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| 50 | Genesis |
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| 1 |
Then Joseph threw himself upon his father, weeping and kissing his face. | |
| 2 |
He ordered the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel, and they did so, | |
| 3 |
finishing the task in forty days, which was the usual time for embalming. The Egyptians mourned him for seventy days; | |
| 4 |
and then, when the days of mourning for Israel were over, Joseph approached members of Pharaoh's household and said, 'If I can count on your goodwill, then speak for me to Pharaoh; tell him that | |
| 5 |
my father made me take an oath, saying, "I am dying. Bury me in the grave that I bought for myself in Canaan." Ask him to let me go up and bury my father, and afterwards I will return.' | |
| 6 |
Pharaoh answered, 'Go and bury your father, as he has made you swear to do.' | |
| 7 |
So Joseph went to bury his father, accompanied by all Pharaoh's courtiers, the elders of his household, and all the elders of Egypt, | |
| 8 |
together with all Joseph's own household, his brothers, and his father's household; only their dependants, with the flocks and herds, were left in Goshen. | |
| 9 |
He took with him chariots and horsemen ; they were a very great company. | |
| 10 |
When they came to the threshing-floor of Atad beside the river Jordan, they raised a loud and bitter lament; and there Joseph observed seven days' mourning for his father. | |
| 11 |
When the Canaanites who lived there saw this mourning at the threshing-floor of Atad, they said, 'How bitterly the Egyptians are mourning!'; accordingly they named the place beside the Jordan Abel-mizraim . | |
| 12 |
Thus Jacob's sons did what he had told them to do. | |
| 13 |
They took him to Canaan and buried him in the cave on the plot of land at Machpelah, the land which Abraham had bought as a burial-place from Ephron the Hittite, to the east of Mamre. | |
| 14 |
Then, after he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone up with him. | |
| 15 |
When their father was dead Joseph's brothers were afraid and said, 'What if Joseph should bear a grudge against us and pay us out for all the harm that we did to him?' | Joseph reassures his brothers. Gn.50.15-21 |
| 16 |
They therefore approached Joseph with these words: 'In his last words to us before he died, your father gave us | |
| 17 |
this message for you: "I ask you to forgive your brothers' crime and wickedness; I know they did you harm." So now forgive our crime, we beg; for we are servants of your father's God.' When they said this to him, Joseph wept. | |
| 18 |
His brothers also wept and prostrated themselves before him; they said, 'You see, we are your slaves.' | |
| 19 |
But Joseph said to them, 'Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God? | |
| 20 |
You meant to do me harm; but God meant to bring good out of it by preserving the lives of many people, as we see today. | |
| 21 |
Do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your dependants.' Thus he comforted them and set their minds at rest. | |
| 22 |
Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's household. He lived there to be a hundred and ten years old | Joseph's death. Gn.50.22-26 |
| 23 |
and saw Ephraim's children to the third generation; he also recognized as his the children of Manasseh's son Machir. | |
| 24 |
He said to his brothers, 'I am dying; but God will not fail to come to your aid and take you from here to the land which he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.' | |
| 25 |
He made the sons of Israel take an oath, saying, 'When God thus comes to your aid, you must take my bones with you from here.' | |
| 26 |
So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. He was embalmed and laid in a coffin in Egypt. | |
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