Joseph lived in Egypt, he, and his father’s house. Joseph lived one hundred ten years. Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” So Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
Parallel Translations
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Joseph lived in Egypt, he, and his father’s house. Joseph lived one hundred ten years.
Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees.
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am dying, but God will surely visit you, and bring you up out of this land to the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
So Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
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And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father’s house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.
And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.
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 sware 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 an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
Show all 3 translations
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And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father's house; and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years.
And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation; the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were born upon Joseph's knees.
And Joseph said unto his brethren: 'I die; but God will surely remember you, and bring you up out of this land unto the land which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.'
And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying: 'God will surely remember you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.'
So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old. And they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
Cross-references (46)
- Exodus 3:16-17 (v24) Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and tell them, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob,…
- Exodus 13:19 (v25) Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had made the children of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall…
- Joshua 24:32 (v25) They buried the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, in Shechem, in the parcel of ground which Jacob…
- Genesis 26:3 (v24) Live in this land, and I will be with you, and will bless you. For I will give to you, and to your offspring, all these lands, and I will…
- Genesis 35:12 (v24) The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and to your offspring after you I will give the land.”
Show all 44 cross-references
- Genesis 28:13 (v24) Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, “I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac. I will give the land you lie…
- Genesis 46:4 (v24) I will go down with you into Egypt. I will also surely bring you up again. Joseph’s hand will close your eyes.”
- Genesis 48:21 (v24) Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am dying, but God will be with you, and bring you again to the land of your fathers.
- Numbers 32:39 (v23) The children of Machir the son of Manasseh went to Gilead, took it, and dispossessed the Amorites who were therein.
- Acts 7:16 (v25) and they were brought back to Shechem, and laid in the tomb that Abraham bought for a price in silver from the children of Hamor of Shechem.
- Hebrews 11:22 (vv24–25) By faith, Joseph, when his end was near, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his…
- Genesis 13:17 (v24) Arise, walk through the land in its length and in its width; for I will give it to you.”
- Genesis 15:18 (v24) In that day Yahweh made a covenant with Abram, saying, “I have given this land to your offspring, from the river of Egypt to the great…
- Genesis 30:3 (v23) She said, “Behold, my maid Bilhah. Go in to her, that she may bear on my knees, and I also may obtain children by her.”
- Genesis 47:29-31 (v25) The time came near that Israel must die, and he called his son Joseph, and said to him, “If now I have found favor in your sight, please…
- Job 42:16 (v23) After this Job lived one hundred forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, to four generations.
- Genesis 13:15 (v24) for I will give all the land which you see to you and to your offspring forever.
- Genesis 15:7 (v24) He said to Abram, “I am Yahweh who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.”
- Genesis 15:14-16 (v24) I will also judge that nation, whom they will serve. Afterward they will come out with great wealth; but you will go to your fathers in…
- Genesis 50:5 (vv24–25) ‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying. Bury me in my grave which I have dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now…
- Genesis 12:7 (v24) Yahweh appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” He built an altar there to Yahweh, who had appeared to him.
- Genesis 48:19 (v23) His father refused, and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also will become a people, and he also will be great. However, his younger…
- Numbers 32:33 (v23) Moses gave to them, even to the children of Gad, and to the children of Reuben, and to the half-tribe of Manasseh the son of Joseph, the…
- Joshua 17:1 (v23) This was the lot for the tribe of Manasseh, for he was the firstborn of Joseph. As for Machir the firstborn of Manasseh, the father of…
- Psalms 128:6 (v23) Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.
- Genesis 3:19 (v24) You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and you shall…
- Genesis 17:8 (v24) I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are traveling, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting…
- Genesis 21:1 (v24) Yahweh visited Sarah as he had said, and Yahweh did to Sarah as he had spoken.
- Genesis 47:9 (v26) Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. The days of the years of my life have been few and evil.…
- Genesis 47:28 (v26) Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were one hundred forty-seven years.
- Genesis 49:12 (v23) His eyes will be red with wine, his teeth white with milk.
- Genesis 50:2-3 (v26) Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. Forty days were used for him, for…
- Genesis 50:22 (v26) Joseph lived in Egypt, he, and his father’s house. Joseph lived one hundred ten years.
- Exodus 4:31 (v24) The people believed, and when they heard that Yahweh had visited the children of Israel, and that he had seen their affliction, then they…
- Exodus 33:1 (v24) Yahweh spoke to Moses, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people that you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which…
- Numbers 32:11 (v24) ‘Surely none of the men who came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac,…
- Deuteronomy 1:8 (v24) Behold, I have set the land before you. Go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers—to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob—to…
- Deuteronomy 6:10 (v24) It shall be, when Yahweh your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you,…
- Joshua 24:29 (v26) After these things, Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Yahweh, died, being one hundred ten years old.
- Job 30:23 (v24) For I know that you will bring me to death, To the house appointed for all living.
- Ecclesiastes 12:5 (v24) yes, they shall be afraid of heights, and terrors will be on the way; and the almond tree shall blossom, and the grasshopper shall be a…
- Ecclesiastes 12:7 (v24) and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
- Romans 5:12 (v24) Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; so death passed to all men, because all sinned.
- Hebrews 9:27 (v24) Inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once, and after this, judgment,
44 distinct cross-references across this passage (46 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (21 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv22, 24, 25 22. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt. It is not…
22. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt. It is not without reason that Moses relates how long Joseph lived, because the length of the time shows the more clearly his unfailing constancy: for although he is raised to great honor and power among she Egyptians, he still is closely united with his father’s house. Hence it is easy to conjecture, that he gradually took his leave of the treasures of the court, because he thought there was nothing better for him to do than to hold them in contempt, lest earthly dignity should separate him from the kingdom of God. He had before spurned all the allurements which might have occupied his mind in Egypt: he now counts it necessary to proceed further, that, laying aside his honor, he may descend to an ignoble condition, and wean his own sons from the hope of succeeding to his worldly rank. We know how anxiously others labor, both that they themselves may not be reduced in circumstances, and that they may leave their fortune entire to their posterity: but Joseph, during sixty years, employed all his efforts to bring himself and his children into a state of submission, lest his earthly greatness should alienate them from the little flock of the Lord. In short, he imitated the serpents, who cast off their exuviae, that, being stripped of their old age, they may gather new strength. He sees the children of his own grandchildren; why does not his solicitude to provide for them increase, as his children increase? Yet he has so little regard for worldly rank or opulence, that he would rather see them devoted to a pastoral life, and be despised by the Egyptians, if only they might be reckoned in the family of Israel. Besides, in a numerous offspring during his own life, the Lord afforded him some taste of his benediction, from which he might conceive the hope of future deliverance: for, among so many temptations, it was necessary for him to be encouraged and sustained, lest he should sink under them.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv22, 25 Who, notwithstanding he bare rule in Egypt about fourscore…
Who, notwithstanding he bare rule in Egypt about fourscore years, yet was joined with the church of God in faith and religion.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv22–24 Gen 50:22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and…
Gen 50:22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father’s house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.
Ver. 22. And Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.] Fourscore of these he lived in great wealth, and all of them, perhaps, in very good health; as Pliny {a} reports of one Xenophilus, that he lived a hundred and five years without sickness, which yet was a rare thing, and few men’s happiness.
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{a} Plin., lib. vii. cap. 5.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv23–26 Of the third generation, reckoning from and after Ephraim,…
Of the third generation, reckoning from and after Ephraim, i.e., Ephraim’s grandchildren’s children. So early did Ephraim’s privilege above Manasseh appear, and Jacob’s blessing (Gen 48:19) take place.
The children of Machir, Heb. sons. For though he had but one son, viz. Gilead, by his first wife, yet he married a second wife, and by her had two other sons, 1Ch 7:16, which Joseph lived long enough to see. Or under the name of children his grandchildren also might be comprehended. So there is no need of that enallage of sons for one son which we meet with in other places.
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Were brought up upon Joseph’s knees; laid upon Joseph’s lap or knees, where parents use ofttimes to take up and repose their infants, to express their love to them, and delight in them. And some observe, that it was an ancient custom in divers nations, that the infant, as soon as it was born, was laid upon the grandfather’s knees. So it is an ellipsis, whereby one word is put for two, or under one verb. See more of this phrase on Gen 30:3; 48:12.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v22 Here is, I. The prolonging of Joseph's life in…
Here is, I. The prolonging of Joseph's life in Egypt: he lived to be a hundred and ten years old, Gen 50:22. Having honoured his father, his days were long in the land which, for the present, God had given him; and it was a great mercy to his relations that God continued him so long, a support and comfort to them.
II. The building up of Joseph's family: he lived to see his great-grand-children by both his sons (Gen 50:23), and probably he saw his two sons solemnly owned as heads of distinct tribes, equal to any of his brethren. It contributes much to the comfort of aged parents if they see their posterity in a flourishing condition, especially if with it they see peace upon Israel, Psa 128:6.
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III. The last will and testament of Joseph published in the presence of his brethren, when he saw his death approaching. Those that were properly his brethren perhaps were some of them dead before him, as several of them were older than he; but to those of them who yet survived, and to the sons of those who were gone, who stood up in their fathers' stead, he said this. 1. He comforted them with the assurance of their return to Canaan in due time: I die, but God will surely visit you, Gen 50:24. To this purport Jacob had spoken to him, Gen 48:21. Thus must we comfort others with the same comforts with which we ourselves have been comforted of God, and encourage them to rest on those promises which have been our support. Joseph was, under God, both the protector and the benefactor of his brethren; and what would become of them now that he was dying? Why, let this be their comfort, God will surely visit you. Note, God's gracious visits will serve to make up the loss of our best friends. They die; but we may live, and live comfortably, if we have the favour and presence of God with us. He bids them be confident: God will bring you out of this land, and therefore, (1.) They must not hope to settle there, nor look upon it as their rest for ever; they must set their hearts upon the land of promise, and call that their home. (2.) They must not fear sinking, and being ruined there; probably he foresaw the ill usage they would meet with there after his death, and therefore gives them this word of encouragement: "God will bring you in triumph out of this land at last." Herein he has an eye to the promise, Gen 15:13, Gen 15:14, and, in God's name, assures them of the performance of it. 2. For a confession of his own faith, and a confirmation of theirs, he charges them to keep him unburied till that day, that glorious day, should come, when they should be settled in the land of promise, v. 25. He makes them promise him with an oath that they would bury him in Canaan. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a significant burial in Canaan, and that deferred too almost 200 years, before a magnificent one in Egypt. Thus Joseph, by faith in the doctrine of the resurrection and the promise of Canaan, gave commandment concerning his bones, Heb 11:22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake that God will surely visit Israel, and bring them to Canaan.
IV. The death of Joseph, and the reservation of his body for a burial in Canaan, Gen 50:26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt, but not buried till his children had received their inheritance in Canaan, Jos 24:32. Note, 1. If the separate soul, at death, 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. 2. 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 is given concerning the bones.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv22–25 And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation,....…
And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation,.... His great grandchildren's children; and which shows, as most interpreters observe, that Jacob's prediction, that Ephraim should be the greatest and most numerous, very early began to take place:
and the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph's knees; Machir had but one son by his first wife, whose name was Gilead; but marrying a second wife, he had two sons, Peresh and Sheresh; see Ch1 7:14 who might be born before the death of Joseph, and be said to be brought up upon his knees, being educated by him, and often took up in his lap, and dandled on his knees, as grandfathers, being fond of their grandchildren, are apt to do.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv24–26 I die, but God will surely visit you -…
I die, but God will surely visit you - To this purpose Jacob had spoken to him, chap. xlviii, 21. Thus must we comfort others with the same comforts wherewith we ourselves have been comforted of God, and encourage them to rest on those promises which have been our support. Joseph was, under God, both the protector and benefactor of his brethren, and what would become of them now he was dying? Why let this be their comfort, God will surely visit you. God's gracious visits will serve to make up the loss of our best friends, and bring you out of this land - And therefore, they must not hope to settle there, nor look upon it as their rest forever; they must set their hearts upon the land of promise, and call that their home.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv22–26 Verse 22. Joseph dwelt in Egypt] Continued in Egypt…
Verse 22. Joseph dwelt in Egypt] Continued in Egypt after his return from Canaan till his death; he, and his father's house-all the descendants of Israel, till the exodus or departure under the direction of Moses and Aaron, which was one hundred and forty-four years after.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv24–26 Gen 50:24. I die; and God will surely visit…
Gen 50:24. I die; and God will surely visit you — To this purpose Jacob had spoken to him, Gen 48:21. Thus must we comfort others with the same comforts wherewith we ourselves have been comforted of God, and encourage them to rest on those promises which have been our support. Joseph was, under God, both the protector and benefactor of his brethren, and what would become of them now he was dying? Why, let this be their comfort, God will surely visit you. God’s gracious visits will serve to make up the loss of our best friends: and bring you out of this land — And therefore they must not hope to settle there, nor look upon it as their rest for ever; they must set their hearts upon the land of promise, and call that their home.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv22, 24, 25 And ten; consequently he had been governor of all…
And ten; consequently he had been governor of all the land eighty years; God having made him abundant recompense, even in this world, for a transient disgrace! (Haydock) --- Knees. Joseph adopted the only son of Machir. See chap. xxx. 3.; or, according to the Samaritan, "in the days of Joseph" he was born. (Calmet)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv22, 24, 26 Joseph dwelt in Egypt--He lived eighty years after his…
Joseph dwelt in Egypt--He lived eighty years after his elevation to the chief power [see on Gen 41:46] witnessing a great increase in the prosperity of the kingdom, and also of his own family and kindred--the infant Church of God.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv22, 23, 25, 26 DEATH OF JOSEPH, Gen_50:22-26.
DEATH OF JOSEPH, Gen_50:22-26.
22. Hundred and ten years — Compare the same age of Joshua when he died. Jos_24:29.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv22–26 22–26. Death of Joseph
22–26. Death of Joseph
22. an hundred and ten years] See Jos_24:29. Attention has been called to passages in Egyptian records, in which this age is described as the ideal span of life.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv23, 24, 26 (23) The third generation.—These would be Joseph’s great-grandchildren. Thus…
(23) The third generation.—These would be Joseph’s great-grandchildren. Thus Eran, son of Shuthelah, son of Ephraim, was to be born in Joseph’s lifetime (Num_26:35-36).
Were brought up . . . —Heb., were born upon Joseph’s knees, that is, were adopted by him. (See Note on Gen_30:3.) They would not form tribes, as this prerogative was reserved for the sons of Jacob (Gen_48:5), but they would count as Joseph’s sons (Gen_48:6), and form “families.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv22, 23, 24, 26 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father"s…
And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father"s house: and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years. Wordsworth notices that Joshua, who superintended the burial of Joseph in Shechem, also lived 110 years. Joseph"s death occurred fifty-six years after that of Jacob.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv22, 25, 26 Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God…
Gen_50:22-26
Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you
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Dying Joseph:
I.
SATISFIED WITH THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD.
II. FULL OF FAITH.
1. Sure of Gods covenant.
2. Superior to the world.
3. The possessor of immortality. (T. H. Leale.)
The last days of Joseph:
I. THE REMOTE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN (Gen_50:15-17). To fear God and keep His commandments, always, is the only safe way and sure way for the soul. Men are peopling their future with calamity when they go one step out of the right path.
II. The last days of Joseph were an illustration of THE MYSTERIES OF GODS PROVIDENCE (Gen_50:20). The strange problems of human history should not cause us to lose faith. Behind the web into which so much that seems chaotic and unintelligible is being wrought, God sits wise to purpose and almighty to accomplish; and when His work is done, the assenting acclaim of the universe will proclaim, Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints. Morbid views of life are unwarranted. What God pleases is best, and what God pleases is sure to come to pass.
III. Very noticeable also is THE FAITH WHICH COMFORTED THE LAST DAYS OF JOSEPH (Gen_50:24). He saw already the blooming fields and laden vineyards which his descendants were to inherit, and he took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. That same sort of faith has a place and power among men now. Outlook and confidence are not the peculiar privileges of any one age. The victories of faith are world-wide and world-old.
IV. Notice also some INCIDENTAL TEACHINGS of this passage.
1. The last days of Joseph were the natural result of his first days. He began right.
2. Righteousness pays in the long run. Men who are tempted by the speciousness of strong temptation do well to listen to the Saviours question What shall it profit? Gods pay-days may be in the future, but He pays well when the time of reckoning comes.
3. What power there is in a good life. (E. S. Atwood.)
The Israelites grave in a foreign land:
I. THE LIFE OF JOSEPH.
1. Its outward circumstances.
(1) Chequered with misfortune. It is the law of our humanity, as that of Christ, that we must be perfected through suffering. And he who has not discerned the Divine sacredness of sorrow, and the profound meaning which is concealed in pain, has yet to learn what life is. The Cross, manifested as the necessity of the highest life, alone interprets it.
(2) Besides this, obloquy was part of Josephs portion. His brethren, even his father, counted him a vain dreamer, full of proud imaginings. He languished long in a dungeon with a stain upon his character. He was subjected to almost all the bitterness which changes the milk of kindly feelings into gall; to Potiphars fickleness, to slander, to fraternal envy, to the ingratitude of friendship in the neglect of the chief butler, who left his prison and straightway forgot his benefactor. Out of all which a simple lesson arises, Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils. Yet that may be over-stated. Nothing chills the heart like universal distrust. Nothing freezes the genial current of the soul so much as doubts of human nature. Human goodness is no dream. Surely we have met unselfishness, and love, and honour among men. Surely we have seen, and not in dreams, pure benevolence beaming from human countenances. Surely we have met with integrity that the worlds wealth could not bribe, and attachment which might bear the test of any sacrifice. It is not so much the depravity as the frailty of men, that makes it impossible to count on them.
(3) Success, besides, marked the career of Joseph. Let us not take half views of men and things. The woof of life is dark; that we granted, but it is shot through a web of brightness. Accordingly, in Josephs case, even in his worst days, you find a kind of balance, to be weighed against his sorrows. The doctrine of compensation is found through all. Amidst the schemings of his brothers envy he had his fathers love. In his slavery he had some recompense in feeling that he was gradually winning his masters confidence. In his dungeon he possessed the consciousness of innocence, and the grateful respect of his fellow prisoners.
2. The spirit of Josephs inner life.
(1) Forgiveness. The Christian spirit before the Christian times.
(2) Simplicity of character. He bore a simple, unsophisticated heart amidst the pomp of an Egyptian court.
(3) Benevolence. This was manifested in the generosity with which he entertained his brethren, and in the discriminating tenderness with which he provided his best beloved brothers feast with extraordinary delicacies.
II. THE DEATH OF JOSEPH WAS IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS LIFE.
1. The funeral was a homage paid to goodness. Little is said in the text of Josephs funeral. To know what it was, we must turn to the earlier part of the chapter, where that of Jacob is mentioned. A mourning of seventy days; a funeral whose imposing greatness astonished the Canaanites, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians. Seventy days were the time, or nearly so, fixed by custom for a royal funeral; and Jacob was so honoured, not for his own sake, but because he was Josephs father. We cannot suppose that Josephs own obsequies were on a scale less grand. Now, weigh what is implied in this. This was not the homage paid to talent, nor to wealth, nor to birth. Joseph was a foreign slave, raised to eminence by the simple power of goodness. Every man in Egypt felt, at his death, that he had lost a friend. There were thousands whose tears would fall when they recounted the preservation of lives dear to them in the years of famine, and felt that they owed those lives to Joseph. Grateful Egypt mourned the good foreigner; and, for once, the honours of this world were given to the graces of another.
2. We collect from this, besides, a hint of the resurrection of the body. The Egyptian mode of sepulture was embalming; and the Hebrews, too, attached much importance to the body after death. Joseph commanded his countrymen to preserve his bones to take away with them. In this we detect that unmistakable human craving, not only for immortality, but immortality associated with a form. The opposite to spirituality is not materialism, but sin. The form of matter does not degrade. For what is this world itself but the form of Deity, whereby the manifoldness of His mind and beauty manifests, and where in it clothes itself? It is idle to say that spirit can exist apart from form. We do not know that it can. Perhaps even the Eternal Himself is more closely bound to His works than our philosophical systems have conceived. Perhaps matter is only a mode of thought. At all events, all that we know or can know of mind exists in union with form. The resurrection of the body is the Christian verity, which meets and satisfies those cravings of the ancient Egyptian mind, that expressed themselves in the process of embalming, and the religious reverence felt for the very bones of the departed by the Hebrews. Finally, in the last will and testament of Joseph we find faith. He commanded his brethren, and through them his nation, to carry his bones with them when they migrated to Canaan. In the Epistle to the Hebrews that is reckoned an evidence of faith. By faith Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones. How did he know that his people would ever quit Egypt? We reply, by faith. Not faith in a written word, for Joseph had no Bible; rather, faith in that conviction of his own heart which is itself the substantial evidence of faith. For religious faith ever dreams of something higher, more beautiful, more perfect, than the state of things with which it feels itself surrounded. Ever, a day future lies before it; the evidence for which is its own hope. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Comfort from the thought of the eternity of God:
These words bring before us the contrast between the mortality of men and the eternity of God. They die, but He abides the King eternal, immortal, the only wise God. Now this truth is full of comfort, on the one hand, to the dying servant of God, and, on the other, to the bereaved who are called to mourn his loss.
1. It is full of comfort to the dying, for whatever of good he has done in the world shall not be lost when he is gone. In the words of the appropriate inscription on the monument to the Wesleys in Westminster Abbey, God buries the workers, but He carries on the work. The sower may die, but the seed which fell from his hands matures into a harvest which is reaped by others, and becomes in its turn the food of multitudes and the germ of many harvests more, I stood once on a Highland hill in my native land, and marked a spot upon the landscape greener than all else around. When I inquired into the reason, I learned that for many, many years there had been a village there, and that the gardens of the villagers so long under cultivation kept unwonted verdure still. So, through the operations of Gods grace, the earth is greener where His servants have been at work, though the servants themselves have long since passed away. The operations of grace, like those of Nature, go on after men have died, because God lives to maintain them, and nothing done for Him is ever allowed by Him to come to nothing. So when we are called to leave the earth, the work in which we delighted shall not be lost. We die, but God lives; and we may he sure that under His care it will flourish.
2. Then what consolation comes from the eternity of God to those who are bereaved! Look at the 90th Psalm. It was written by Moses in the wilderness, when he was depressed by the death of those who had reached mans estate when he led them out of Egypt. There came a time when he was left wellnigh alone of all his generation; and then he took his comfort out of the permanence of God, singing, Lord Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations; from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God, and by that he was upheld. We see the same thing in Davids case; for not far from the close of his life, and when many of his early companions had gone into the silent land, he wrote the 18th Psalm, in which he said, The Lord liveth, and blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted. Yes, the Lord liveth, therefore let us not refuse to be comforted when dear ones are taken from our side. He can sustain us and He will. He is as near us as He was when they were with us, and they were but the agents whom He used for our welfare. But He is not tied to any instrumentality, and He can guide, uphold, and bless by one as well as by another. He takes away the earthly prop that we may learn to lean the more thoroughly on Himself. He will surely visit us; yea, He will be ever with us, and when our death-hour comes we shall be with Him. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
All die, but Gods work proceeds
I. THAT THE MOST DISTINGUISHED SERVANTS OF GOD MUST DIE. Even the Great Master Himself died.
II. THAT THOUGH THEY DIE, THE CAUSE IN WHICH THEY WERE ENGAGED WILL MOVE ON. (R. Stodhart.)
The death of Joseph:
I. HIS BODILY FRAILTY. I die.
1. Not all his honours and dignities can exempt him. The princely robe must be exchanged for the winding-sheet.
2. Not all his eminent piety can buy him off. It is the common lot. No exception to this rule.
3. Will you not remember this? Is it wise to forget it, or try to forget. The one thing thats certain in your earthly history. Ought it to be crowded out by a multitude utterly uncertain? There is nothing else I can foresee. I cannot tell how long you will live. I cannot tell whether rich or poor, strong or weak, joyful or sorrowful. No, I cannot discern anything of the complexion of your course. But this I know, that your course will have an end. And that the day, the hour will come, when (if syllable anything) you will say, I die. That day--dont let it take you by surprise. Dont leave the preparation for death until death comes. But live habitually prepared. And see whether it is not possible to triumph over death.
II. HIS ABOUNDING FAITH.
1. See his calmness in prospect of departure. I die! Thats all he has to say about it. No fears--no doubts--of any kind whatever. No vain regrets that his life come to an end. No painful forebodings of what may follow. It is not everyone can meet the last messenger like that. But it is possible to do so. His father Jacob did the same.
2. The consolation he gives those he leaves. I die, but God will surely visit. Your earthly friend may be taken--your heavenly not forsake you. Nay l more than this--He will bring you out of this land, unto the land which He sware to, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nearly three hundred years had passed away since this oath first uttered. More than one hundred must still pass before the time for its fulfilment. How it will be fulfilled Joseph does not know. But fulfilled it must be, for God had spoken it. Mark, brethren, this triumphant faith. My bones (says this dying man) shall not rest in Egypt. You may put them in sarcophagus--but label it Passenger to Canaan. For when the people go to the promised land, take it with them. Where they go, I will go--where they rest, I will rest. And there will I be buried!
3. I call that abounding faith. So the apostle seems to think it, in Epistle to Hebrews. For he gives it a niche in that temple of faith, in chap. 11. By the side of Abel, and Noah, and Enoch--Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. Figure of Joseph, with this inscription, By faith Joseph. And was this faith a mere delusion?
III. A WORD OF APPLICATION.
1. Would not such faith be precious to you? Would it not be pleasant to be able to say, I die! without single fear. And to say to those we leave behind, God will surely?
2. Are there no precious promises for you? You are a sinner, I know--If we confess our sins. The wages of sin is death. Gift of God is eternal life. Accept these promises--go and plead them. And all fear of death taken away--Have a desire. I know you cannot take all your loved ones with you. And you may have many a fear on their behalf. Be careful for nothing. Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them. Widows trust.
3. Is there not precious confirmation of these? Ay! more precious than any Joseph ever knew. He knew there should be seed of Abraham, blessing to world--He saw bleeding lamb, emblem. But we can say the seed of Abraham has come--Great Sacrifice offered. Christ has died. How all the precious promises sealed with precious blood. He that spared not. (F. Tucker, B. A.)
Josephs dying assurance to his brethren:
I. THE REFLECTION WHICH JOSEPH MAKES UPON HIS PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES. I die, or am dying.
II. THE ASSURANCE HE GIVES THEM, THAT GOD WOULD VISIT THEM.
III. The further assurance he gives them, THAT GOD WOULD BRING THEM INTO THE LAND OF CANAAN.
Application:
I. To aged Christians.
1. Frequently to think and speak of dying.
2. Reflect that God will visit and take care of your posterity when you are gone.
3. Remind your posterity of this, for their encouragement, when you are dying and leaving the world, that God will surely visit them.
II. To those descendants of good men, who are in the prime, or middle of their days.
1. Encourage yourselves with this thought, that God will surely visit you when your parents and friends die.
2. Pray earnestly for His visits.
3. Be prepared to receive His visits. (3. Often.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v22 Gen_50:23. Of the third generation.] “Either sons belonging to,…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_50:23. Of the third generation.] “Either sons belonging to, or sons of, the third generation. If the former, then his (Joseph’s) great,—if the latter, his great-great-grandchildren.” (Alford.)—Were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.] The meaning is, that they were placed upon his knees, when new-born, for his recognition and blessing (Gen_30:3).
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Gen_50:25. Ye shall carry up my bones from hence.] The record of his burial is preserved (Exo_13:19; Jos_24:32). It was at Shechem.—
Gen_50:26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt] “The mummy of Joseph was put, as was the duty of the embalmers, in a chest of wood, such as may be seen in our museums to this day.” (Alford.)
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_50:22-26
DYING JOSEPH
I. Satisfied with the goodness of the Lord. He had his misfortunes, his days of evil; but they were the consequences of his integrity, not of his sin. The “evil report” carried to his father, though prompted by a sense of duty, was the occasion of his slavery. His invincible purity was the cause of his imprisonment. Yet his career was, on the whole marked by success. “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man.” For eighty years he lived as prime minister of Egypt, and died at the age of an hundred and ten years. “He saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.” He had seen the goodness of the Lord in a long life, an honoured old age, and a prosperous family. The morning of his life was clouded, but the clouds had passed away, and his evening sky is pure.
II. Full of faith. He was one of those heroes of faith commended in Hebrews 11. His faith made him,
1. Sure of God’s Covenant. “God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land, unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” (Gen_50:24.) But, how did Joseph know that his people would ever quit Egypt? We answer, by faith. He trusted in God. He had in his soul the sure conviction of things not seen. Faith looks to the future, but, at the same time, gives to that future a substantial existence; so that the soul is conscious of a higher and more perfect state of things than that which surrounds it here. Joseph was sure of that covenant which promised deliverance and the possession of the good land. Faith made him,
2. Superior to the world. Joseph was an illustration of St. Paul’s words, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” His dying words show that, after all, he was very little at home in Egypt, though, to all outward appearance, he was one of its people. He bore an Egyptian name—a high sounding title. He married an Egyptian woman of rank. But he was still an Israelite at heart, with all the convictions, aims, and hopes of his nation. The pomp and state in which he lived afforded him no true rest for his heart and soul. Prime Minister of Egypt as he was, his last words open a window in his soul, and declare how little he belonged to that state of things in which he had been content to live. He was content to feel and know, that like his fathers, he was but a stranger and a sojourner. Dying, he said, “Carry up my bones from hence.” His faith made him superior to the world in which he lived and moved. He passed the time of his sojourning there as an alien; for his true home and all his desire was the Promised Land. And faith ought to produce such effects in us. The believer is not of this world. His true home is on high. His “life is hid with Christ in God.” The centre of his interest is changed from earth to heaven. His faith also made him,
3. The possessor of immortality. His commandment concerning his bones may have been dictated by a natural instinct. We cherish a feeling that, somehow, after death, our bodies still remain part of ourselves. Our ideas of existence are all associated with material substance and form. Joseph may also have been influenced by a natural desire that his grave should not be among strangers, but among his own kindred. When old Barzillai was offered by the king to spend the remnant of his age in the palace at Jerusalem, he said—“Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in mine own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and my mother.” (2Sa_19:37.) But whatever other motives Joseph had, this is certain, that he believed in God’s covenant promise and claimed his share in it. God had proclaimed Himself to the patriarchs as their God. His covenant relation to them implied a life beyond the grave. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Men who stand so with God can never really die. The soul that has once looked up, by faith, into the face of its unseen Father, cannot be left in the grave. The patriarchs still exist. They are before God, and beneath His eye. While they were living here they may have wandered far in sin, darkness, and error. They may have served other gods, as Abraham did before he was called to the life of faith; but the one true God, who is the Judge of all, is their God now. Joseph felt that within him which triumphed over death. All was failing him on earth, but his faith held on to God. When his brethren stood around his dying bed, they could not help fearing that when this powerful prince was gone, disaster must fall upon their people. But the dying man lays firm hold upon the promise, that word of God which cannot pass away. “I die,” he says, but “God will surely visit you.” He is not going to die. He lives on for ever to be the portion and strength of his people when their heart and flesh fail.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_50:22-23. If children’s children are the glory of old men, they were so in a very eminent degree to Joseph, who was assured that the blessings of Divine goodness should descend upon his head in the persons of his descendants.—(Bush.)
Gen_50:24. It is clear that when Joseph was dying, his thoughts were not engrossed by his own concerns, although he was on the borders of the everlasting world. His mind was at perfect ease concerning his own state; but he did what he could to console the hearts of his brethren, and of all his father’s house, whom his death was depriving of their last earthly friend. He does not refer them to any new discoveries made to himself, but to the well-known promise made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. When there was no written word of God, His afflicted people found a sufficient ground for their faith and hope in the sure promises handed down from father to son. How superior are our privileges, who enjoy that precious volume filled with promises as the heaven is with stars.—(Bush.)
That is the best thought of death, to remember the promise of God and His gracious redemption.—(Lange).
Gen_50:25. Joseph saw, by that creative faith, his family in prosperity, even in affluence; but he felt that this was not their rest. A higher life than that of affluence, a nobler destiny than that of stagnant rest, there must be for them in the future; else all the anticipations of a purer earth, and a holier world, which imagination bodied forth within his soul, were empty dreams, not the intuitions of God’s Spirit. It was this idea of perfection, which was “the substance of things hoped for,” that carried him far beyond the period of his own death, and made him feel himself a partaker of his nation’s blessed future. They who have lived as Joseph lived, just in proportion to their purity and unselfishness, must believe in immortality. They cannot but believe it. The eternal existence is already pulsing in their veins; the life of trust and high hope, and sublime longings after perfection, with which the decay of the frame has nothing at all to do. That is gone—yes—but it was not that life in which they lived; and when it finished, what had that ruin to do with the destruction of the immortal? Heaven begun is the living proof that makes the heaven to come credible. “Christ in you” is “the hope of glory.”—(Robertson).
Gen_50:26. We collect from this a hint of the resurrection of the body. The Egyptian mode of sepulture was by embalming; and the Hebrews, too, attached much importance to the body after death. Joseph commanded his countrymen to preserve his bones to take away with them. In this we detect that unmistakable human craving, not only for immortality, but immortality associated with a form. The Egyptians had a kind of feeling, that while the mummy lasted, the man had not yet perished from earth. Christianity does not disappoint, but rather meets that feeling. It grants to the materialist, by the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that future life shall be associated with a material form. It grants to the spiritualist all he ought to wish, that the spirit shall be free from evil. For it is a mistake of ultra spiritualism to connect degradation with the thought of a risen body; or to suppose that a mind, unbound by the limitations of space, is a more spiritual idea of resurrection than the other. The opposite to spirituality is not materialism, but sin; the form of matter does not degrade.—(Robertson).
It all ends with the coffin, the mourning for the dead, the funeral procession, and the glance into the future life. The age of promise is over; there follows now a silent chasm of four hundred years, until out of the rushes of the Nile there is lifted up a weeping infant in a little reed-formed ark. The age of law begins, which endures for fifteen hundred years. Then in Bethlehem—Ephratah is there born another infant, and with him begins the happy time, the day of light, and quickening grace.—(Krummacher.)
The sacred writer here takes leave of the chosen family, and closes the Bible of the sons of Israel. It is truly a wonderful book. It lifts the veil of mystery that hangs over the present condition of the human race. It records the origin and fall of man, and thus explains the co-existence of moral evil and a moral sense, and the hereditary memory of God and judgment in the soul of man. It gradually unfolds the purpose and method of grace through a deliverer who is successively announced the seed of the woman, of Shem, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah. So much of this plan of mercy is revealed from time to time to the human race as comports with the progress they have made in the education of the intellectual, moral, and active faculties. This only authentic epitome of primeval history is worthy of the constant study of intelligent and responsible man.—(Murphy.)
THE END.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv25–26
Genesis
A CALM EVENING, PROMISING A BRIGHT MORNING
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JOSEPH’S FAITH
Gen 50:25.
This is the one act of Joseph’s life which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews selects as the sign that he too lived by faith. ‘By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.’
It was at once a proof of how entirely he believed God’s promise, and of how earnestly he longed for its fulfilment. It was a sign too of how little he felt himself at home in Egypt, though to outward appearance he had become completely one of its people. The ancestral spirit was in him true and strong though he was ‘separate from his brethren.’ He bore an Egyptian name, a swelling title, he married an Egyptian woman, he had an Egyptian priest for father-in-law, but he was an Israelite in heart; and in the midst of official cares and a surfeit of honours, his desires turned away from them all towards the land promised by God to his fathers.
And when he lay dying, he could not bear to think that his bones should moulder in the country where his life had been spent. ‘I know that this is not our land after all; swear to me that when the promise that has tarried so long comes at last, you will take me, all that is left of me, and carry it up, and lay it in some corner of the blessed soil, that I too may somehow share in the inheritance of His people. God shall surely visit you. Carry my bones up hence.’
Perhaps there is in this wish a trace of something besides faith in God’s promises. Of course, there is a natural sentiment which no clearness of knowledge of a future state wholly dispels. We all feel as if somehow our bodies remain a part of ourselves even after death, and we have wishes where they shall lie. But perhaps Joseph had a more definite belief on the matter than that. What theory of another life does an Egyptian mummy express? Why all that sedulous care to preserve the poor relics? Was it not a consequence of the belief that somehow or other there could be no life without a body, and that in some mysterious way the preservation of that contributed to the continuance of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and put into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the land of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry him thither. Be that as it may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation of flesh and spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too possess, that our graves may not be among strangers, but beside our father’s and our mother’ s-that is not the main thing in this fact. The main thing is that this dying man believed God’s promise, and claimed his share in it.
And on this the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever he was, fastens. Neglecting the differences in knowledge between Joseph and the Christians whom he addresses, and pointing back to the strong confidence in God and longing for participation in the promises which brightened the glazing eye and gave him ‘hope in his death,’ he declares that the principle of action which guided this man in the dim twilight of early revelation, is that same faith which ought to guide us who live in the full light of the unsetting sun.
Taking, then, this incident, with the New Testament commentary upon it, it leads us to a truth which we often lose sight of, but which is indispensable if we would understand the relations of the earlier and later days.
1. Faith is always the same, though knowledge varies.-There is a vast difference between a man’s creed and a man’s faith. The one may vary, does vary within very wide limits; the other remains the same. The things believed have been growing from the beginning-the attitude of mind and will by which they have been grasped has been the same from the beginning, and will be the same to the end. And not only so, but it will be substantially the same in heaven as it is on earth. For there is but one bond which unites men to God; and that emotion of loving trust is one and the same in the dim twilight of the world’s morning, and amid the blaze of the noonday of heaven. The contents of faith, that on which it relies, the treasure it grasps, changes; the essence of faith, the act of reliance, the grasp which holds the treasure, does not change.
It is difficult to decide how much Joseph’s gospel contained. From our point of view it was very imperfect. The spiritual life was nourished in him and in the rest of ‘the world’s grey fathers’ on what looks to us but like seven basketsful of fragments. They had promises, indeed, in which we, looking at them with the light of fulfilment blazing upon them, can see the broad outlines of the latest revelation, and can trace the future flower all folded together and pale in the swelling bud. But we shall err greatly if we suppose, as we are apt to do, that those promises were to them anything like what they are to us. It requires a very vigorous exercise of very rare gifts to throw ourselves back to their position, and to gain any vivid and approximately accurate notion of the theology of these ancient lovers of God.
This, at any rate, we may, perhaps, say: they had a sure and clear knowledge of the living God, who had talked with them as with a friend; they knew His inspiring, guiding presence; they knew the forgiveness of sins; they knew, though they very dimly understood, the promise, ‘In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ How far they looked across the gulf of death and beheld anything-even cloudland-on the other side, is a question very hard to answer, and about which confident dogmatism, either affirmative or negative, is unwarranted. But it is to be remembered that, whether they had any notion of a future state or no, they had a promise which fulfilled for them substantially the same office as that does for us. The promise of the land of Canaan gleaming before them through the mists, bare and ‘earthly’ as it seems to us when compared with our hope of an inheritance incorruptible in the heavens, is, by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, identified with that hope of ours, for he expressly says that, whilst they were looking for an earthly Canaan, they were ‘desiring a better country, that is an heavenly.’ So that, whether they definitely expected a life after death or not, the anticipation of the land promised to them and to their fathers held the same place in their creed, and as a moral agent in their lives, which the rest that remains for the people of God ought to do in ours.
And it is to be taken into account also that fellowship with God has in it the germ of the assurance of immortality. It seems almost impossible to suppose a state of mind in which a man living in actual communion with God shall believe that death is to end it all. Christ’s proof that immortal life was revealed in the Pentateuch, was the fact that God there called Himself the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob; by which our Lord meant us to learn that men who are brought into personal relations with God can never die, that it is impossible that a soul which has looked up to the face of the unseen Father with filial love should be left in the grave, or that those who are separated to be His, as He is theirs, should see corruption. The relation once established is eternal, and some more or less definite expectation of that eternity seems inseparable from the consciousness of the relation.
But be that as it may, and even taking the widest possible view of the contents of the patriarchal creed, what a rude outline it looks beside ours! Can there be anything in common between us? Can they be in any way a pattern for us? Yes; as I said, faith is one thing, creed is another. Joseph and his ancestors were joined to God by the very same bond which unites us to Him. There has never been but one path of life: ‘They trusted God and were lightened, and their faces were not ashamed.’ In that Old Covenant the one thing needful was trust in the living Jehovah. In the New, the one thing needful is the very same emotion, directed to the very same Lord, manifested now and incarnate in the divine Son, our Saviour. In this exercise of loving confidence, in which reason and will and affection blend in the highest energy and holiest action, Joseph and we are one. Across the gulf of centuries we clasp hands; and in despite of all superficial differences of culture and civilisation, and all deeper differences in knowledge of God and His loving will, Pharaoh’s prime minister, and the English workman, and the Hindoo ryot, may be alike in what is deepest-the faith which grasps God. How all that mysterious Egyptian life fades away as we think of the fundamental identity of religious emotion then and now! It disguises our brother from us, as it did from the wandering Arabs who came to buy corn, and could not recognise in the swarthy, imperious Egyptian, with strange head-dress and unknown emblems hanging by chains of gold about his neck, the fair boy whom they had sold to the merchants. But beneath it all is the brother’s heart, fed by the same life-blood which feeds ours. He trusts in God, he expects a future because God has promised it, and, therefore, he is separated from those among whom he dwells, and knit to us in this far-off island of the sea, who so many centuries after are partakers of like precious faith.
And incomplete as his creed was, Joseph may have been a better Christian than some of us, and was so, if what he knew nourished his spiritual life more than what we know nourishes ours, and if his heart and will twined more tenaciously round the fragments of revelation which he possessed, and drew from them more support and strength than we do from the complete Gospel which we have.
Brethren, what makes us Christians is not the theology we have in our heads, but the faith and love we have in our hearts. We must, indeed, have a clear statement of truth in orderly propositions-that is, a system of dogmas-to have anything to trust to at all. There can be no saving faith in an unseen Person, except through the medium of thoughts concerning Him, which thoughts put into words are a creed. The antithesis which is often eagerly urged upon us-not doctrines, but Christ-is a very incomplete and misleading one. ‘Christ’ is a mere name, empty of all significance till it is filled with definite statements of who and what Christ is. But whilst I, for my part, believe that we must have doctrines to make Christ a reality and an object of faith to grasp at all, I would urge all the more earnestly, because I thus believe, that, when we have these doctrines, it is not the creed that saves, but the faith. We are united to Christ, not by the doctrine of His nature and work, needful as that is, but by trusting in Him as that which the doctrine declares Him to be-Redeemer, Friend, Sacrifice, Divine Lover of our souls. Let us always remember that it is not the amount of religious knowledge which I have got, but the amount which I use, that determines my religious position and character. Most of us have in our creeds principles that have no influence upon our moral and active life; and, if so, it matters not one whit how pure, how accurate, how comprehensive, how consistent, how scriptural my conceptions of the Gospel may be. If they are not powers in my soul, they only increase my responsibility and my liability to condemnation. The dry light of the understanding is of no use to anybody. You must turn your creed into a faith before it has power to bless and save.
There are hosts of so-called Christians who get no more good out of the most solemn articles of their orthodox belief than if they were heathens. What in the use of your saying that you believe in God the Father Almighty, when there is no child’s love and happy confidence in your heart? What the better are you for believing in Jesus Christ, His divine nature, His death and glory, when you have no reliance on Him, nor any least flutter of trembling love towards Him? Is your belief in the Holy Ghost of the smallest consequence, if you do not yield to His hallowing power? What does it matter that you believe in the forgiveness of sins, so long as you do not care a rush whether yours are pardoned or no? And is it anything to you or to God that you believe in the life everlasting, if all your work, and hopes, and longings are confined to ‘this bank and shoal of time’? Are you any more a Christian because of all that intellectual assent to these solemn verities? Is not your life like some secularised monastic chamber, with holy texts carved on the walls, and saintly images looking down from glowing windows on revellers and hucksters who defile its floor? Your faith, not your creed, determines your religion. Many a ‘true believer’ is a real ‘infidel.’
Thank God that the soul may be wedded to Christ, even while a very partial conception of Christ is in the understanding. The more complete and adequate the creed, indeed, the mightier and more fruitful in blessing will the faith naturally be; and every portion of the full orb of the Sun of Righteousness which is eclipsed by the shadow of our intellectual misconceptions, will diminish the light and warmth which falls upon our souls. It is no part of our duty to pronounce what is the minimum of a creed which faith needs for its object. For myself, I confess that I do not understand how the spiritual life can be sustained in its freshness and fervour, in its fulness and reality, without a belief in the divinity and saving work of Jesus Christ. But with that belief for the centre which faith grasps, the rest may vary indefinitely. All who stand around that centre, some nearer, some further off, some mazed in errors which others have cast behind them, some of them seeing and understanding more, and some less of Him and of His work-are His. He loves them, and will save them all. Knowledge varies. The faith which unites to God remains the same.
2. We may gather from this incident another consideration, namely, that 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 Pharaoh’s 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 the midst of which he had been content to live. This man, too, surrounded by an ancient civilisation, and dwelling among granite temples and solid pyramids and firm-based sphinxes, the very emblems of eternity, confessed that here he had no continuing city, but sought one to come. As truly as his ancestors who dwelt in tabernacles, like Abraham journeying with his camels and herds, and pitching his tent outside the walls of Hebron, like Isaac in the grassy plains of the South country, like Jacob keeping himself apart from the families of the land, their descendant, an heir with them of the same promise, showed that he too regarded himself as a ‘stranger and a sojourner.’ Dying, he said, ‘Carry my bones up from hence. Therefore we may be sure that, living, the hope of the inheritance must have burned in his heart as a hidden light, and made him an alien everywhere but on its blessed soil.
And faith will always produce just such effects. In exact proportion to its strength, that living trust in God will direct our thoughts and desires to the ‘King in His beauty, and the land that is very far off.’ In proportion as our thoughts and desires are thus directed, they will be averted from what is round about us; and the more longingly our eyes are fixed on the furthest horizon, the less shall we see the flowers at our feet. To behold God pales the otherwise dazzling lustre of created brightness. They whose souls are fed with heavenly manna, and who have learned that it is their necessary food, will scent no dainties in the fleshpots of Egypt, for all their rank garlic and leeks. It is simply a question as to which of two classes of ideas occupies the thoughts, and which of two sets of affections engages the heart. If vulgar brawling and rude merrymakers fill the inn, there will be no room for the pilgrim thoughts which bear the Christ in their bosom, and have angels for their guard; and if these holy wayfarers enter, their serene presence will drive forth the noisy crowd, and turn the place into a temple. Nothing but Christian faith gives to the furthest future the solidity and definiteness which it must have, if it is to be a breakwater for us against the fluctuating sea of present cares and thoughts.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must be through their thoughts. It must become intelligible, clear, real. It must be brought out of the flickering moonlight of fancy and surmises, into the sunlight of certitude and knowledge. Dreams, and hopes, and peradventures are too unsubstantial stuff to be a bulwark against the very real, undeniable present. And such certitude is given through faith which grasps the promises of God, and twines the soul round the risen Saviour so closely that it sits with Him in heavenly places. Such certitude is given by faith alone.
If the unseen is ever to rule in men’s lives, it must become not only an object for certain knowledge, but also for ardent wishes. The vague sense of possible evils lurking in its mysteries must be taken out of the soul, and there must come somehow an assurance that all it wraps in its folds is joy and peace. It must cease to be doubtful, and must seem infinitely desirable. 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? Where besides, then, can there be found a counterpoise weighty enough to heave up the souls that are laden with the material, and cleaving to the dust? Nowhere. The only possible deliverance from the tyrannous pressure of the trifles amidst which we live is in having the thoughts familiarised with Christ in heaven, which will dwarf all that is on earth, and in having the affections fixed on Him, which will emancipate them from the pains and sorrows that ever wait upon love of the mutable and finite creatures.
Let us remember that such deliverance from the present is the condition of all noble, joyous, pure life. It needs Christianity to effect it indeed, but it does not need Christianity to see how desirable it is, and how closely connected with whatever is lovely and of good report is this detachment from the near and the visible. A man that is living for remote objects is, in so far, a better man than one who is living for the present. He will become thereby the subject of a mental and moral discipline that will do him good. And, on the other hand, a life which has no far-off light for its guiding star, has none of the unity, of the self-restraint, of the tension, of the conscious power which makes our days noble and strong. Whether he accomplish them or fail, whether they be high or low, the man who lets future objects rule present action is in advance of others. ‘To scorn delights and live laborious days,’ which is the prerogative of the man with a future, is always best. He is rather a beast than a man, who floats lazily on the warm, sunny wavelets as they lift him in their roll, and does not raise his head high enough above them to see and steer for the solid shore where they break. But only he has found the full, controlling, blessing, quickening power that lies in the thought of the future, and in life directed by it, to whom that future is all summed in the name of his Saviour. 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 is fellowship with Christ, and joy in the heavens. Having these hopes, it will be our own faults if we are not pure and gentle, calm in changes and sorrows, armed against frowning dangers, and proof against smiling temptations. They are our armour-’Put on the breastplate of faith . . .and for an helmet the hope of salvation.’
A very sharp test for us all lies in these thoughts. This change of the centre of interest from earth to heaven is the uniform effect of faith. What, then, of us? On Sundays we profess to seek for a city; but what about the week, from Monday morning to Saturday night? What difference does our faith make in the current of our lives? How far are they unlike-I do not mean externally and in occupations, but in principle-the lives of men who ‘have no hope’? Are you living for other objects than theirs? Are you nurturing other hopes in your hearts, as a man may guard a little spark of fire with both his hands, to light him amid the darkness and the howling storm? Do you care to detach yourself from the world? or are you really ‘men of this world, which have their portion in this life,’ even while Christians by profession? A question which I have no right to ask, and no power to answer but for myself; a question which it concerns your souls to ask and to answer very definitely for yourselves. There is no need to preach an exaggerated and impossible abstinence from work and enjoyment in the world where God has put us, or to set up a standard ‘too high for mortal life beneath the sky.’ Whatever call there may have sometimes been to protest against a false asceticism, and withdrawing from active life for the sake of one’s personal salvation, times are changed now. What we want to-day is: ‘Come ye out and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing.’ In my conscience I believe that multitudes are having the very heart of the Christian life eaten out by absorption in earthly pursuits and loves, and by the effacing of all distinction in outward life, in occupation, in recreation, in tastes and habits, between people who call themselves Christians, and people who do not care at all whether there is another world or not. There can be but little strength in our faith if it does not compel us to separation. If it has any power to do anything at all, it will certainly do that. If we are naturalised as citizens there, we cannot help being aliens here. ‘Abraham,’ says the New Testament, ‘dwelt in tabernacles, for he looked for a city.’ Just so! The tent life will always be the natural one for those who feel that their mother-country is beyond the stars. We should be like the wandering Swiss, who hear in a strange land the rude, old melody that used to echo among the Alpine pastures. The sweet, sad tones kindle home-sickness that will not let them rest. No matter where they are, or what they are doing, no matter what honour they have carved out for themselves with their swords, they throw off the livery of the alien king which they have worn, and turning their backs upon pomp and courts, seek the free air of the mountains, and find home better than a place by a foreign throne. Let us esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, and go forth to Him without the camp, for here have we no continuing city.
3. Again, we have here an instance that Faith makes men energetic in the duties of the present.
The remarks which I have been making must be completed by that consideration, or they become hurtful and one-sided. You know that common sarcasm, that Christianity degrades this present life by making it merely the portal to a better, and teaches men to think of it as only evil, to be scrambled through anyhow. I confess that I wish the sneer were a less striking contrast to what Christian people really think. But it is almost as gross a caricature of the teaching of Christianity as it is of the practice of Christians.
Take this story of Joseph as giving us a truer view of the effect on present action of faith in, and longing for, God’s future. He was, as I said, a true Hebrew all his days. But that did not make him run away from Pharaoh’s service. He lived by hope, and that made him the better worker in the passing moment, and kept him tugging away all his life at the oar, administering the affairs of a kingdom.
Of course it is so. The one thing which saves this life from being contemptible is the thought of another. The more profoundly we feel the reality of the great eternity whither we are being drawn, the greater do all things here become. They are made less in their power to absorb or trouble, but they are made infinitely greater in importance as preparations for what is beyond. When they are first they are small, when they are second they are great. When the mist lifts, and shows the snowy summits of the ‘mountains of God,’ the nearer lower ranges, which we thought the highest, dwindle indeed, but gain in sublimity and meaning by the loftier peaks to which they lead up. Unless men and women live for eternity, they are ‘merely players,’ and all their busy days ‘like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ How absurd, how monotonous, how trivial it all is, all this fret and fume, all these dying joys and only less fleeting pains, all this mill-horse round of work which we pace, unless we are, mill-horse-like, driving a shaft that goes through the wall, and grinds something that falls into ‘bags that wax not old’ on the other side. The true Christian faith teaches us that this world is the workshop where God makes men, and the next, the palace where He shows them. All here is apprenticeship and training. It is of no more value than the attitudes into which gymnasts throw themselves, but as a discipline most precious. The end makes the means important; and if we believe that God is preparing us for immortal life with Him by all our work, then we shall do it with a will: otherwise we may well be languid as we go on for thirty or forty years, some of us, doing the same trivial things, and getting nothing out of them but food, occupation of time, and a mechanical aptitude for doing what is not worth doing.
It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground. A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree-tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. But when we see that all paths lead to heaven, and that our eternity is affected by our acts in time, then it is blessed to gaze, it is possible to love, the earthly shadows of the uncreated beauty, it is worth while to work.
Remember, too, that faith will energise us for any sort of work, seeing that it raises all to one level and brings all under one sanction, and shows all as cooperating to one end. Look at that muster-roll of heroes of faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and mark the variety of grades of human life represented there-statesmen, soldiers, prophets, shepherds, widow women, martyrs-all fitted for their tasks and delivered from the snare that was in their calling, by that faith which raised them above the world, and therefore fitted them to come down on the world with stronger strokes of duty. This is the secret of doing with our might whatsoever our hand finds to do-to trust Christ, to live with Him, and by the hope of the inheritance.
Then, brethren, let us see that our clearer revelation bears fruit in a faith in the great divine promises as calm and firm as this dying patriarch had. Then the same power will work not only the same detachment and energy in life, but the same calmness and solemn light of hope in death. It is very beautiful to notice how Joseph dying almost overleaps the thought of death as a very small matter. His brethren who stood by his bedside might well fear what might be the consequences to their people when the powerful protector, the prime minister of the kingdom, was gone. But the dying man has firm hold of God’s promises, and he knows that these will be fulfilled, whether he live or no. ‘I die,’ says he, ‘but God shall surely visit you. He is not going to die; and though I stand no more before Pharaoh, you will be safe.’
Thus we may contemplate our own going away, or the departure of the dearest from our homes, and of the most powerful for good in human affairs, and in the faith of God’s true promises may feel that no one is indispensable to our well-being or to the world’s good. God’s chariot is self-moving. One after another, who lays his hand upon the ropes, and hauls for a little space, drops out of the ranks. But it will go on, and in His majesty He will ride prosperously.
And for himself, too, the dying man felt that death was a very small matter. ‘Whether I live or die I shall have a share in the promise. Living, perhaps my feet would stand upon its soil; dying, my bones will rest there.’ And we, who know a resurrection, have in it that which makes Joseph’s fond fancy a reality, and reduces the importance of that last enemy to nothing. Some will be alive and remain till the coming of the Lord, some will be laid in the grave till His voice calls them forth, and carries their bones up from hence to the land of the inheritance. But whether we be of generations that fell on sleep looking for the promise of His coming, or whether of the generation that go forth to meet Him when He comes, it matters not. All who have lived by faith will then be gathered at last. The brightest hopes of the present will be forgotten. Then, when we too shall stand in the latter day, wearing the likeness of His glory, and extricated wholly from the bondage of corruption and the dust of death, we, perfected in body, soul, and spirit, shall enter the calm home, where we shall change the solitude of the desert and the transitoriness of the tent and the dangers of the journey, for the society and the stability and the security of the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v22 The Death of Joseph
The Death of Joseph
v. 22. And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his father’s house. And Joseph lived an hundred and ten years, thus enjoying the love and the reverence of the Egyptians for eighty years.
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v. 23. And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation; the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were brought up upon Joseph’s knees. He lived to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren, thus experiencing what it means that God shows mercy to the third and fourth generation of them that love Him and keep His commandments.
v. 24. And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die; and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which He sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. It was his dying message, prophetical in tone, breathing his faith in the fulfillment of the divine promise, Gen 46:4-5.
v. 25. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. Like his father, he did not want his bones to rest in strange ground, but his very burial should express his faith in the patriarchal blessing and in the Messianic promise. He was sure that the Lord would visit His people with His grace and mercy. That is the final test, if a person retains his faith until the end,
v. 26. So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old; and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt, in a chest of sycamore wood such as was used to keep a mummy until the time of burial. The children of Israel kept the oath which their fathers had sworn to Joseph. When they left Egypt, they carried the mummy of Joseph along with them, Exo 13:19, and when they arrived in Canaan, they buried him in the field of Jacob at Shechem, Jos 24:32. From Joseph we learn to set our hope forward to the great Land of Promise above and patiently to await the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv22, 24 one hundred ten years
one hundred ten years
"110 years" (See: Numbers)
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Ephraim's children to the third generation
"Ephraim's children and grandchildren"
Machir
This is the name of Joseph's grandson. (See: How to Translate Names)
who were placed on the knees of Joseph
This expression means that Joseph adopted these children of Machir as his own children. This means they would have special inheritance rights from Joseph. (See: Idiom)
translationWords
Egypt
year
Ephraim
generation
Manasseh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv22, 23, 24, 26 50:22-23 Joseph lived to see his great-great-grandchildren by Ephraim,…
50:22-23 Joseph lived to see his great-great-grandchildren by Ephraim, and his great-grandchildren by Manasseh—a sign of God’s blessing (see Ps 128:6; Prov 17:6; Isa 53:10).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.