We're ready? Turn to Genesis chapter 50. We're in the last chapter of Genesis. We've been studying on the stories of, mostly on the, we started out studying stories in Genesis, and we've kind of got bogged down for some time in the stories of Abraham's family. But it's been a good study, I think, for me anyway. I don't know about anybody else. It's been good for me. When you do a verse-by-verse study on these things, sometimes there's things that you miss. Even when you do your daily readings, if you read through the Bible, in a year or multiple times a year as our Sunday school teacher brought out. Sometimes we don't take time to stop and study some of these things. So it's been good in that fashion. Last time we saw where Jacob passed away, he prepared his family for his dying. He knew it was coming. His sons, as we saw, would be the 12 tribes of Israel to come. And he requested that he be buried in the same place, same burying ground as Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebekah. And we saw in verse 31 in chapter 49 where he also, at some point, Jacob had buried Leah there, his first wife. So it's a family, what we would call a family plot or a family cemetery. As far as we know, it's the only people, at least up until this time, that's the only people that were buried there. I don't know about today. I've not researched that and just didn't think about it. Anyway, today we'll see the continuation in chapter 50 of the bearing process of Jacob. And then the last part of the chapter will be on the death of Joseph. And we may, just for If we have time, we may read into the first part of Exodus. That's not where I'm going next, okay? But we may read that little bit of the first chapter there where it talks about some of Joseph's family and what happened to them later. So just as a curiosity thing, just to see what would happen. Now, in Genesis 50, chapter 50, verse 1, And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, and the physicians embalmed Israel. Now, remember Joseph's position in Egypt. He's the governor of all the land under Pharaoh. He has servants. We don't commonly think of a Hebrew in their day and time of heaven. Well, Abraham had servants, but not like this. It says he had physicians, doctors, in other words. And not just doctors, but these would have been, I guess what we would refer to as the coroner. or even the, it says here they did the embalming process, so they would have been what we would be familiar with as far as a funeral home, funeral director or whatever. These men actually did the embalming process in the fashion, it's my understanding they would have done it in the fashion of the Egyptians, because the Hebrews at this time really didn't have an embalming process, they just buried them. They might have wrapped them in clothing and put some smell-good stuff on them, and that was about it. Historically, the Egyptians, it appears as though, if they weren't the first, they were one of the first civilizations that embalmed their dead. To prolong the decay of the body was the purpose of it. And from my understanding, it was back then it was more of like a pickling process. So basically they pickled the body so that it would last longer. And of course there were spices and fragrances that they would put in with that to make the smell of death not to seem so bad. You see a lot of that if you've ever studied archaeology, especially Egyptian archaeology, you see that with the pharaohs and even some of their families that were made mummies, you know, that would have been done the same way. Verse 3, well, first verse 2, I also notice at the end the physicians embalmed Israel. Again, In the rest of this story, I believe, the rest of this chapter, I believe, we'll see him as referred to as Jacob. But here he's referred to as Israel. The leader, the head of the nation of Israel. And forty days were fulfilled for him. For so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed. And the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days. Now, one, we notice the Egyptians mourned him for 70 days. That's how much respect they had, not only for Joseph, but for Joseph's father. They understood that Joseph got his good ways from his father. They had spent some time, some of them had spent some time with Jacob while he was alive in the land of Egypt. They got to know him some. But you notice there in the first of the chapter, 40 days were fulfilled for him. Now, it's my understanding, reading from John Gill's commentary on this and some others, the practice of the Egyptians was they would take 40 days to embalm the body. That was part of the pickling process that I mentioned. It would take that long. And then there was 30 days. At the end of the 40 days, after the ending of the embalming process, at the end of the 40 days, they would turn the body back over to the family. And then the family would have their time of grieving. for 30 days. So that's where the 70 days comes in totally. So the Egyptians mourned him for three score and 10 days, for 70 days. So the first 40. during the embalming process, the last 30 was while the family was mourning. And they would, in some cases, and in particularly with Jacob's family being at least semi-wealthy in this time, and with Joseph being part of the royal court, high up in the royal court of Pharaoh, very possibly that Jacob's body was what we would call laid in state, whether it was in Jacob's house, I mean, not Jacob's, but Joseph's house, since he was a leader in the government there, or in our modern day, what we think of when, for example, if a president dies or a popular politician, they will lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda. The Egyptians would do the same thing. That's where that tradition comes from. And it's not a bad tradition. It's just that's how they did things. But the body would lay in state for 30 days after the embalming process. And when the days of his mourning were past, so at the end of the 70 days, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die in my grave, which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan. There shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, bury my father, and I will come again. Now you notice Joseph doesn't go to Pharaoh himself. I don't know why. He doesn't tell us here. He goes to the house of Pharaoh and tells someone else, a servant perhaps, maybe another member of the family. They get the message to Pharaoh. Was he afraid of Pharaoh? I don't know. I don't know what was going on. We don't have, we don't know. They don't tell us here. We do see Pharaoh does respond in verse six, and Pharaoh said, go up and bury thy father according as he made thee swear. So, Pharaoh's very understanding. Joseph and Pharaoh were on good terms. Again, I don't know why Joseph didn't, unless it was because he was in mourning. He didn't go and approach Pharaoh himself. Maybe Pharaoh wasn't home. You know, I don't know. But he could have been off, out of town for some reason. But this is what happened. And you notice at the end of verse 5, Joseph says, and I will come again. Here's Joseph's opportunity, the opportunity for his whole family, actually. They could have left and claimed that they were going to mourn or to bury Jacob and never come back. Why would they? Why would they come back? Well, he made a promise. And so and we'll see here in a moment, there's other reasons why. Joseph and our seven and Joseph went up to bury his father and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh So he's got Servants where there was there were probably military, but we don't know for sure the elders of his house the elders of And all the elders of the land of Egypt. So this was a big entourage of people from Egypt politicians military leaders So there's no way Joseph and his family could have stayed anyway. But we don't see anywhere where that was their objective. They were going there to bury their father and come back. That was it. And all the house of Joseph, it's all his servants. So what we see, we see the elders of Pharaoh's house, all the elders of the land of Egypt. We also see the servants of Pharaoh. and now all those that are of Joseph's house. This is a big group of people. It doesn't give us a number, but this is a large group of people. And his father's house, Jacob's house, in other words, all the people from, only their little ones and their flocks and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen. Why? Well, you had to have somebody to watch over the flocks, didn't you? So they left the little ones Some would say that because they left the little ones, who's there to watch over the little ones? How little were these kids? Well, it's possible that some of the mothers had to stay behind. Maybe all their mothers stayed behind, we don't know. Again, this is one of those places, this chapter, I think is a good example of why we have to be careful what we guess about in the scripture. because you could read more into this than what's actually there. So be careful about that. But we know some of the traditions, we have evidence of that from Egypt, like we talked about with the embalming process and the burial process and all that. Those you can easily find in secular history. But when you have these things here where all these people that went with Joseph to bury his father, We have no exact number. We don't know why. Well, we could guess why the little ones are left behind. It's because of the flocks and the herds. And also, you wouldn't expect the little ones to stay behind without some adults, would you? So, again, that's just a guess, okay? So don't read that into that. And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen, an army, in other words. Who used chariots in there today? Well, it was either royalty or the military, and usually when the royalty used a chariot, it was in a military fashion. He was traveling with the military. And horsemen, he's got a cavalry with him. And it was a very great company. That's all we know. No number, but a very great company. And they came to the threshing floor of ATAD, which is beyond Jordan, and there They mourned with a great, very sore lamentation. And he made a mourning for his father seven days. So why would they go to the threshing floor of Aitad? Well, for one, a threshing floor was a very large place in that day and time. It's where they would thresh the chaff from the wheat. They would thresh the wheat, and it would separate the hulls off the wheat and the part that's unedible. They would beat it with a stick, basically, or a bat, what we would call a bat. And it would bust the holes, and then they'd throw it in the air when the wind was blowing, and it would blow the holes off, the loose holes out of the wheat. And it was a threshing floor, and so it was a big place where they would smooth out the ground, pack it down tight. Sometimes in some wealthier places, they would even have a wooden floor. Anyway, they went to this place because it was closest to the burying place, to the graveyard, to the cemetery, and it was a big place where everyone could gather for a ceremony, a funeral ceremony of sorts. They came to the threshing floor of Etad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days. So it lasted for seven days. And when the inhabitants, and remember, they've already been through this in Egypt, where they mourned for 70 days. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, this is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians. Wherefore the name of it was called Ebel Miserium, which is beyond Jordan. That's all it means, it's beyond Jordan. The Canaanites that were there recognized that this was a great time of mourning for the Egyptians. Notice it doesn't mention, or they don't mention the family of Jacob or Joseph, they mentioned the Egyptians because there's a large number of Egyptians there. We've already said the Egyptian army is there. There's heads of state there. And remember the Canaanites and the Egyptians were never friendly. They were for most of both of them's existence, They were bitter enemies and fought back and forth off and on. But the Canaanites respected this time. They recognized there's something special about this person that has died. This person they have come here to bury, there's something special with the Egyptians, with this man. And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them. This is talking about the sons of Jacob. For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burying place of Ephron the Hittite before Mamre. And Joseph returned into Egypt, and he and his brethren and all that went up with him to bury his father after he had buried his father. Everybody came back. They didn't leave one soul behind. They all came back. Again, this could have been their opportunity to escape. Remember, Joseph, anyway, was there held as a servant. His family was there because of the famine they had been through. They were sojourners, remember? They weren't in the land of Egypt to stay. From the very beginning, they were there just to stay for a time and to rest and to basically stay alive because of the famine. But there's no mention here of them trying to escape. Why? Well, at this point in time, things were good back in Egypt. There's nothing going on between the Egyptians and The Hebrews, they're friends. They know their limitations. They're not to intermingle, intermarry. They both have different styles of worship and different beings that they worship. The Hebrews worship the God of the Bible. The Egyptians worship multiple gods and even their own Pharaoh. But as long as they stay separated, there's no conflict. And when Joseph's brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph, will pervent your hate us, and will certainly requit us all the evil which we did unto him. Okay, now, here he comes. His brothers are worried. Now that Jacob's dead, All those things that they did to Joseph come back to mind. And they're like, oh no. He's going to kill us. He's going to torture us. He's going to make life hard for us because of what we did to him in the past. And they sent a messenger. They won't even go face him. They sent a messenger unto Joseph saying, thy father did command before he died saying... So they're going to bring back what Joseph said. shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren and their sin, for they did unto thee evil. And now we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. And Joseph's never, in this whole story, has never, he didn't like what they did, but he still loved his brothers. even as bad as they treated him. When they came to Egypt the first few times before Jacob came with them, he treated them very good. He could have wiped them all out then. He could have captured them all and made them work as slaves. He didn't because he loved them. And his brethren also went and fell down before his face. So now they go and face him. And they said, Behold, we be thy servants. They're willing to do anything as long as He won't do evil by them. And Joseph said unto them, Fear not, for am I in the place of God? What does he mean by that? We're not the judge, are we? Or the executioner? In this manner, at least what he's talking about here, or what they're talking about here. He's the command that we see in the Ten Commandments. We're to love our neighbor as ourselves. All throughout, what did Jesus preach? That we're supposed to love our brethren? Joseph is practicing that here. Even before the law was written, he's practicing the law. Parts of the law, anyway. And he knows, I can't, I can't judge my brothers. He doesn't know what was on their minds at the time that they did what they did. He doesn't even want to get into it. To him, it's over and done with. And isn't that how it's supposed to be with, especially with our past sins, and that's what he's referring to here, their past wickedness or past sins. It's forgiven. Don't worry about it. That's another example we see in the story of Joseph, where he is played out as an example of Christ. Because he forgives his brothers of their past sin. But as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good. To bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. What's he bringing out to them? If they hadn't have done what they did to Joseph, if they had not have put him in the well and then sold him to the Ishmaelites, and the Ishmaelites had not sold him into Egypt as a slave, the rest of this story would have been totally different. If they had killed him, or if it had happened, like they told their father. Remember what they told Jacob? They killed a goat and sprinkled blood on his coat and ripped his coat up. They took it back and said that he had been eaten by a wild animal. Well, if that had been what really happened, what would have happened to his brothers at this point in time that we're reading about today? The story would be totally different, wouldn't it? And that's what he's trying to tell them. God used the evil you did for good. It had to play out the way that it played out because that was God's providence. Them treating him evil, wickedly, caused him to be sent to Egypt. He lived out most of his life, the vast majority of his life was lived out in Egypt as a ruler in Egypt, the governor over the land. And because of his position in the land at the time that the famine came, he was able to help his family and to save his family. They were about to lose everything they had because of the famine. And then He talked Pharaoh into giving them a place to live in the land, a portion of the land. It wasn't theirs to keep, but it was theirs while they were willing to stay there, while they needed to stay there. And then we see all the things in the last few chapters that play out with Jacob and the death of Jacob. And we see how Pharaoh permitted him to go back and bury Jacob in the land where his fathers were. None of that would have happened if it had not been for the wickedness that they had done to Joseph in the beginning. And it's all because, he says, God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. If all that had not have played out, Israel would not have gone through the time that they spent in Egypt. What you see take place in the book of Exodus, in the next book, would not have played out like it did. This was part of God's plan. Think about, we can think about maybe even things in our lives that if If there was something that we had done different in the past, how much different things would be right now? And I mean, not necessarily for the good. You know, if we had killed that person that we hated so bad when we were younger, before the Lord saved us, where would we be today? We might not be with the spouse we're with. We might not have children. We might be in prison still. Or, even worse, We could be in hell. Because if it happened before we were saved. God has a plan for everything. And we see that all through this story from Abraham on through to Joseph. We see God's hand working in this family for his eventual end of Israel eventually becoming to possess the promised land. Now therefore fear ye not. I will nourish you and your little ones. And he comforted them and spake kindly unto them. He forgave them. In other words, that's what he's saying. Joseph forgave his brothers. Now, the last part of the chapter concerns the death of Joseph. So we skip, I don't know how many years, but we skip a few years, a lot of years actually. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt. He and his father's house, And Joseph lived 110 years. So he doesn't live as long as Jacob did, but he still lives a lot of years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation. He lived long enough to see his great-great-grandchildren. The children also of Matre, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph's knees. So his grandsons by Manasseh, he saw them. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. If you fast forward and read the rest of the story with Moses, when they left Egypt during the Exodus, they carried the bones of Jacob with them into the wilderness. And that's what he's talking about there in verse 25, where it says, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. So eventually they will carry his bones back to Canaan. Joseph, at least as far as we're concerned, lived a long life, 110 years. That's a long time. People live that long today. Not many, but there are a few that do. But you start to see now where men's depravity is kicking in even more as men are not living as long as they did. Now, just to kind of finish this series up, in Exodus chapter 1, we'll read part of chapter 1. Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt. Every man in his household came with Jacob. And you see the names of the sons of Jacob mentioned there. in verses two through four. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were 70 souls. So that's how many went in to Egypt. For Joseph was in Egypt already. So that's everybody that came with Jacob out of Canaan into Egypt. And Joseph died and all his brethren and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful. and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them." Uh-oh, we've got a problem now. The land of Egypt is full of Hebrews, the family of the children of Israel, the children of Jacob. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt. They've got a new Pharaoh now, which knew not Joseph. So this new Pharaoh has no knowledge of Joseph. What do we see today even in our country? We have leaders in our country that have no knowledge of our Founding Fathers. They have no knowledge of the God of our Founding Fathers. And they're not ashamed to admit it. That's how this Pharaoh was. Not only did he not know Joseph, he didn't know the stories of the God of Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. All of a sudden they're scared. Don't we see that today too? We're in a day where politicians are afraid of God's people. Because at least for now, at least it seems as though we outnumber them. So what do they do? They try to skew the numbers at election time. They try to claim that the majority of the people want this. No. They're not talking to the majority of the people. They may be talking to the majority of their friends, and maybe that's what the majority of their friends want, or maybe the majority of their supporters, but the majority of the people in the land, that's not what they want. He says, come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and it come to pass that when they fall without any war, they join also unto our enemies and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. This is how scared Pharaoh is of God's people. They've never been a threat to him at all. Never been a threat to the Pharaohs in the past. They've been good, honest citizens. And yet now, all of a sudden, he's scared of them. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with burdens. They made slaves out of them. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pythium and Rameses. In that day and time, two of the biggest cities. And they were cities of worship to their false gods. They forced these people of Israel not only to build the cities, but to build the temples to their false gods, the worship centers. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. They couldn't stop them. Their population kept growing. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. In other words, they made their life hard. And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick and in all manner of service in the field. All their service wherein they made them serve was with rigor. And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives of which The name of the one was Shapira, and the name of the other was Puha. And he said, when you do the office of the midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then you shall kill him. But if it be a daughter, then she shall live. Abortion. late abortion at the time of birth. And what do we see today? How many politicians have we heard in the last few years that this is what they want? Why? It's a way to control the population. And that's what Pharaoh's goal was here. He was going to stop the spreading of Well, why wouldn't he kill the daughters instead? They're the ones that have the babies, right? Yes, but it's the men who fight. So not only was he trying to suppress the population, but he's trying to stop them from forming an army. But the midwives, notice what it says here, the midwives feared God. They feared God more than they did Pharaoh. and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive." Well, we had some doctors today that feared God and would put a stop to abortion. The king of Egypt called for the midwives and said unto them, why have you done this thing and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they are lively and they are delivered, ere the midwives come in unto them." So sometimes, in other words, the Hebrew women didn't always require midwives. She had a baby on her own. It didn't matter. We can't stop them, you know? Therefore God dealt with the midwives, not Pharaoh, but God dealt with the midwives, And the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. Again, God's plan. And it came to pass because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. Gil says that he caused them to have children themselves, the midwives. Another poke in the eye, Pharaoh. God blessed them because of their stand against the law of the land. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive. He charged all his people. This was not just the Hebrews. This was all of Egypt. All the people of Egypt. He tells them, You're going to throw all your newborn sons into the river. That's how wicked he was. We're going to stop there, but just know we see in a few generations how Egypt went from having a governor who was a godly man to now you've got Pharaoh, a new Pharaoh, who has no remembrance of Joseph or the God of Joseph. He's scared that the people of Israel are going to overthrow Egypt. He doesn't even remember, doesn't even know the promise that was given to Jacob's sons that they were going to inherit Canaan, not Egypt. That's why they had no desire to stay in Egypt. They knew that their home was not in Egypt. They were there just for a short time. But the Pharaoh didn't understand that. He had not been taught these things. We'll stop there for now. This is the end of this study. We'll go on to something else