John Gill Commentary Genesis 50

And Joseph fell upon his father's face Laid his own face to the cold face and pale cheeks of his dead father, out of his tender affection for him, and grief at parting with him; this shows that Joseph had been present from the time his father sent for him, and all the while he had been blessing the tribes, and giving orders about his funeral:

and wept upon him ; which to do for and over the dead is neither unlawful nor unbecoming, provided it is not carried to excess, as the instances of David, Christ, and others show:

and kissed him ; taking his farewell of him, as friends used to do, when parting and going a long journey, as death is. This was practised by Heathens, who had a notion that the soul went out of the body by the mouth, and they in this way received it into themselves: so Augustus Caesar died in the kisses of Livia, and Drusius in the embraces and kisses of Caesar ^F23 .

Joseph no doubt at this time closed the eyes of his father also, as it is said he should, and as was usual; see (Genesis 46:4) .

FOOTNOTES:

• F23: Vid. Kirchman. de Funer. Rom. l. 1. c. 5.

And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm
his father
Which he did, not merely because it was the custom of the Egyptians, but because it was necessary, his father's corpse had to be carried into Canaan to be interred there, which would require time; and therefore it was proper to use some means to preserve it, and these men were expert in this business, which was a branch of the medicinal art, as Pliny ^F24 and Mela ^F25 suggest; and Joseph had more than one of these, as great personages have physicians ready to attend them on any occasion, as kings and princes, and such was Joseph, being viceroy of Egypt.

Herodotus ^F26 says the Egyptians had physicians peculiar to every disease, one for one disease, and another for another; and Homer ^F1 speaks of them as the most skilful of all men; though the Septuagint render the word by (entafiastai), the "buriers", such who took care of the burial of persons, to provide for it, and among the rest to embalm, dry, and roll up the bodies in linen:

and the physicians embalmed him;
the manner of embalming, as Herodotus^F2 relates, was this,
``first with a crooked iron instrument they extracted the brain through the nostrils, which they got out partly by this means, and partly by the infusion of medicines; then with a sharp Ethiopian stone they cut about the flank, and from thence took out all the bowels, which, when they had cleansed, they washed with palm wine (or wine of dates), and after that again with odours, bruised; then they filled the bowels (or hollow place out of which they were taken) with pure myrrh beaten, and with cassia and other odours, frankincense excepted, and sewed them up; after which they seasoned (the corpse) with nitre, covering it with it for seventy days, and they might not season it for longer than that. The seventy days being ended, they washed the corpse, and wrapped the whole body in bands of fine linen, besmearing it with gum, which gum the Egyptians use generally instead of glue.'' And Diodorus Siculus ^F3, who gives much the same account, says, that every part was retained so perfectly, that the very hairs of the eyebrows, and the whole form of the body, were invariable, and the features might be known; and the same writer tells us, that the expense of embalming was different; the highest price was a talent of silver, about one hundred and eighty seven pounds and ten shillings of our money, the middlemost twenty pounds, and the last and lowest were very small. The embalmers he calls (tariceutai), and says they were in great esteem, and reckoned worthy of much honour, and were very familiar with the priests, and might go into holy places when they pleased, as the priests themselves.

FOOTNOTES:

• F24: Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 11. c. 37.
• F25: De Orbis Situ, l. 1. c. 9.
• F26: Euterpe, sive, l. 2. c. 84.
• F1: Odyss. 4.
• F2: relates, was this,
• F3: Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 81, 82.

Forty days were fulfilled for him
Were spent in embalming him:

for so are fulfilled the days of those that are embalmed ;
so long the body lay in the pickle, in ointment of cedar, myrrh and cinnamon, and other things, that it might soak and penetrate thoroughly into it: and so Diodorus Siculus ^F4 says, that having laid more than thirty days in such a state, it was delivered to the kindred of the deceased:

and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days ;
during the time of their embalming him; for longer than seventy days the body might not lie in the pickle, as before observed, from Herodotus. According to Diodorus Siculus ^F5 , the Egyptians used to mourn for their kings seventy two days: the account he gives is, that upon the death of a king, all Egypt went into a common mourning, tore their garments, shut up their temples, forbid sacrifices, kept not the feasts for seventy two days, put clay upon their heads ^F6 , girt linen clothes under their breasts; men and women, two or three hundred together, went about twice a day, singing in mournful verses the praises of the deceased; they abstained from animal food, and from wine, and all dainty things; nor did they use baths, nor ointments, nor lie in soft beds, nor dared to use venery, but, as if it was for the death of a beloved child, spent the said days in sorrow and mourning.''

Now these seventy days here are either a round number for seventy two, or two are taken from them, as Quistorpius suggests, to make a difference between Jacob, and a king of theirs, who yet being the father of their viceroy, they honoured in such a manner.

Jarchi accounts for the number thus, forty for embalming, and thirty for mourning; which latter was the usual time for mourning with the Jews for principal men, and which the Egyptians added to their forty of embalming; see (Numbers 20:29) (Deuteronomy 34:8)

FOOTNOTES:

• F4: lBibliothec. l. 1. p. 82.
• F5: lbid. p. 65.
• F6: Vid. Pompon. Mela de Situ Orbis, l. 1. c. 9.

And when the days of his mourning were past
The forty days before mentioned, in which both the Egyptians and Jacob's family mourned for him. An Arabic writer ^F7 says, the Egyptians mourned for Jacob forty days, which was the time of embalming; but the text is express for seventy days.

Joseph spoke unto the house of Pharaoh; to the court of Pharaoh, the principal men there; so the Targum of Jonathan and the Septuagint version, to the great men or princes of the house of Pharaoh. It may seem strange that Joseph, being next to Pharaoh in the administration of the government, should make use of any to speak for him to Pharaoh on the following account.

It may be, that Joseph was not in so high an office, and in so much power and authority, as in the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine; and it is certain that that branch of his office, respecting the corn, must have ceased; or this might have been a piece of policy in Joseph to make these men his friends by such obliging treatment, and by this means prevent their making objections to his suit, or plotting against him in his absence; or if it was the custom in Egypt, as it afterwards was in Persia, that no man might appear before the king in a mourning habit, (Esther 4:2) this might be the reason of his not making application in person.

Moreover, it might not seem so decent for him to come to court, and leave the dead, and his father's family, in such circumstances as they were: besides, he might speak to them not in person, but by a messenger, since it is highly probable he was now in Goshen, at a distance from Pharaoh's court; unless it can be supposed that these were some of Pharaoh's courtiers who were come to him in Goshen, to condole his father's death.

saying, if now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in
the ears of Pharaoh; however, as these men had the ear of Pharaoh, and an interest in him, Joseph entreats the favour of them to move it to him:

saying, as follows, in his name.

FOOTNOTES:

• F7: Elmacinus, p. 43. apud Hottinger. Smegma, c. 8. p. 380.

My father made me swear, saying, lo, I die
Having reason to believe he should not live long, he sent for Joseph and took an oath from him to do as follows. Joseph would have observed this to Pharaoh to show the necessity of his application and the reasonableness of his request. The words of dying men are always to be regarded; their dying charge is always attended to by those who have a regard to duty and honour; but much more when an oath is annexed to them, which among all nations was reckoned sacred:

in the grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there
you shall bury me;
It was usual with persons in their lifetime to prepare graves or sepulchres for themselves, as appears from the instances of Shebna, Joseph of Arimathea, and others. So Jacob provided one for himself. When he is said to "dig" it, it is not to be supposed that he dug it himself, but ordered it to be dug by his servants, and very probably this was done at the time he buried Leah.

Onkelos renders it, "which I have bought", possessed or obtained by purchase; and so the word is used in (Hosea 3:2). But the cave of Machpelah, in which Jacob's grave was, was not bought by him, but by Abraham. For to say, as some Jewish writers ^F8 suggest, that he bought Esau's part in it with a mess of pottage, is without foundation. It is better to take the words in the first sense.

And now, since it was Jacob's desire, yea, his dying charge, to be buried in the grave he had provided for himself, the mention of this to an Egyptian king could not fail of having its desired effect; since the Egyptians, as the historian ^F9 says, were more careful about their graves than about their houses:

now therefore let me go up, I pray thee;
to the land of Canaan, which lay higher than Egypt; and bury my father;
there, in the grave he has provided for himself: and I will come again;
to the land of Egypt. This he would have said, lest it should be thought he only contrived this to get an opportunity of going away to Canaan with all his wealth and riches.

FOOTNOTES:

• F8: R. David Kimchi Sepher Shorash. rad. (hrk) Ben Melech in loc.
• F9: Diodor. Sic. Bibliothec. l. 1. p. 47.