))of Eber, son of Salah, Ge 11:14. | 2231 |
| 1757 | ))))of Peleg, son of Eber, Ge 11:16. | 2247 |
|
| Building of the Tower of Babel, Ge 11:1-9. |
|
| 1771 | About this time Babylon was built by the command of Nimrod. | 2233 |
| 1787 | Birth of Reu, son of Peleg, Ge 11:18. | 2217 |
| 1816 | Commencement of the regal government of Egypt, from Mizraim, son of Ham. Egypt continued an independent kingdom from this time to the reign of Cambyses, king of Persia, which was a period of 1663 years, according to Constantinus Manasses. | 2188 |
| 1819 | Birth of Serug, son of Reu Ge 11:20 | 2185 |
| 1849 | ) ) ) ) of Nahor, son of Serug, Ge 11:22. | 2155 |
| 1878 | ) ) ) ) of Terah, son of Nahor, Ge 11:24. | 2126 |
| 1915 | About this time, gialeus founds the kingdom of Sicyon, according to Eusebius. | 2089 |
| 1948 | Birth of Nahor and Haran, sons of Terah, Ge 11:26. | 2056 |
| 1996 | Peleg dies, aged 239 years, Ge 11:19. | 2008 |
| 1997 | Nahor dies, aged 148 years, Ge 11:25. | 2007 |
| 2006 | Noah dies, aged 950 years, 350 years after the flood, Ge 11:29. | 1998 |
| 2008 | Birth of ABRAM, son of Terah, Ge 11:26. | 1996 |
| 2018 | ) ) ) ) of SARAI, wife of Abram. | 1986 |
| 2026 | Reu dies, Ge 11:21. | 1978 |
| 2049 | Serug dies, Ge 11:23. | 1955 |
| 2079 | Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, subdues the kings of the Pentapolis, Sodom, Gomorrah, &c., to whom they continued in subjection 12 years, Ge 14:4. | 1925 |
| 2083 | The calling of Abram out of UR of the Chaldees, where the family had been addicted to idolatry, Jos 24:2. He comes to Haran in Mesopotamia, with Lot his nephew, Sarai his wife, and his father Terah, who dies at Haran, aged 205 years, Ge 11:31-32. | 1921 |
|
| Abram comes to Canaan, when 75 years of age, Ge 12:4. From this period the 430 years of the sojourning of the Israelites, mentioned Ex 12: 40-41, is generally dated. |
|
| 2084 | Abram goes into Egypt because of the famine, Ge 12:10; causes Sarai to pass for his sister. Pharaoh (Apophis) takes her to his house; but soon restores her, finding her to be Abram’s wife, Ge 12:14-20. | 1920 |
| 2086 | Abram and Lot, having returned to the land of Canaan, separate; Lot goes to Sodom, and Abram to the valley of Mamre, near to Hebron, Ge 13. | 1918 |
| 2090 | The kings of the Pentapolis revolt from Chedorlaomer, Ge 14:4. | 1914 |
| 2091 | Chedorlaomer and his allies make war with the kings of the Pentapolis; Lot is taken captive; Abram with his allies pursues Chedorlaomer, defeats him and the confederate kings, delivers Lot and the other captives, and is blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem, Ge 14. | 1913 |
| 2093 | God promises Abram a numerous posterity, Ge 15:1. | 1911 |
|
| About this time Bela, the first king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:32. |
|
| 2094 | Sarai gives Hagar to Abram, Ge 16:2. | 1910 |
|
| Of her Ishmael is born, Ge 16:15, Abram being then 86 years old. |
|
| 2096 | Arphaxad dies, 403 years after the birth of Salah, Ge 15:13. | 1908 |
| 2107 | God makes a covenant with Abram; gives him the promise of a son; changes his name into Abraham, and Sarai’s into Sarah, and enjoins circumcision, Ge 17:1, Ge 17:5-6, &c. Abraham entertains three angels on their way to destroy Sodom, &c., Ge 18. He intercedes for the inhabitants; but as ten righteous persons not be found in those cities, they are destroyed, Ge 19:23. Lot is delivered and for his sake Zoar is preserved, Ge 19:19, &c. | 1897 |
|
| Abram retires to Beer-sheba, afterwards sojourns at Gerar. Abimelech, king of Gerar, takes Sarah, in order to make her his wife, but is obliged to restore her. Ge 20. |
|
| 2108 | Isaac is born, Ge 21:2-3. | 1896 |
|
| Moab and Ben-ammi, the sons of Lot, born, Ge 19:37-38. |
|
| 2110 | Abraham sends away Ishmael, Ge 21:13-14. | 1894 |
| 2118 | Abimelech and Phichol his chief captain make an agreement with Abraham, and surrender the well of Beer-sheba for seven ewe lambs, Ge 21:22, &c. | 1886 |
| 2126 | Salah dies 403 years after the birth of Eber, Ge 21:15. | 1878 |
| 2135 | About this time Jobab, the second king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:33. | 1869 |
| 2141 | Abraham is called to sacrifice his son Isaac, Ge 22. | 1863 |
| 2145 | Sarah dies, aged 127 years, Ge 23:1. | 1859 |
| 2148 | Abraham sends Eliezer to Mesopotamia to get a wife for his son Isaac, Ge 24. | 1856 |
| 2154 | About this time Abraham marries Keturah, Ge 25:1. | 1850 |
| 2158 | Shem, son of Noah, dies 500 years after the birth of Arphaxed, Ge 11:11. | 1846 |
| 2168 | Birth of Jacob and Esau, Isaac their father being 60 years old, Ge 25:22, &c. | 1836 |
| 2177 | About this time Husham, the third king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36: 34. | 1827 |
| 2183 | Abraham dies, aged 175 years, Ge 25:7-8. | 1821 |
| 2187 | Eber dies, 430 years after the birth of Peleg, Ge 11:17. | 1817 |
| 2200 | God appears to Isaac, and gives him glorious promises, Ge 26:4. He stays at Gerar during the famine, Ge 26:6. | 1804 |
| 2208 | Esau marries two Canaanitish women, Ge 26:34. | 1796 |
| 2219 | About this time Hadad, the fourth king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:35. | 1785 |
|
| Deluge of Ogyges in Greece, 1020 years before the first Olympiad. |
|
| 2225 | Jacob by subtlety obtains Esau’s blessing, Ge 27. He goes to Haran, and engages to serve Laban seven years for Rachel, Ge 28, Ge 29. | 1779 |
|
| Esau marries Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Ge 28:9. |
|
| 2231 | Ishmael dies, aged 137 years, Ge 25:17. | 1773 |
| 2232 | Jacob espouses Rachel seven years after his engagement with Laban: Leah is put in the place of her sister; but seven days after he receives Rachel, Ge 29. | 1772 |
| 2233 | Reuben is born, Ge 29:32. | 1771 |
| 2234 | Simeon is born, Ge 29:33. | 1770 |
| 2235 | Levi is born, Ge 29:34. | 1769 |
| 2236 | Judah is born, Ge 29:35. | 1768 |
| 2237 | Dan is born, Ge 30:5-6. | 1767 |
| 2239 | Naphtali is born, Ge 30:7-8. | 1765 |
| 2240 | Gad is born, Ge 30:10-11. | 1764 |
| 2242 | Asher is born, Ge 30:12-13. | 1762 |
|
| Evechous begins to reign over the Chaldeans 224 years before the Arabs reigned in that country (Julius Africanus). Usher supposes him to have been the same with Belus, who was afterwards worshipped by the Chaldeans. |
|
| 2247 | Issachar is born, Ge 30:17-18. | 1757 |
| 2249 | Zebulun is born, Ge 30:19-20. | 1755 |
| 2250 | Dinah is born, Ge 30:21. | 1754 |
| 2259 | Joseph is born, Ge 30:23-24. | 1745 |
| 2261 | About this time Samlah, the fifth king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:36. | 1743 |
| 2265 | Jacob and his family, unknown to Laban, set out for Canaan. Laban, hearing of his departure, pursues him; after seven days he comes up with him at the mountains of Gilead; they make a covenant, and gather a heap of stones, and set up a pillar as a memorial of the transaction, Ge 31. | 1739 |
| | Jacob wrestles with an Angel, and has his name changed to that of Israel, Ge 32:24-29. |
|
|
| Esau meets Jacob, Ge 33:4. |
|
|
| Jacob arrives in Canaan, and settles among the Shechemites, Ge 33:18. |
|
| 2266 | Benjamin born, and Rachel dies immediately after his birth, Ge 35:18. | 1738 |
|
| Dinah defiled by Shechem, and the subsequent murder of the Shechemites by Simeon and Levi, Ge 34. |
|
| 2276 | Joseph, aged seventeen years, falling under the displeasure of his brothers, they conspire to take away his life, but afterwards change their minds, and sell him for a slave to some Ishmaelite merchants, who bring him to Egypt and sell him to Potiphar, Ge 37. | 1728 |
| 2278 | Pharez and Zarah, the twin-sons of Judah, born about this time, Ge 38:27-30. | 1726 |
| 2285 | Joseph, through the false accusation of his mistress, is cast into prison, where, about two years after, he interprets the dreams of the chief butler and the chief baker, Ge 39, Ge 40. | 1719 |
| 2288 | Isaac dies, aged 180 years, Ge 35:28. | 1716 |
| 2289 | Joseph interprets the two-prophetic dreams of Pharaoh, Ge 41. | 1715 |
|
| Commencement of the seven years of plenty. |
|
| 2290 | About this time was born Manasseh, Joseph’s first-born. | 1714 |
| 2292 | About this time was born Ephraim, Joseph’s second son. | 1712 |
| 2296 | Commencement of the seven years of famine. | 1708 |
| 2297 | Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy corn, Ge 42:1, &c. | 1707 |
| 2298 | He sends them a second time, and with them his son Benjamin, Ge 43:11. | 1706 |
|
| Joseph makes himself known to his brethren, sends for his father, and allots him and his household the land of Goshen to dwell in; Jacob being then 130 years old, Ge 45, Ge 46. |
|
| 2300 | Joseph sells corn to the Egyptians, and brings all the money in Egypt into the king’s treasury, Ge 47:14. | 1704 |
| 2301 | He buys all the cattle, Ge 47:16. | 1703 |
| 2302 | All the Egyptians give themselves up to be Pharaoh’s servants, in order to get corn to preserve their lives and sow their ground, Ge 47:18, &c. | 1702 |
| 2303 | The seven years of famine ended. | 1701 |
|
| About this time Saul, the sixth king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:37. |
|
| 2315 | Jacob, having blessed his sons and the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, dies, aged 147 years. He is embalmed and carried into Canaan, and buried in the cave of Machpelah, Ge 49:1. | 1689 |
| 2345 | About this time Baal-hanan, the seventh of king the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:38. | 1659 |
| 2369 | Joseph dies, aged 110, having governed Egypt fourscore years. | 1635 |
| 2387 | About this time Hadar or Hadad, the eighth and last king of the Edomites, began to reign, Ge 36:39. | 1617 |
| 2429 | About this time the regal government of the Edomites is abolished, and the first aristocracy of dukes begins, Ge 36:15, 16. | 1575 |
| 2471 | About this time the second aristocracy of Edomitish dukes begins, Ge 36:40-43. | 1533 |
| 2474 | Caleb, the son of Jephunneh, born forty years before he was sent by Moses to spy out the land of Canaan. | 1530 |
| 2494 | Ramasses Miamun died in the 67th year of his reign, under whom, and his son Amenophis, who succeeded him, the children of Israel endured the cruel bondage and oppression mentioned in Exodus 1. | 1510 |
Finished the correction of this Part, April 6th, 1827. – A. CLARKE.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
So for about thirteen years of affliction he enjoyed eighty years of honour, and as much happiness as earth could afford him.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
26. and they embalmed him[Seeon Ge 50:2]. His funeral wouldbe conducted in the highest style of Egyptian magnificence and hismummied corpse carefully preserved till the Exodus.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old,…. The exact age assigned him by Polyhistor x, from Demetrius an Heathen. The Jewish writers y say, that he died the first of the twelve patriarchs, though he was the youngest of them; he died, according to Bishop Usher z, in the year of the world 2369, and before Christ 1635:
and they embalmed him; his servants, the physicians, according to the manner of the Egyptians, and as his father Jacob had been embalmed,
[See comments on Ge 50:2],
and he was put into a coffin in Egypt; in an ark or chest, very probably into such an one in which the Egyptians had used to put dead bodies when embalmed; which Herodotus a calls a , or chest, and which they set up against a wall: in what part of Egypt this coffin was put is not certain, it was most likely in Goshen, and in the care and custody of some of Joseph’s posterity; so Leo Africanus says b, that he was buried in Fioum, the same with the Heracleotic nome, supposed to be Goshen; [See comments on Ge 47:11], and was dug up by Moses, when the children of Israel departed. The Targum of Jonathan says, it was sunk in the midst of the Nile of Egypt; and an Arabic writer c says, the corpse of Joseph was put into a marble coffin, and cast into the Nile: the same thing is said in the Talmud d, from whence the story seems to be taken, and where the coffin is said to be a molten one, either of iron or brass; which might arise, as Bishop Patrick observes, from a mistake of the place where such bodies were laid; which were let down into deep wells or vaults, and put into a cave at the bottom of those wells, some of which were not far from the river Nile; and such places have been searched for mummies in late times, where they have been found, and the coffins and clothes sound and incorrupt. And so some of the Jewish writers say e he was buried on the banks of the river Sihor, that is, the Nile; but others f say he was buried in the sepulchre of the kings, which is much more likely.
x Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 21. p. 425. y Shalshalet Hakabala, fol. 4. 1. & T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 13. 2. z Annalea Vet. Test. A. M. 2369. a Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 86, 91. b Descriptio Africae, l. 8. p. 722. c Patricides, p. 24. apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. c. 8. p. 379. d T. Bab. Sotah, c. 1. fol. 13. 1. e Sepher Hajaschar, p. 118. apud Wagenseil Sotah, p. 300. f In T. Bab. Sotah, ut supra. (c. 1. fol. 13.1.)
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(26) A coffin.The word means a case or chest of wood. The mummy-cases were generally of sycamore-wood. As it would not be possible for the Israelites, now that their great protector was no more, to go with a military escort to Hebron to bury him, Joseph orders that his embalmed body should be placed in some part of Goshen, whence it would be easy to remove it when the time of deliverance had arrived. And his wish was fulfilled; for Moses took the bones of Joseph with him (Exo. 13:19), and Joshua buried them in Shechem, in the piece of ground which Jacob had given to him (Jos. 24:32).
With the death of Joseph ends the preparation for the formation of a chosen race. Summoned from a remote city upon the Persian Gulf to Palestine, Abraham had wandered there as a stranger, and Isaac and Jacob had followed in his steps. But in Palestine the race could never have multiplied largely; for there were races already there too powerful to permit of their rapid increase. Abraham and Lot, Esau and Jacob had been compelled to separate; but now, under Joseph, they had been placed in a large, fertile, and well-nigh uninhabited region. The few who dwelt there were, as far as we can judge, of the Semitic stock, and whatever immigrants came from time to time were also of the same race, and were soon enrolled in the taf of some noble or chief. And thus all was ready for their growth into a nation; and when we next read of them they had multiplied into a people so vast that Egypt was afraid of them.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
26. They embalmed him See on Gen 50:2.
He was put in a coffin “Rather, in the coffin, that is, the customary Egyptian coffin, or mummy chest, usually made of sycamore wood, which, though porous, was so durable that coffins of the time of the Pharaohs are freely used for fuel in Egypt to-day . Cedar coffins are also found, though less generally . The mummy chests of kings were often placed in a stone sarcophagus .
“Here, at the sepulchre of Joseph, endeth the great Book of Generations, wherein are laid the historical, doctrinal, and ethical foundations of Divine revelation. In Egypt are the significant closing words, for there the posterity of Jacob now vanish from our sight for centuries; but through those ages of servile travail, the mummy of Joseph, wrapped in its fragrant cerements, a mute but eloquent admonition and prophecy, stands calmly waiting in its niche for the birth of the NATION OF ISRAEL.” Newhall.
‘So Joseph died being a hundred and ten years old, and they embalmed him and put him in a coffin in Egypt.’
This verse is not a conclusion but a hesitation, for it describes a temporary situation. The final conclusion awaits the return of his bones to the promised land when God visits His people.
“One hundred and ten years old.” It is repeated and thus emphasised that he lived a full and complete life. And the very fact that this is done in terms of Egyptian thought must surely confirm to us that this was written down at a time when Egyptian thought was primarily influencing the writer and that suggests it was by someone not too long after his death as befitted a great Vizier of Egypt.
“And they embalmed him and put him in a coffin in Egypt.” This is his temporary resting place. He will not remain in Egypt, any more than will the children of Israel. The same embalming and mourning that followed the death of Jacob follows here. But the writer omits it. He mentions only the coffin into which he is placed, richly made and shaped roughly in the form of a man. For the reader is expected to wait expectantly for the next episode. After all, this is the story of God.
Gen 50:26. And they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin The same care of his body was taken as of that of his father Jacob; he was embalmed and put into a coffin, which was considered as a mark of distinction. With us the poorest people have their coffins; if the relations cannot afford them, the parish is at that expence. In the East, on the contrary, they are not at all made use of in our times. Christians and Turks, Thevenot assures us, part i. p. 58. agree in this. The ancient Jews seem to have buried their dead in the same manner; neither was the body of our Lord, it should seem, put into a coffin; nor that of Elisha, whose bones were touched by the corpse that was let down a little after into his sepulchre, 2Ki 13:21. That they, however, were anciently made use of in AEgypt, all agree; and antique coffins of stone and sycamore wood are still to be seen in that country; not to mention those said to be made of a kind of pasteboard, formed by folding and gluing cloth together a great number of times, curiously plaistered, and then painted with hieroglyphics. Thev. part. 1: p. 137. Its being an ancient AEyptian custom, and its not being used in the neighbouring countries, were, doubtless, the cause that the sacred historian expressly observes of Joseph, that he was not only embalmed, but that he was put into a coffin also, both being managements peculiar in a manner at that time to the AEgyptians. Maillet apprehends that all were not inclosed in coffins who were laid in the AEgyptian repositories of the dead; but that it was an honour appropriated to persons of consequence; for, after having given an account of several niches that are found in those chambers of death, he adds, “But it must not be imagined that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all inclosed in chests and placed in niches. The greatest part were simply embalmed, and swathed after that manner which every one has some notion of; after which they laid them one by the side of another, without any ceremony. Some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or such a slight one, that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and those half rotten. It is probable that each considerable family had one of these burial-places to themselves; that the niches were designed for the bodies of the heads of the family, and that those of their domestics and slaves had no other care taken of them than the laying them on the ground after having been embalmed, or even without that, which, without doubt, was also all that was done, even to the heads of families of less distinction.” See Maillet’s Letters, let. 7: p. 281. After which he gives an account of a way of burial practised anciently in that country, which had been but lately discovered, and which consisted in placing the bodies, after they were swathed up, on a layer of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, under a depth of sand of seven or eight feet.
Coffins then were not universally used in AEgypt: that is undoubted from these accounts; and, probably, they were only persons of distinction who were buried in them. It is also reasonable to believe, that, in times so remote as those of Joseph, they might be much less common than afterwards; and, consequently, that Joseph’s being put into a coffin in AEgypt might be mentioned to express the great honours the AEgyptians did him in death as well as in life, being interred after the most sumptuous manner of the AEgyptians, embalmed, and in a coffin.
REFLECTIONS.Joseph was long spared through mercy, to fulfil his promise to his brethren. We have here,
1. His blessing in his children. It is the comfort of age to see an increasing and prosperous family. Thus ends the admirable, instructive, and most ancient book of GENESIS; in which it is observable, that Moses confines himself to the history of the patriarchs, and of the holy line. Nothing further enters into his plan: for other circumstances we must refer to prophane authors. We shall now conclude our comment on this book with a short review of the character of Joseph, and more especially as he may be considered a type of our glorious Redeemer.
It is observable, that the sacred Writer is more diffuse upon the history of Joseph than upon that of any other of the patriarchs. Indeed, the whole is a master-piece of history. There is not only in the manner throughout such a happy, though uncommon mixture of simplicity and grandeur, which is a double character, so hard to be united, that it is seldom to be met with in compositions merely human; but it is likewise related with the greatest variety of tender and affecting circumstances, which might afford matter for reflections useful for the conduct of almost every part and stage of man’s life. The name of Joseph is venerable also in the Eastern world. The Arabian writers, from ancient tradition, give, in many respects, the same history of him as Moses does; and, particularly, ascribe to him the useful invention of measuring the Nile, the cutting some of the principal canals, and other works of great use and advantage in AEgypt. In a word, they attribute to him all the curious wells, cisterns, aqueducts, and public granaries, as well as some obelisks, pyramids, and other ancient monuments, which are all called by his name, and which are also ascribed by the natives of AEgypt themselves to him, as well as all the ancient works of public utility throughout the kingdom; particularly, the rendering the province of Al-Tey-yum, from a standing pool or marsh, the most fertile and best cultivated land in all AEgypt. The Koran of Mohammed is very liberal in his commendation: we find there one whole chapter (the twelfth, entitled JOSEPH) concerning him: and the Eastern tradition of him is, that he not only caused justice to be impartially administered, and encouraged the people in industry and the improvement of agriculture, during the seven years of plenty; but began and perfected several works of great benefit. See Chandler’s Vindication.
Such was Joseph: a careful perusal of whose history will fully exemplify this character, some of the excellencies of which we have briefly hinted in the course of our remarks. Upon the whole, this history of Joseph may be considered as an exact picture in miniature of the conduct of Providence: of that Providence, “which,” as Lord Bacon observes, “in all its works, is full of windings and turnings; so that one thing seems to be a doing, when, in the mean time, quite another thing is really intended.” Thus the lowest stage of misfortune, to which Joseph, by the mysterious conduct of Providence, was reduced, proved the immediate step by which he rose to honour. And those who would see the same method of Providence exemplified in a reverse of fortune, may consult the instructive history of Haman, beautifully contrasted with that of Mordecai, in the book of Esther: a consideration this, which should check our forwardness in censuring the ways of God, because they often appear to us crooked and irregular; for this is no more than what must happen, while the ends of all things are placed at a distance far beyond our reach: a consideration, which should teach us, that whatever vicissitudes befal us in this life, it is our truest wisdom, as well as our highest duty, cheerfully to acquiesce, and readily to submit ourselves: assured that the hand of God is in all, and that His wisdom, by ways and means unknown to us, will, unquestionably, cause every thing to work together for the good of those who truly and unfeignedly love and serve him. But we should not fail to observe, that as there is hardly any character in the Old Testament more worthy of imitation than that of Joseph, so are there few saints in whom God hath been pleased to express so many circumstances of resemblance with his BLESSED SON, as in Joseph. Like Joseph, he was a beloved Son, whom God the Father has blessed above all his brethren. Jacob made for Joseph a garment of divers colours; and God prepared for Christ a body curiously wrought in the lower parts of the earth. Like Joseph, he is an affectionate Brother. He came to seek his brethren in the wilderness of this world, though they received him not. He knows them, when they know not him; and his bowels yearn towards them, even when he seems severe. He may deal roughly with them at first, but his heart is full of mercy. He liberally supplies their wants without money and without price, and at last, when they have known him, and faithfully adhered to him, brings them to dwell with him in the heavenly Canaan, where they shall behold his glory, and be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of his house. Like Joseph, he was a trusty servant, acquitting himself dexterously in every part of the work which was given him to do: even as the prophet also foretels, “Behold, my Servant shall deal prudently; he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high,” Isa 52:13. Like Joseph, he is a most illuminated Prophet, in whom the Spirit of God is: none is so discreet and wise as he, the true Zaphnath-paneah, or Revealer of secrets, who is worthy to take the sealed book of God, and open its seven seals. Like Joseph, he was a Resister of temptations; for he was solicited in vain to spiritual adultery by the great enemy of salvation, when he said unto him, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” Mat 4:9. Though this harlot world hath cast down, wounded, and slain many strong men, our Joseph overcame her: his heart declined not to her ways: he went not astray in her paths, though in the encounter he was stripped of his mortal life, which he willingly resigned, Like Joseph he was and is a Forgiver of injuries: for as on the cross he implored forgiveness to his murderers with his expiring breath; so on the throne he gave repentance unto Israel and remission of sins; many of them whose hand had been very deep in that bloody tragedy of his crucifixion being brought to a sincere profession, that, “Verily, they were guilty concerning their brother,” and the blood which they impiously shed, spoke better things than that of Abel.
But chiefly let us view him as an innocent Sufferer, whose sufferings issued in glory to himself, and universal good to men. Joseph was mortally hated of his brethren, and the butt of their envy, because, he exposed their wicked courses, and foretold his own advancement. For these same reasons was Jesus Christ hated by the Jews; and Pilate knew that for envy they delivered him. Joseph was derided of his brethren as an idle fantastic dreamer; and Jesus Christ was esteemed a doting enthusiast, a madman, and one beside himself. Joseph’s brethren conspired against him to take away his life: and of Jesus Christ it is prophesied, “Why do the Heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing, to plot against the Lord, and against his Anointed?” Psa 2:1-2. Joseph was cast into a pit, but he did not remain there long: Jesus Christ was laid in the grave, but he saw no corruption. Joseph was sold for a servant by the advice of the patriarch Judah; and Jesus Christ was, by the apostle Judas, sold for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave; a goodly price he was prized at by them! Joseph was unjustly accused in AEgypt, and cast into a dungeon with two noted criminals, Pharaoh’s butler and baker; Jesus Christ was unjustly condemned in Canaan, and crucified between two thieves. Joseph adjudged the one criminal to death, and the other to life; Jesus Christ adjudged one of the thieves to everlasting life, while the other perished. Joseph entreated the person whom he delivered to remember him when he came to his glory; and the person whom Jesus Christ delivered, prayed him, “O Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” Joseph indeed could but foretel his companion’s deliverance; but Christ Jesus effected, by his own power, what he foretold”To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.”
Such were the patriarch’s almost unparalleled afflictions; but as he soon emerged from these deep plunges of adversity, becoming, instead of a forlorn prisoner, a prime minister of state; so Jesus Christ was taken from prison and from judgment, and “receives from God the Father honour and glory, and a name above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Php 2:9-11. Behold, ye mistaken Jews, how vain were all your machinations to frustrate his predictions! Even you yourselves became subservient to fulfil the grand design, when you killed the Prince of life, who was, by suffering death, to enter into his glory. Here the patriarch’s speech to his penitent brethren may fitly be applied: “As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as at this day, to save much people alive.”
For, as the sufferings and glory of Joseph issued in the common salvation of the lives of Pharaoh’s subjects and of the family of Jacob, who was a Syrian ready to perish; even so thy sufferings, and thy glory, O thou once humbled, but now exalted Redeemer, were ordained for the salvation of the world, both Jews and Gentiles, from a far more dreadful destruction than a famine of bread or water! Go unto this Joseph for a supply of your numerous wants, ye that are ready to perish. His fulness shall never be exhausted, be their number ever so great who receive out of it. O that his glory might be the joy of our heart, and the grand theme on every tongue! With what cheerfulness ought we to forsake the stuff of all terrestrial things, when Joseph is alive, that we may be with him where he is, and enjoy those blessings which are “on the head of Jesus Christ, and on the crown of the head of Him who was separated from his brethren!”
Heb 11:22 .
REFLECTIONS
Reader! it would be wrong to close our review of the life of the Patriarch Joseph, without once more looking at so illustrious a character, both as he is in himself, and as he is a type of the ever blessed JESUS. As he is in himself, how truly lovely doth he appear in every relation and character of life. As a son, as a brother, as the wise governor in Egypt, raised up by the LORD for the preservation of his own house and family, and the whole kingdom of Egypt. And as a father, as a man, when a servant, and when a Lord! But how lovely is it to see the HOLY GHOST graciously shadowing out the features of JESUS, in the prominent parts of Joseph’s life. From the first departure he made from his father’s house, through the whole of his eventful life, from the prison to the throne, we see the outlines of the great Redeemer’s history sketched out. And from Joseph we are immediately directed to JESUS, and as we bow the knee before him, we cannot help crying out; Hail! thou glorious Almighty Governor of thy kingdom! Thou art indeed the true Zapnath-paaneah. Thou art He whom thy brethren shall praise, and all thy church adore. To thee every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that thou art CHRIST, to the glory of GOD the FATHER.
Before we shut this book of Genesis let us take one thought more. The close of it may lead our minds to the improving thought of the close of our own. It serves to enforce upon the mind that solemn conclusion of the sacred writer; so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Reader! what a vast change hath been wrought in the circumstances of mankind, from the opening of the history of creation through the several periods of it. There we began the wonderful relation of GOD’S goodness to our race, in the formation of man after his own image. And here we behold him become the prey and food of worms! And whence all this but because sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin: and so death hath passed upon all men, because all have sinned. And what shall bring relief to the mind under this discouraging prospect, but the contemplation of his love and faithfulness, who is the unchangeable covenant GOD, the same yesterday and today and forever. Reader! may it be your happiness and mine, to live upon this great and unchangeable GOD, as he is revealed to his people in a three-fold character of persons. And under this assurance that blessing will be our portion: the children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.
Genesis
A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING
A COFFIN IN EGYPT
Gen 50:26 So closes the book of Genesis. All its recorded dealings of God with Israel, and all the promises and the glories of the patriarchal line, end with ‘a coffin in Egypt’. Such an ending is the more striking, when we remember that a space of three hundred years intervenes between the last events in Genesis and the first in Exodus, or almost as long a time as parts the Old Testament from the New. And, during all that period, Israel was left with a mummy and a hope. The elaborately embalmed body of Joseph lay in its gilded and pictured case, somewhere in Goshen, and was, no doubt, in the care of the Israelites, as is plain from the fact that they carried it with them at the exodus. For three centuries, that silent ‘coffin in Egypt’ preached its impressive messages. What did it say? It spoke, no doubt, to ears often deaf, but still some faint whispers of its speechless testimony would sound in some hearts, and help to keep vivid some hopes.
First, it was a silent reminder of mortality. Egyptian consciousness was much occupied with death. The land was peopled with tombs. But the corpse of Joseph was perhaps not laid in one of these, but remained housed somewhere in sight, as it were, of all Israel. Many a passer-by would pause for a moment, and think; Here is the end of dignity second only to Pharaoh’s, to this has come that strong brain, that true heart, Israel’s pride and protection is shut up in that wooden case.
‘The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings.’
Nor are these thoughts all the message of that ‘coffin in Egypt.’ In the first verses of the next book, that of Exodus, there is a remarkable juxtaposition of ideas, when we read that ‘Joseph died and all his brethren and all that generation.’ But was that the end of Israel? By no means, for the narrative goes on immediately to say-linking the two things together by a simple ‘and’-that ‘the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty.’
So life springs side by side with death. There are cradles as well as graves.
‘The individual withers,
And the race is more and more.’
Again, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a herald of Hope. The reason for Joseph’s dying injunction that his body should be preserved after the Egyptian fashion, and laid where it could be lifted and carried away, when the long-expected deliverance was effected, was the dying patriarch’s firm confidence that, though he died, he had still somehow a share in God’s faithful promise. We do not know the precise shape which his thought of that share took. It may have been merely the natural sentiment which desires that the unconscious frame shall moulder quietly beside the mouldering forms which once held our dear ones. This naturalised Egyptian did his work manfully in the land of his adoption, and flung himself eagerly into its interests, but his heart turned to the cave at Machpelah, and, though he lived in Egypt, he could not bear to think of lying there for ever when dead, especially of being left there alone. There may have been some trace in his wish of the peculiar Egyptian belief that the preservation of the body contributed in some way to the continuance of personal life, and that a certain shadowy self hovered about the spot where the mummy was laid. Our knowledge of the large place filled by a doctrine of a future life in Egyptian thought makes it most probable that Joseph had at least some forecast of that hope of immortality, which seems to us to be inseparable from the consciousness of present communion with God.
But, in any case, Israel had charge of that coffin because the dead man that lay in it had, on the very edge of the gulf of death, believed that he had still a portion in Israel’s hope, and that, when he had taken the plunge into the great darkness, he had not sunk below the reach of God’s power to give him personal fulfilment of His yet unfulfilled promise. His dying command was the expression of his unshaken faith that, though he was dead, God would visit him with His salvation, and give him to see the prosperity of His chosen, that he might rejoice in the gladness of the nation, and glory with His inheritance. He had lived, trusting in God’s bare promise, and, as he lived, he died. The Epistle to the Hebrews lays hold of the true motive power in the incident, when it points to Joseph’s dying ‘commandment concerning his bones’ as a noble instance of Faith.
Thus, through slow creeping centuries, this silent preacher said-’Hope on, though the vision tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come. God is faithful, and will perform His word.’ There was much to make hope faint. To bring Israel out of Canaan seemed a strange way of investing it with the possession of Canaan. As the tardy years trickled away, drop by drop, and the promise seemed no nearer fulfilment, some film of doubt must have crept over Hope’s bright eyes. When new dynasties reigned, and Israel slowly sank into the state of bondage, it must have been still harder to believe that the shortest road to the inheritance was round by Goshen. But through all the darkening course of Israel in these sad centuries, there stood the ‘coffin,’ the token of a triumphant faith which had leapt, as a trifle, over the barrier of death, and grasped as real the good which lay beyond that frowning wall. We have a better Herald of hope than a mummy-case and a pyramid built round it. We have an empty grave and an occupied Throne, by which to nourish our confidence in Immortality and our estimate of the insignificance of death. Our Joseph does not say-’I die, but God will surely visit you,’ but He gives us the wonderful assurance of identification with Himself, and consequent participation in His glory-’Because I live, ye shall live also.’ Therefore our hope should be as much brighter and more confirmed than this ancient one was as that on which it is based is better and more joyous. But, alas, there is no invariable proportion between food supplied and strength derived. An orchid can fling out gorgeous blooms, though it grows on a piece of dry wood, but plants set in rich soil often show poor flowers. Our hope will be worthy of its foundation, only on condition of our habitually reflecting on the firmness of that foundation, and cultivating familiarity with the things hoped for.
There are many ways in which the apostle’s great saying that ‘we are saved by hope’ approves itself as true. Whatever leads us to grasp the future rather than the present, even if it is but an earthly future, and to live by hope rather than by fruition, even if it is but a short-reaching hope, lifts us in the scale of being, ennobles, dignifies, and in some respects purifies us. Even men whose expectations have not wing-power enough to cross the dreadful ravine of Death, are elevated in the degree in which they work towards a distant goal. Short-sighted hopes are better than blind absorption in the present. Whatever puts the centre of gravity of our lives in the future is a gain, and most of all is that hope blessed, which bids us look forward to an eternal sitting with Jesus at the right hand of God.
If such hope has any solidity in it, it will certainly detach us from the order of things in which we dwell. The world is always tempting us to ‘forget the imperial palace’ whither we go. The Israelites must have been swayed by many inducements to settle down for good and all in the low levels of fertile Goshen, and to think themselves better off there than if going out on a perilous enterprise to win no richer pastures than they already possessed. In fact, when the deliverance came, it was not particularly welcome, oven though oppression was embittering the peoples’ lives. But, when hope had died down in them, and desire had become languid, and ignoble contentment with their flocks and herds had dulled their spirits, Joseph’s silent coffin must have pealed in their ears-’This is not your rest; arise and claim your inheritance.’ In like manner, the pressure of the apparently solid realities of to-day, the growth of the ‘scientific’ temper of mind which confines knowledge to physical facts, the drift of tendency among religious people to regard Christianity mainly in its aspect of dealing with social questions and bringing present good, powerfully reinforce our natural sluggishness of Hope, and have brought it about that the average Christian of this day has fewer of his thoughts directed to the future life than his predecessors had, or than it is good for him to have.
Among the many truths which almost need to be rediscovered by their professed believers, that of the rest that remains for the people of God is one. For the test of believing a truth is its influence on conduct, and no one can affirm that the conduct of the average Christian of our times bears marks of being deeply influenced by that Future, or by the hope of winning it. Does he live as if he felt that he was an alien among the material things surrounding him? Does it look as if his true affinities were beyond the grave and above the stars? If we did thus feel, not at rare intervals, when ‘in seasons of calm weather, our souls have sight of that immortal sea,’ which lies glassy before the throne, and on whose banks the minstrels stand singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb, but habitually and with a vivid realisation, which makes the things hoped for more solid than what we touch and handle, our lives would be far other than they are. We should not work less, but more, earnestly at our present duties, whatever these may be, for they would be seen in new importance as bearing on our place in that world of consequences. The more our goal and prize are seen gleaming through the dust of the race-ground, the more strenuous our effort here. Nothing ennobles the trifles of our lives in time like the streaming in on these of the light of eternity. That vision ever present with us will not sadden. The fact of mortality is grim enough, if forced upon us unaccompanied by the other fact that Death opens the gate of our Home. But when the else depressing thought that ‘here we have no continuing city’ is but the obverse and result of the fact that ‘we seek one to come,’ it is freed from its sadness, and becomes powerful for good and even for joy. We need, even more than Israel in its bondage did, to realise that we are strangers and pilgrims. It concerns the depth of our religion and the reality of our profiting by the discipline, as well as of our securing the enjoyment of the blessings, of the fleeting and else trivial present, that we shall keep very clear in view the great future which dignifies and interprets this enigmatical earthly life.
Further, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a preacher of patience. As we have seen, three centuries at least, probably a somewhat longer period, passed between the time when Joseph’s corpse was laid in it, and the night when it was lifted out of it by the departing Israelites. No doubt, hope deferred had made many a heart sick, and the weary question, ‘Where is the promise of His coming?’ had in some cases changed into bitter disbelief that the promise would ever be fulfilled. But, for all these years, the dumb monitor stood there proclaiming, ‘If the vision tarry, wait for it.’
Surely we need the same lesson. It is hard for us to acquiesce in the slow march of the divine purposes. Life is short, and desire would fain see the great harvests reaped before death seals our eyes. Sometimes the very prospect of the great things that shall one day be accomplished in the world, and we not there to see, weighs heavily on us. Reformers, philanthropists, idealists of all sorts are constitutionally impatient, and in their generous haste to see their ideals realised, forget that ‘raw haste’ is ‘half-sister to delay’ and are indignant with man for his sluggishness and with God for His majestic slowness. Not less do we fret and fume and think the days drag with intolerable slowness, before some eagerly expected good rises like a star on our individual lives. But there is deep truth in Paul’s apparent paradox, that ‘if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.’ The more sure the confidence, the more quiet the patient waiting. It is uncertainty which makes earthly hope short of breath, and impatient of delay.
But since a Christian man’s hope is consolidated into certainty, and when it is set on God, cannot only say, I trust that it will be so and so, but, I know that it shall, it may well be content to be patient for the fulfilment, ‘as the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it.’ ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years’ in respect of the magnitude of the changes which may be wrought by the instantaneous operation of His hand when the appointed hour shall strike, and therefore it should not strain our patience nor stagger our faith that ‘a thousand years’ should be ‘as one day,’ in respect of the visible approximation achieved in them, towards the establishment of His purpose. The world was prepared for man through countless millenniums. Man was prepared for the advent of Christ through long centuries. Nineteen hundred years have effected comparatively little in incorporating the issues of Christ’s work in the consciousness and characters of mankind. Much of the slowness of that progress of Christianity is due to the faithlessness and sloth of professing Christians. But it still remains true that God lifts His foot slowly, and plants it firmly, in His march through the world. So, both in regard to the progress of truth, and the diffusion of the highest, and of the secondary, blessings of Christianity through the nations, and in respect to the reception of individual good gifts, we shall do wisely to leave God to settle the ‘when’ since we are sure that He has bound Himself to accomplish the fact.
Finally, that ‘coffin in Egypt’ was a pledge of possession. It lay long among the Israelites to uphold fainting faith, and at last was carried up before their host, and reverently guarded during forty years’ wanderings, till it was deposited in the cave at Machpelah, beside the tombs of the fathers of the nation. Thus it became to the nation, and remains for us, a symbol of the truth that no hope based upon God’s bare word is ever finally disappointed. From all other anticipations grounded on anything less solid, the element of uncertainty is inseparable, and Fear is ever the sister of Hope. With keen insight Spenser makes these two march side by side, in his wonderful procession of the attendants of earthly Love. There is always a lurking sadness in Hope’s smiles, and a nameless dread in her eyes. And all expectations busied with or based upon the contingencies of this poor life, whether they are fulfilled or disappointed, prove less sweet in fruition than in prospect, and often turn to ashes in the eating, instead of the sweet bread which we had thought them to be. One basis alone is sure, and that is the foundation on which Joseph rested and risked everything-the plain promise of God. He who builds on that rock will never be put to shame, and when floods sweep away every refuge built on sand, he will not need to ‘make haste’ to find, amid darkness and storm, some less precarious shelter, but will look down serenely on the wildest torrent, and know it to be impotent to wash away his fortress home.
There is no nobler example of victorious faith which prolonged confident expectation beyond the insignificant accident of death than Joseph’s dying ‘commandment concerning his bones.’ His confidence, indeed, grasped a far lower blessing than ours should reach out to clasp. It was evoked by less clear and full promises and pledges than we have. The magnitude and loftiness of the Christian hope of Immortality, and the certitude of the fact on which it reposes, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, should result in a corresponding increase in the firmness and clearness of our hope, and in its power in our lives. The average Christian of to-day may well be sent to school to Joseph on his death-bed. Is our faith as strong as-I will not ask if it is stronger than-that of this man who, in the morning twilight of revelation, and with a hope of an eternal possession of an earthly inheritance, which, one might have thought, would be shattered by death, was able to fling his anchor clean across the gulf when he gave injunction, ‘Carry my bones up hence’? We have a better inheritance, and fuller, clearer promises and facts on which to trust. Shame to us if we have a feebler faith.
a coffin. Thus the book of Genesis begins with God, and ends with man. It begins with the creation of the heavens above, and ends with “a coffin in Egypt”.
being an hundred and ten years old: Ben meah weaiser shanim; “the son of an hundred and ten years;” the period he lived being personified. Gen 50:22, Gen 47:9, Gen 47:28, Jos 24:29
they embalmed: Gen 50:2, Gen 50:3
Reciprocal: Gen 35:28 – General Exo 1:6 – General Exo 6:16 – an hundred 2Sa 19:32 – fourscore Job 42:16 – an
JOSEPHS DEATH
So Joseph died.
Gen 50:26
Death is an unescapable experience alike for prince and for peasant. Joseph was great and good, but he was mortal, and, in Gods appointed time, went the way of all the earth. Death is always impressive whether it be the decease of an exalted ruler, or of an obscure day-labourer. Its lessons are essentially the same for every age, whether the soul takes its flight from under the shadow of the pyramids, or from amid the bustling scenes of a great modern metropolis.
I. When his long life task was complete, Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten, after ninety years of varied experience in Egypt. Apparently he continued to be held in honour until the day of his death. There are characters that seem to have their allotted amount of trial early in life, and after that enjoy comparative immunity from care or trouble. Nearly eighty per cent (or fourscore years) of Josephs life has been prosperous. In other lives this order appears to be inverted, for after an earlier season of prosperity, misfortune and tribulation cloud lifes afternoon and evening. Yet in every case God means it for good.
II. Gifted to the last with the prophetic instinct, Joseph foretold on his dying bed the subsequent exodus of Gods people from the school life of Egypt, and their entrance upon the covenanted blessings of the Promised Land. It has been given to few to read history before it happens, but Joseph was one of these favoured seers. In his dying visions he looked backward to Abrahams time and onward to the stirring scenes attending the return to Canaan, and he loved in all to trace the guiding wisdom of the Lord. With calm faith he gave direction that his embalmed body should be left unburied in Egypt until such a time, years afterward, as the people of Israel should form in line for the great desert march Canaanwards, and his bones be finally laid away in the soil of the land of promise.
III. So Joseph died, calmly, peacefully, full of faith and hope. His taking off was like the harvesting of a full sheaf of grain from the fertile Nile delta whose stores he had gathered in in the years of plenty. Joseph had been tried for a time, but he was triumphant at last. His faith and faithfulness gave him favour both with God and man. Only so can life be made worth living for anyone, and death, robbed of its terrors, appear at last, as the herald of immortal blessedness.
Illustration
(1) Faith has its noblest office in detaching from the present. All his life long, from the day of his captivity, Joseph was an Egyptian in outward seeming. He filled his place at Pharaohs court; but his dying words open a window into his soul, and betray how little he had felt that he belonged to the order of things in which he had been content to live. He too confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. Dying, he said, Carry my bones up from hence. Living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but upon its blessed soil. Faith will produce just such effects. Does anything but Christian faith engage the heart to love and all the longing wishes to set towards the things that are unseen and eternal? Whatever makes a man live in the past and in the future raises him; but high above all others stand those to whom the past is an apocalypse of God, with Calvary for its centre, and all the future fellowship with Christ and joy in the heavens.
(2)Weve no abiding city here;
Sad truth, were this to be our home!
But let this thought our spirits cheer,
We seek a city yet to come.
Weve no abiding city here,
We seek a city out of sight;
Zion, its name; the Lord is there,
It shines with everlasting light.
Gen 50:26. Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old So for about thirteen years of affliction he enjoyed eighty years of honour, and as much happiness as earth could afford him. He was put in a coffin in Egypt But not buried till his children had received their inheritance in Canaan, Jos 24:32. If the soul do but return to its rest with God, the matter is not great, though the deserted body find not at all, or not quickly, its rest in the grave. Yet care ought to be taken of the dead bodies of the saints, in the belief of their resurrection; for there is a covenant with the dust which shall be remembered, and a commandment given concerning the bones.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
2. His injunctions to his brethren when he perceived his death approaching. He confirms them in the fulfilment of God’s promises; he bids them expect their removal, and neither be induced by prosperity to settle in AEgypt, nor faint under any adversity, for God would bring them up. He charges them to take his bones along with them, expresses his own faith, and strengthens theirs by this pledge, and the oath he required of them. He then expires content, in a good old age; and, after embalming, is laid in his coffin, ready for removal, when God’s appointed time shall call them into the promised land. Note; (1.) When we lose our best friends, our comfort is, that God will surely bring them up again in a resurrection-day. (2.) A decent care ought to be had of the corpse, not for any effect it can produce on the departed soul, but in honour to its having been once the temple of the Holy Ghost, and in prospect of its rising again a glorious body, to be the companion of saints and angels to eternity.
For consider him in whatever point of view, or in whatever relation you will, and you will behold him amiable and excellent, worthy of imitation, and claiming the greatest applause. You see him spoken of in the sacred books with the highest honour; as a person greatly in the favour of God, and prospered by him wheresoever he went, even in so extraordinary a manner as to become the observation of others; as one of the strictest fidelity in every trust committed to him; of the most exemplary chastity, which no solicitations could overcome; of the most fixed reverence for God, in the midst of all the corruptions with which he was surrounded; of the noblest resolution and fortitude, which the strongest temptations could never subdue; of the most admirable sagacity, wisdom, and prudence, which made even a prince and his nobles look upon him as under Divine inspiration; of indefatigable industry and diligence, which made him successful in the most arduous attempts; of the most generous compassion and forgiveness of spirit, which the most malicious and cruel injuries could never weaken or destroy; as the preserver of AEgypt and the neighbouring nations, and as the stay and support of his own father and family; as one patient and humble in adversity; moderate in the use of power, and in the height of prosperity; faithful as a servant, dutiful as a son, affectionate as a brother; just and generous as a governor and ruler: in a word, as one of the best and most finished characters, and as an instance of the most exemplary and prosperous piety and virtue.
Agreeable to this account, he is spoken of with the greatest honour and respect by other ancient writers. Artaphanus, an ancient Greek Writer, represents him as a person who excelled his brethren in wisdom and prudence, and therefore was betrayed and sold by them; and that when he came into AEgypt, and was presented to the king, he was made by him administrator of the whole kingdom; that whereas, before his time, the business of agriculture was in great disorder, because the country was not rightly divided, and the poorer sort of people were oppressed by the higher, Joseph first of all divided the lands, distinguished them by proper marks and bounds, recovered a good part of them from the waters, and made them fit for cultivation and tillage; that he divided some of them by lot to the priests, and found out the art of measurement; and that he was greatly beloved by the AEgyptians on these accounts. See Artaphan. apud Euseb. praep. Evang. l. ix. c. 23. Philo, an ancient poet, makes honourable mention of him, as the sort of Jacob, as an interpreter of dreams, as lord of AEgypt, and as conversant in the secrets of time, under the various fluctuations of fate. See Phil. apud Euseb. ib. c. 24.. Alexander Polyhistor, who made large extracts out of other authors, relating to the Jewish affairs, cites one Demetrius, as giving the character of the ancient Jewish patriarchs. He speaks honourably of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, who, he says, was sold to the AEgyptians at seventeen years of age; that he interpreted the king’s dreams; that he was governor of all AEgypt, with other circumstances, agreeable to the sacred history. See Euseb. ib. c. 17, 18, 19, 21. The account of Joseph given by Justin, we have inserted on a former occasion. See ch. Gen 41:55.
For Jesus Christ may be said to be the true Joseph, if you view him as a beloved Son; an affectionate Brother; a trusty Servant; an illuminated Prophet; a Resister of temptations; a Forgiver of injuries; but chiefly if you consider him as an innocent Sufferer; an exalted Prince; and an universal Saviour.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments