Genesis · Chapter 50

V. 1. And Joseph fell upon his father’s face and wept upon him, and kissed him-Joseph shewed his faith in God, and love to his father, by kissing his pale and cold lips, and so giving an affectionate farewell. Probably the rest of Jacob’s sons did the same, much moved, no doubt, with his dying words.

Verse 1. Joseph fell upon his father’s face] Though this act appears to be suspended by the unnatural division of this verse from the preceding chapter, yet we may rest assured it was the immediate consequence of Jacob’s death.

Verse 1. Joseph fell upon his father’s face — Having first, no doubt, closed his eyes, according as God had promised that he should; and wept upon him, and kissed — His pale and cold lips, thus manifesting his love to and his sorrow for the loss of him. Probably the rest of Jacob’s sons did the same, much moved, no doubt, with his dying words.

THE FUNERAL OF JACOB, 1-14.

“The royal obsequies of Israel and Joseph fittingly end the history of the patriarchal age, and the first stage in the development of the covenant people. The father of Joseph was buried with all the magnificence of an Egyptian funeral. No prophet, or prince, or king of Israel’s line, even in the noontide glory of the Hebrew monarchy, was ever laid to his rest with such pomp and splendour. The funeral ceremony was, with the Egyptians, an elegant art, in which they concentrated their religion and highest philosophy, and on which they lavished their taste and wealth. Their belief in immortality, and in the re-union of the soul with the body after transmigration, led them to carve magnificent sepulchres out of their mountains, and decorate them with all the splendours of painting and architecture, where the embalmed body, fresh in feature and fragrant in smell, might wait, as in a palace hall, to welcome the spirit on its return from its wanderings. Thus the Greek historian, Diodorus, says that the Egyptians built only inns for the living, but eternal habitations for the dead. The temples and tombs of Egypt are not only the oldest and most massive monuments of the past, but are also monuments of man’s faith in God and the future state, which have endured from the earliest dawn of civilization.

“Magnificent funeral processions are pictured in the royal tombs of Thebes. Such an imposing pageant is here described, though with such unworldly simplicity as almost to escape the eye, when ‘all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house,’ leaving only their ‘little ones’ in the land of Goshen, with ‘chariots and horsemen,’ a ‘very great company,’ (verses 7-9,) set forth from the land of Goshen on a funeral march of three hundred miles, through the desert, round the Dead Sea, to the banks of the Jordan, and halted there for seven days’ funeral rites, such as the land of Canaan never witnessed before or after, and which stamped the meadow with the name, ‘Mourning (place) of the Egyptians.’” — Newhall.

1. Joseph fell… and wept… and kissed — A touching picture of the tender emotion of Joseph’s soul. The prominence given to Joseph in the account of this funeral was due to his official position in Egypt as well as to his great devotion to his father.

V. 2. He ordered the body to be embalmed, not only because he died in Egypt, and that was the manner of the Egyptians, but because he was to be carried to Canaan, which would be a work of time.

Verse 2. The physicians] רפאים ropheim, the healers, those whose business it was to heal or restore the body from sickness by the administration of proper medicines; and when death took place, to heal or preserve it from dissolution by embalming, and thus give it a sort of immortality or everlasting duration. The original word cnj chanat, which we translate to embalm, has undoubtedly the same meaning with the Arabic [Arabic] hanata, which also signifies to embalm, or to preserve from putrefaction by the application of spices, &c., and hence [Arabic] hantat, an embalmer. The word is used to express the reddening of leather; and probably the ideal meaning may be something analogous to our tanning, which consists in removing the moisture, and closing up the pores so as to render them impervious to wet. This probably is the grand principle in embalming; and whatever effects this, will preserve flesh as perfectly as skin. Who can doubt that a human muscle, undergoing the same process of tanning as the hide of an ox, would not become equally incorruptible? I have seen a part of the muscle of a human thigh, that, having come into contact with some tanning matter, either in the coffin or in the grave, was in a state of perfect soundness, when the rest of the body had been long reduced to earth; and it exhibited the appearance of a thick piece of well tanned leather.

In the art of embalming, the Egyptians excelled all nations in the world; with them it was a common practice. Instances of the perfection to which they carried this art may be seen in the numerous mummies, as they are called, which are found in different European cabinets, and which have been all brought from Egypt. This people not only embalmed men and women, and thus kept the bodies of their beloved relatives from the empire of corruption, but they embalmed useful animals also. I have seen the body of the Ibris thus preserved; and though the work had been done for some thousands of years, the very feathers were in complete preservation, and the colour of the plumage discernible. The account of this curious process, the articles used, and the manner of applying them, I subjoin from Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, as also the manner of their mournings and funeral solemnities, which are highly illustrative of the subjects in this chapter.

“When any man of quality dies,” says Herodotus, “all the women of that family besmear their heads and faces with dirt; then, leaving the body at home, they go lamenting up and down the city with all their relations; their apparel being girt about them, and their breasts left naked. On the other hand the men, having likewise their clothes girt about them, beat themselves. These things being done, they carry the dead body to be embalmed; for which there are certain persons appointed who profess this art. These, when the body is brought to them, show to those that bring it certain models of dead persons in wood, according to any of which the deceased may be painted. One of these they say is accurately made like to one whom, in such a matter, I do not think lawful to name; tou ouk osion poioumai to ounoma epi toioutw prhgmati onomazein;

(probably Osiris, one of the principal gods of Egypt, is here intended;) then they show a second inferior to it, and of an easier price; and next a third, cheaper than the former, and of a very small value; which being seen, they ask them after which model the deceased shall be represented. When they have agreed upon the price they depart; and those with whom the dead corpse is left proceed to embalm it after the following manner: First of all, they with a crooked iron draw the brain out of the head through the nostrils; next, with a sharp Æthiopic stone they cut up that part of the abdomen called the ilia, and that way draw out all the bowels, which, having cleansed and washed with palm wine, they again rinse and wash with wine perfumed with pounded odours: then filling up the belly with pure myrrh and cassia grossly powdered, and all other odours except frankincense, they sew it up again. Having so done, they salt it up close with nitre seventy days, for longer they may not salt it. After this number of days are over they wash the corpse again, and then roll it up with fine linen, all besmeared with a sort of gum, commonly used by the Egyptians instead of glue. Then is the body restored to its relations, who prepare a wooden coffin for it in the shape and likeness of a man, and then put the embalmed body into it, and thus enclosed, place it in a repository in the house, setting it upright against the wall. After this manner they, with great expense, preserve their dead; whereas those who to avoid too great a charge desire a mediocrity, thus embalm them: they neither cut the belly nor pluck out the entrails, but fill it with clysters of oil of cedar injected up the anus, and then salt it the aforesaid number of days. On the last of these they press out the cedar clyster by the same way they had injected it, which has such virtue and efficacy that it brings out along with it the bowels wasted, and the nitre consumes the flesh, leaving only the skin and bones: having thus done, they restore the dead body to the relations, doing nothing more. The third way of embalming is for those of yet meaner circumstances; they with lotions wash the belly, then dry it up with salt for seventy days, and afterwards deliver it to be carried away. Nevertheless, beautiful women and ladles of quality were not delivered to be embalmed till three or four days after they had been dead;” for which Herodotus assigns a sufficient reason, however degrading to human nature: touto de poieousi outw toude eineka, ina mh sfi oi tariceutai misgwntai thsi gunaixi, lamfqhnai gar tina fasi misgomenon nekrw

prosfatw gunaikov, kateipai de ton omotecnon. [The original should not be put into a plainer language; the abomination to which it refers being too gross.] “But if any stranger or Egyptian was either killed by a crocodile or drowned in the river, the city where he was cast up was to embalm and bury him honourably in the sacred monuments, whom no one, no, not a relation or friend, but the priests of the Nile only, might touch; because they buried one who was something more than a dead man.” -HEROD. Euterpe, p. 120, ed. Gale.

Diodorus Siculus relates the funeral ceremonies of the Egyptians more distinctly and clearly, and with some very remarkable additional circumstances. “When any one among the Egyptians dies,” says he, “all his relations and friends, putting dirt upon their heads, go lamenting about the city, till such time as the body shall be buried: in the meantime, they abstain from baths and wine, and all kinds of delicate meats; neither do they, during that time, wear any costly apparel. The manner of their burials is threefold: one very costly, a second sort less chargeable, and a third very mean. In the first, they say, there is spent a talent of silver; in the second, twenty minae; but in the last there is very little expense. ‘Those who have the care of ordering the body are such as have been taught that art by their ancestors. These, showing each kind of burial, ask them after what manner they will have the body prepared. When they have agreed upon the manner, they deliver the body to such as are usually appointed for this office. First, he who has the name of scribe, laying it upon the ground, marks about the flank on the left side how much is to be cut away; then he who is called parascisthv, paraschistes, the cutter or dissector, with an Æthiopic stone, cuts away as much of the flesh as the law commands, and presently runs away as fast as he can; those who are present, pursuing him, cast stones at him, and curse him, hereby turning all the execrations which they imagine due to his office upon him. For whosoever offers violence, wounds, or does any kind of injury to a body of the same nature with himself, they think him worthy of hatred: but those who are tariceutai, taricheutæ, the embalmers, they esteem worthy of honour and respect; for they are familiar with their priests, and go into the temples as holy men, without any prohibition. As soon as they come to embalm the dissected body, one of them thrusts his hand through the wound into the abdomen, and draws forth all the bowels but the heart and kidneys, which another washes and cleanses with wine made of palms and aromatic odours. Lastly, having washed the body, they anoint it with oil of cedar and other things for about thirty days, and afterwards with myrrh, cinnamon, and other such like matters, which have not only a power to preserve it a long time, but also give it a sweet smell; after which they deliver it to the kindred in such manner that every member remains whole and entire, and no part of it changed, but the beauty and shape of the face seem just as they were before; and the person may be known, even the eyebrows and eyelids remaining as they were at first. By this means many of the Egyptians, keeping the dead bodies of their ancestors in magnificent houses, so perfectly see the true visage and countenance of those that died many ages before they themselves were born, that in viewing the proportions of every one of them, and the lineaments of their faces, they take as much delight as if they were still living among them. Moreover, the friends and nearest relations of the deceased, for the greater pomp of the solemnity, acquaint the judges and the rest of their friends with the time prefixed for the funeral or day of sepulture, declaring that such a one (calling the dead by his name) is such a day to pass the lake; at which time above forty judges appear, and sit together in a semicircle, in a place prepared on the hither side of the lake, where a ship, provided beforehand by such as have the care of the business, is haled up to the shore, and steered by a pilot whom the Egyptians in their language called Charon. Hence they say Orpheus, upon seeing this ceremony while he was in Egypt, invented the fable of hell, partly imitating therein the people of Egypt, and partly adding somewhat of his own. The ship being thus brought to the lake side, before the coffin is put on board every one is at liberty by the law to accuse the dead of what he thinks him guilty. If any one proves he was a bad man, the judges give sentence that the body shall be deprived of sepulture; but in case the informer be convicted of false accusation, then he is severely punished. If no accuser appear, or the information prove false, then all the kindred of the deceased leave off mourning, and begin to set forth his praises, yet say nothing of his birth, (as the custom is among the Greeks,) because the Egyptians all think themselves equally noble; but they recount how the deceased was educated from his youth and brought up to man’s estate, exalting his piety towards the gods, and justice towards men, his chastity, and other virtues wherein he excelled; and lastly pray and call upon the infernal deities (touv katw qeouv, the gods below) to receive him into the societies of the just. The common people take this from the others, and consequently all is said in his praise by a loud shout, setting forth likewise his virtues in the highest strains of commendation, as one that is to live for ever with the infernal gods. Then those that have tombs of their own inter the corpse in places appointed for that purpose; and they that have none rear up the body in its coffin against some strong wall of their house. But such as are denied sepulture on account of some crime or debt, are laid up at home without coffins; yet when it shall afterwards happen that any of their posterity grows rich, he commonly pays off the deceased person’s debts, and gets his crimes absolved, and so buries him honourably; for the Egyptians are wont to boast of their parents and ancestors that were honourably buried. It is a custom likewise among them to pawn the dead bodies of their parents to their creditors; but then those that do not redeem them fall under the greatest disgrace imaginable, and are denied burial themselves at their deaths.”-Diod. Sic. Biblioth., lib. i., cap. 91-93., edit. Bipont. See also the Necrokedia, or Art of Embalming, by Greenhill, 4to., p. 241, who endeavoured in vain to recommend and restore the art But he could not give his countrymen Egyptian manners; for a dead carcass is to the British an object of horror, and scarcely any, except a surgeon or an undertaker, cares to touch it.

Verse 2. He ordered the body to be embalmed, not only because he died in Egypt, and that was the manner of the Egyptians, but because he was to be carried to Canaan, which would be a work of time. “Embalming is the opening of a dead body, taking out the intestines, and filling the place with odoriferous and desiccative drugs and spices, to prevent its putrifying. The Egyptians excelled all other nations in the art of preserving bodies from corruption; for some, that they embalmed upward of two thousand years ago, remain whole to this day, and they are often brought into other countries as great curiosities. Their manner of embalming was this; they scooped the brains with an iron scoop out at the nostrils, and threw in medicaments to fill up the vacuum. They also took out the entrails, and having filled the body with myrrh, cassia, and other spices (except frankincense) proper to dry up the humours, they pickled it in nitre, where it lay soaking for seventy days. The body was then wrapped up in bandages of fine linen and gums, to make it stick like glue; and so was delivered to the kindred of the deceased, entire in all its features, the very hairs of the eyelids being preserved. They used to keep the bodies of their ancestors, thus embalmed, in little houses magnificently adorned, and took great pleasure in beholding them alive, as it were, without any change in their size, features, or complexion. The Egyptians also embalmed birds,” &c. — Encyclop. Britan. This practice of embalming, it appears, was common both to the rich and poor, but it was more or less costly, according to the rank and circumstances of the person. Joseph commanded his servants the physicians — To perform this office. For, according to Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, the same persons who prescribed as physicians for the living, were employed in embalming the dead. As it appears that many of these physicians were wont to be kept in pay, as servants, in the courts of princes, and the families of the great, we may conclude that Joseph, in his office of prime minister, had not a few of them belonging to his household. Indeed, if we may credit Herodotus, all places in Egypt were crowded with them. And no wonder; for “every distinct distemper” says he, “hath its own physician, who confines himself to the study and care of that alone, and meddles with no other. Thus, one class hath the care of the eyes, another of the head, another of the region of the belly,” &c.; (lib. 2. c. 84;) so that their number must have been very great.

Verse 2. The physicians embalmed Israel. The Egyptians in early times built pyramids to contain their dead, and they preserved them from putrefaction by balsomic paste. This was performed by physicians, and in the most curious manner. They took out the brain, the viscera, and laid open the principal muscles of the limbs, inlaid the whole with this paste, and then so bandaged the corpse, that it would be durable as the mausoleum where it reposed.

2. Commanded… to embalm — “The Egyptians were famous for their skill in medicine. Homer says that every physician in Egypt ‘knew more than all other men.’ Odyss., 4, 229. Medical specialties were carefully cultivated, and the land abounded with oculists, aurists, dentists, etc., so that persons of rank and wealth generally had several different kinds of physicians among their servants, as Joseph seems to have had, according to the text. The Persian kings, Cyrus and Darius, had Egyptian physicians at their courts. Herod., 2:84; 3:1, 132. The Theban mummies show that they filled teeth with gold; and Pliny says, that they practised postmortem examinations; while one of the books of Hermes treated of medical instruments, and another of anatomy. The government was very severe upon quacks, and the death of a patient who had not been ‘doctored by the books,’ was held a capital crime. Wilkinson, in Rawl., Her., ii, p. 117. European medicine came from Egypt through the Arabs, whence the Arab symbols of our chemists, while the very word chem-istry is a souvenir of the land of Ham, or Chem.

“Embalming was practised by several ancient nations, but the art was carried to the highest perfection in Egypt. The materials principally used were cedar oil, natron, (native carbonate of soda,) and various spices. Embalming was the work of a special class, (Herod., 2:86,) whom probably Joseph’s physicians employed.” — Newhall.

V. 3. He observed the ceremony of solemn mourning for him. Forty days were taken up in embalming the body, which the Egyptians had an art of doing so curiously, as to preserve the very features of the face unchanged. All this time, and thirty days more, seventy in all, they either confined themselves and sat solitary, or when they went out, appeared in the habit of close mourners, according to the decent custom of the country. Even the Egyptians, many of them, out of the respect they had for Joseph, put themselves into mourning for his father.

Verse 3. Forty days] The body it appears required this number of days to complete the process of embalming; afterwards it lay in natron thirty days more, making in the whole seventy days, according to the preceding accounts, during which the mourning was continued.

Verse 3. Forty days were fulfilled for him — That is, for embalming him, this time being, at the least, requisite to go through the process. But according to Herodotus, the body often remained at the embalmer’s seventy days. The Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days — Thirty days according to the custom of the Hebrews, Numbers 20:29, Deuteronomy 34:8, over and above the forty employed in embalming, which also was a time of mourning. During all which time they either confined themselves, and sat solitary, or, when they went out, appeared in the habit of close mourners, according to the custom of the country.

Ver. 3. The Egyptians mourned. This shows, at least, how much Joseph was beloved by that nation. And where did there ever exist a minister of state who retained like him his honours for eighty years? But Jacob’s great age and descent would entitle him to very much veneration.

3. Forty days… of those which are embalmed… mourned for him threescore and ten days — That is, it required forty days for the embalming, during which time the mourning for him went on, and after the embalming they continued to mourn for thirty days more. Thus the Egyptians honoured Jacob as though he were a great prince. “Diodorus says, that the process of embalming took more than thirty days, and that the Egyptians were accustomed to mourn seventy-two days for a king. Herodotus mentions that the body was never allowed to lie in the natron more than seventy days, 2:86. These periods, given by the classical writers, it will be seen remarkably correspond with the numbers of the text. The actual process occupied the first forty days, while the body lay for thirty days more in natron, completing thus the seventy days of mourning. Wilkinson, in Rawl., Her., ii, p. 122. There were, however, many grades and varieties of the process, according to the rank of the person, for rank is seen in the grave in Egypt as well as in Christendom.” — Newhall.

Verse 4. Speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh.] But why did not Joseph apply himself? Because he was now in his mourning habits, and in such none must appear in the presence of the eastern monarchs. See Esther 4:2.

Verses 4, 5. Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh — Either it was not customary for mourners to enter the royal presence, or Joseph wished to make his request to the king with all possible humility and respect. He therefore made application to Pharaoh, not directly, but through the intervention of some of his courtiers. Let me go up, I pray thee — It was a piece of necessary respect to Pharaoh, that he would not go without leave; for we may suppose, though his charge about the corn was long since over, yet he continued a prime minister of state, and therefore would not be so long absent from his business without license.

4. Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh — He communicated with Pharaoh by means of his servants, or messengers, as it would have been contrary to Egyptian customs for him to have gone in mourning attire into the presence of the king. During the days of mourning for a relative the Egyptians allowed the hair and beard to grow long, (Herod., 2:36,) and no man might enter the king’s presence unshaven. Comp. Genesis 41:14; Esther 4:2.

V. 5. He asked and obtained leave of Pharaoh to go to Canaan, to attend the funeral of his father. It was a piece of necessary respect to Pharaoh, that he would not go without leave; for we may suppose, though his charge about the corn was long since over, yet he continued a prime minister of state, and therefore would not be so long absent from his business without license.

Verses 4, 5. Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh — Either it was not customary for mourners to enter the royal presence, or Joseph wished to make his request to the king with all possible humility and respect. He therefore made application to Pharaoh, not directly, but through the intervention of some of his courtiers. Let me go up, I pray thee — It was a piece of necessary respect to Pharaoh, that he would not go without leave; for we may suppose, though his charge about the corn was long since over, yet he continued a prime minister of state, and therefore would not be so long absent from his business without license.

5. Which I have digged for me — Some take the word hrk, here rendered digged, in the sense of purchased, as hnq is used in reference to Abraham’s purchase in Genesis 49:30. If so rendered, the language used would make Jacob speak of Abraham’s act as his own. This is an allowable explanation, but unnecessary. The more common meaning of hrk is dig, and Jacob may have excavated his own sepulchre or separate chamber in the cave after the burial of Abraham and Isaac. See on Genesis 23:9. I will come again — “The earnestness of Joseph’s entreaty, and the repetition of his solemn oath to his father, show what difficulty a naturalized foreigner would have in leaving the land of the Pharaohs. Jacob’s characteristic foresight and prudence appear in exacting this oath, which he knew Pharaoh’s religious scruples would guarantee from violation, while, at the same time, Joseph would be protected from the national jealousy.” — Newhall.

THE FUNERAL OF JACOB, 1-14.

“The royal obsequies of Israel and Joseph fittingly end the history of the patriarchal age, and the first stage in the development of the covenant people. The father of Joseph was buried with all the magnificence of an Egyptian funeral. No prophet, or prince, or king of Israel’s line, even in the noontide glory of the Hebrew monarchy, was ever laid to his rest with such pomp and splendour. The funeral ceremony was, with the Egyptians, an elegant art, in which they concentrated their religion and highest philosophy, and on which they lavished their taste and wealth. Their belief in immortality, and in the re-union of the soul with the body after transmigration, led them to carve magnificent sepulchres out of their mountains, and decorate them with all the splendours of painting and architecture, where the embalmed body, fresh in feature and fragrant in smell, might wait, as in a palace hall, to welcome the spirit on its return from its wanderings. Thus the Greek historian, Diodorus, says that the Egyptians built only inns for the living, but eternal habitations for the dead. The temples and tombs of Egypt are not only the oldest and most massive monuments of the past, but are also monuments of man’s faith in God and the future state, which have endured from the earliest dawn of civilization.

“Magnificent funeral processions are pictured in the royal tombs of Thebes. Such an imposing pageant is here described, though with such unworldly simplicity as almost to escape the eye, when ‘all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house,’ leaving only their ‘little ones’ in the land of Goshen, with ‘chariots and horsemen,’ a ‘very great company,’ (verses 7-9,) set forth from the land of Goshen on a funeral march of three hundred miles, through the desert, round the Dead Sea, to the banks of the Jordan, and halted there for seven days’ funeral rites, such as the land of Canaan never witnessed before or after, and which stamped the meadow with the name, ‘Mourning (place) of the Egyptians.’” — Newhall.

1. Joseph fell… and wept… and kissed — A touching picture of the tender emotion of Joseph’s soul. The prominence given to Joseph in the account of this funeral was due to his official position in Egypt as well as to his great devotion to his father.

Verse 7. The elders of his house] Persons who, by reason of their age, had acquired much experience; and who on this account were deemed the best qualified to conduct the affairs of the king’s household. Similar to these were the [Anglo-Saxon] Eldermen, or Aldermen, among our Saxon ancestors, who were senators and peers of the realm.

The funeral procession of Jacob must have been truly grand. Joseph, his brethren and their descendants, the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders-all the principal men, of the land of Egypt, with chariots and horsemen, must have appeared a very great company indeed. We have seen LORDS, for their greater honour, buried at the public expense; and all the male branches of the royal family, as well as the most eminent men of the nation, join in the funeral procession, as in the case of the late Lord Nelson; but what was all this in comparison of the funeral solemnity now before us? Here was no conqueror, no mighty man of valour, no person of proud descent; here was only a plain man, who had dwelt almost all his life long in tents, without any other subjects than his cattle, and whose kingdom was not of this world. Behold this man honoured by a national mourning, and by a national funeral! It may be said indeed that “all this was done out of respect to Joseph.” Be it so; why was Joseph thus respected? Was it because he had conquered nations, had made his sword drunk with blood, had triumphed over the enemies of Egypt? NO! But because he had saved men alive; because he was the king’s faithful servant, the rich man’s counsellor, and the poor man’s friend. He was a national blessing; and the nation mourns in his affliction, and unites to do him honour.

7. All the elders of the land — The writer dwells with emphasis on the magnificent funeral procession, composed of the various officers of the Egyptian court, and the entire house of Israel excepting the little children, (verse 8,) probably the seventy whose names are given in chap. 46.

THE FUNERAL OF JACOB, 1-14.

“The royal obsequies of Israel and Joseph fittingly end the history of the patriarchal age, and the first stage in the development of the covenant people. The father of Joseph was buried with all the magnificence of an Egyptian funeral. No prophet, or prince, or king of Israel’s line, even in the noontide glory of the Hebrew monarchy, was ever laid to his rest with such pomp and splendour. The funeral ceremony was, with the Egyptians, an elegant art, in which they concentrated their religion and highest philosophy, and on which they lavished their taste and wealth. Their belief in immortality, and in the re-union of the soul with the body after transmigration, led them to carve magnificent sepulchres out of their mountains, and decorate them with all the splendours of painting and architecture, where the embalmed body, fresh in feature and fragrant in smell, might wait, as in a palace hall, to welcome the spirit on its return from its wanderings. Thus the Greek historian, Diodorus, says that the Egyptians built only inns for the living, but eternal habitations for the dead. The temples and tombs of Egypt are not only the oldest and most massive monuments of the past, but are also monuments of man’s faith in God and the future state, which have endured from the earliest dawn of civilization.

“Magnificent funeral processions are pictured in the royal tombs of Thebes. Such an imposing pageant is here described, though with such unworldly simplicity as almost to escape the eye, when ‘all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house,’ leaving only their ‘little ones’ in the land of Goshen, with ‘chariots and horsemen,’ a ‘very great company,’ (verses 7-9,) set forth from the land of Goshen on a funeral march of three hundred miles, through the desert, round the Dead Sea, to the banks of the Jordan, and halted there for seven days’ funeral rites, such as the land of Canaan never witnessed before or after, and which stamped the meadow with the name, ‘Mourning (place) of the Egyptians.’” — Newhall.

1. Joseph fell… and wept… and kissed — A touching picture of the tender emotion of Joseph’s soul. The prominence given to Joseph in the account of this funeral was due to his official position in Egypt as well as to his great devotion to his father.

9. Chariots and horsemen — For protection and defence. So large and solemn a procession required a military escort in their long march through the desert.

Verse 10. The threshing-floor of Atad] As dca atad signifies a bramble or thorn, it has been understood by the Arabic, not as a man’s name, but as the name of a place; but all the other versions and the Targums consider it as the name of a man. Threshing-floors were always in a field, in the open air; and Atad was probably what we would call a great farmer or chief of some clan or tribe in that place. Jerome supposed the place to have been about two leagues from Jericho; but we have no certain information on this point. The funeral procession stopped here, probably as affording pasturage to their cattle while they observed the seven days’ mourning which terminated the funeral solemnities, after which nothing remained but the interment of the corpse. The mourning of the ancient Hebrews was usually of seven days’ continuance, Numbers 19:19; 1 Samuel 31:13; though on certain occasions it was extended to thirty days, Numbers 20:29; Deuteronomy 21:13; 34:8, but never longer. The seventy days’ mourning mentioned above was that of the Egyptians, and was rendered necessary by the long process of embalming, which obliged them to keep the body out of the grave for seventy days, as we learn both from Herodotus and Diodorus. Seven days by the order of God a man was to mourn for his dead, because during that time he was considered as unclean; but when those were finished he was to purify himself, and consider the mourning as ended; Numbers 19:11,19. Thus God gave seven days, in some cases thirty, to mourn in: man, ever in his own estimation wiser than the word of God, has added eleven whole months to the term, which nature itself pronounces to be absurd, because it is incapable of supporting grief for such a time; and thus mourning is now, except in the first seven or thirty days, a mere solemn ill-conducted FARCE, a grave mimicry, a vain show, that convicts itself of its own hypocrisy. Who will rise up on the side of God and common sense, and restore becoming sorrow on the death of a relative to decency of garb and moderation in its continuance? Suppose the near relatives of the deceased were to be allowed seven days of seclusion from society, for the purpose of meditating on death and eternity, and after this to appear in a mourning habit for thirty days; every important end would be accomplished, and hypocrisy, the too common attendant of man, be banished, especially from that part of his life in which deep sincerity is not less becoming than in the most solemn act of his religious intercourse with God.

In a kind of politico-religious institution formed by his late majesty Ferdinand IV., king of Naples and the Sicilies, I find the following rational institute relative to this point: “There shall be no mourning among you but only on the death of a father, mother, husband, or wife. To render to these the last duties of affection, children, wives, and husbands only shall be permitted to wear a sign or emblem of grief: a man may wear a crape tied round his right arm; a woman, a black handkerchief around her neck; and this in both cases for only two months at the most.” Is there a purpose which religion, reason, or decency can demand that would not be answered by such external mourning as this? Only such relatives as the above, brothers and sisters being included, can mourn; all others make only a part of the dumb hypocritical show.

Verse 10. They mourned with a very great and sore lamentation — “This,” says Sir John Chardin, quoted by Harmer, (vol. 2. p. 136,) “is exactly the genius of the people of Asia, especially of the women. Their sentiments of joy or grief are properly transports; and their transports are ungoverned, excessive, and truly outrageous. When any one returns from a long journey, or dies, his family bursts into cries that may be heard twenty doors off; and this is renewed at different times, and continues many days, according to the vigour of the passion. Especially are these cries long in the case of death, and frightful; for their mourning is right down despair, and an image of hell. I was lodged, in the year 1676, at Ispahan, near the royal square; the mistress of the next house to mine died at that time. The moment she expired, all the family, to the number of twenty-five or thirty people, set up such a furious cry, that I was quite startled, and was above two hours before I could recover myself. These cries continue a long time, then cease all at once; they begin again as suddenly at day-break and in concert. It is this suddenness which is so terrifying, together with a greater shrillness or loudness than any one would easily imagine. This enraged kind of mourning, if I may call it so, continued forty days, not equally violent, but with diminution from day to day. The longest and most violent acts were when they washed the body, when they perfumed it, when they carried it out to be interred, at making the inventory, and when they divided the effects. You are not to suppose that those that were ready to split their throats with crying out wept as much: the greatest part of them did not shed a single tear through the whole tragedy.” It is probable, however, that there was more sincerity in the mourning, even of the Egyptians, for Jacob, than is described in these words; for they seem evidently to have greatly respected him. And their solemn mourning for him (verse 11) gave a name to the place, Abel-Misraim, which, in Hebrew, signifies, The mourning of the Egyptians: which served for a testimony against the next generation of the Egyptians, who oppressed the posterity of this Jacob, to whom their ancestors showed such respect.

Ver. 10. Mourned with a sore lamentation. The Irish still keep up the funeral cries. Women are hired for that purpose, who raise a piercing yell in the streets, about every forty or fifty paces, as the procession slowly moves. In the South-seas, men are very extravagant in their cries, and wounding their bodies; and some will even run a spear through the muscles of their arm when a prince dies. In Babylon, and still in the interior of Africa, servants are murdered the moment the shrieks of death are heard. If it be a princess, the women fly for their lives while the guards pursue, and strike off their heads, that their spirits may still attend their lady.

10. The threshing-floor of Atad — Or, the threshing-floor of the thorn. The words may be taken as the proper name of a place, Goren-haatadh. It was beyond Jordan, that is, on the east of Jordan, for such is the natural meaning of this phrase. Accordingly, it appears that this vast procession took a circuitous route, went round the Dead Sea, and entered Canaan on the east. Why they should have taken such a journey does not appear in this narrative, and some have regarded it as so improbable that they have discarded the natural meaning of the language here employed, and have explained beyond Jordan as meaning west of the Jordan. According to Jerome it was called in his time Beth-agla, and some have sought to identify it with the modern Ain Hadjla, the Beth-hoglah of the tribe of Judah, (Joshua 15:6,) situated at the northern end of the Dead Sea, about two miles west of the Jordan. One writing at the east of the Jordan, as the author of this passage is supposed to have done, would have spoken of this place as beyond Jordan. But this identification with Beth-hoglah is of no sufficient authority, and why any writer should have designated a place west of the Jordan as beyond Jordan is inexplicable, if this funeral procession did not go anywhere in the vicinity of the Jordan. Better, therefore, to suppose that this round-about journey was taken to avoid conflict with hostile tribes then occupying the country on the direct road to Hebron. For a similar reason the whole house of Israel at a later day compassed the land of Edom and entered Canaan from the east. At this place, perhaps nothing but a threshing-floor surrounded by thornbushes, but affording a suitable place for the purpose, they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation for the space of seven days. Thus to the seventy days of mourning in Egypt, (verse 3,) they now added a full week at the borders of Canaan.

V. 11. The solemn mourning for Jacob gave a name to the place; Abel-mizraim-The mourning of the Egyptians: which served for a testimony against the next generation of the Egyptians, who oppressed the posterity of this Jacob, to whom their ancestors shewed such respect.

11. Abel-mizraim — That is, the mourning of the Egyptians. The Canaanites, who witnessed the unusual spectacle of lamentation, gave a new name to the place. They had never before seen such violence of mourning. Herodotus in describing the habits of the Egyptians observes, (Herod., 2:85,) that when a distinguished individual died the females of the family besmear their heads and faces with mud, and wander about beating themselves and exposing their breasts. The men, also, having their clothes girt about them, beat themselves and indulge in excessive lamentation. See also Wilkinson’s full account of Egyptian funeral rites, Ancient Egyptians, vol. ii, p. 366.

Verse 12. And his sons did unto him] This and the thirteenth verse have been supposed by Mr. Locke and others to belong to the conclusion of the preceding chapter, in which connection they certainly read more consistently than they do here.

THE FUNERAL OF JACOB, 1-14.

“The royal obsequies of Israel and Joseph fittingly end the history of the patriarchal age, and the first stage in the development of the covenant people. The father of Joseph was buried with all the magnificence of an Egyptian funeral. No prophet, or prince, or king of Israel’s line, even in the noontide glory of the Hebrew monarchy, was ever laid to his rest with such pomp and splendour. The funeral ceremony was, with the Egyptians, an elegant art, in which they concentrated their religion and highest philosophy, and on which they lavished their taste and wealth. Their belief in immortality, and in the re-union of the soul with the body after transmigration, led them to carve magnificent sepulchres out of their mountains, and decorate them with all the splendours of painting and architecture, where the embalmed body, fresh in feature and fragrant in smell, might wait, as in a palace hall, to welcome the spirit on its return from its wanderings. Thus the Greek historian, Diodorus, says that the Egyptians built only inns for the living, but eternal habitations for the dead. The temples and tombs of Egypt are not only the oldest and most massive monuments of the past, but are also monuments of man’s faith in God and the future state, which have endured from the earliest dawn of civilization.

“Magnificent funeral processions are pictured in the royal tombs of Thebes. Such an imposing pageant is here described, though with such unworldly simplicity as almost to escape the eye, when ‘all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house,’ leaving only their ‘little ones’ in the land of Goshen, with ‘chariots and horsemen,’ a ‘very great company,’ (verses 7-9,) set forth from the land of Goshen on a funeral march of three hundred miles, through the desert, round the Dead Sea, to the banks of the Jordan, and halted there for seven days’ funeral rites, such as the land of Canaan never witnessed before or after, and which stamped the meadow with the name, ‘Mourning (place) of the Egyptians.’” — Newhall.

1. Joseph fell… and wept… and kissed — A touching picture of the tender emotion of Joseph’s soul. The prominence given to Joseph in the account of this funeral was due to his official position in Egypt as well as to his great devotion to his father.

13. His sons carried him into the land of Canaan — This implies that the place of the seven days’ mourning was not in Canaan proper, though on its border, where the Canaanites (verse 11) could observe their excessive lamentations. The Egyptian escort probably waited at Abel-mizraim, while the sons of the great patriarch carried him to the ancient tomb of Machpelah, (see on Genesis 23:9,) and deposited his embalmed body by the dust of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, where also he had buried Leah. Genesis 49:31. And there, perhaps, that embalmed body still remains, and may be identified when Moslem fanaticism permits a careful and thorough examination of that ancient cave at Hebron.

THE FUNERAL OF JACOB, 1-14.

“The royal obsequies of Israel and Joseph fittingly end the history of the patriarchal age, and the first stage in the development of the covenant people. The father of Joseph was buried with all the magnificence of an Egyptian funeral. No prophet, or prince, or king of Israel’s line, even in the noontide glory of the Hebrew monarchy, was ever laid to his rest with such pomp and splendour. The funeral ceremony was, with the Egyptians, an elegant art, in which they concentrated their religion and highest philosophy, and on which they lavished their taste and wealth. Their belief in immortality, and in the re-union of the soul with the body after transmigration, led them to carve magnificent sepulchres out of their mountains, and decorate them with all the splendours of painting and architecture, where the embalmed body, fresh in feature and fragrant in smell, might wait, as in a palace hall, to welcome the spirit on its return from its wanderings. Thus the Greek historian, Diodorus, says that the Egyptians built only inns for the living, but eternal habitations for the dead. The temples and tombs of Egypt are not only the oldest and most massive monuments of the past, but are also monuments of man’s faith in God and the future state, which have endured from the earliest dawn of civilization.

“Magnificent funeral processions are pictured in the royal tombs of Thebes. Such an imposing pageant is here described, though with such unworldly simplicity as almost to escape the eye, when ‘all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father’s house,’ leaving only their ‘little ones’ in the land of Goshen, with ‘chariots and horsemen,’ a ‘very great company,’ (verses 7-9,) set forth from the land of Goshen on a funeral march of three hundred miles, through the desert, round the Dead Sea, to the banks of the Jordan, and halted there for seven days’ funeral rites, such as the land of Canaan never witnessed before or after, and which stamped the meadow with the name, ‘Mourning (place) of the Egyptians.’” — Newhall.

1. Joseph fell… and wept… and kissed — A touching picture of the tender emotion of Joseph’s soul. The prominence given to Joseph in the account of this funeral was due to his official position in Egypt as well as to his great devotion to his father.

V. 15. Joseph will peradventure hate us-While their father lived, they thought themselves safe under his shadow; but now he was dead, they feared the worst. A guilty conscience exposeth men to continual frights; those that would be fearless must keep themselves guiltless.

Verse 15. Saw that their father was dead] This at once argues both a sense of guilt in their own consciences, and a want of confidence in their brother. They might have supposed that hitherto he had forborne to punish them merely on their father’s account; but now that he was dead, and Joseph having them completely in his power, they imagined that he would take vengeance on them for their former conduct towards him. Thus conscience records criminality; and, by giving birth to continual fears and doubtfulness, destroys all peace of mind, security, and confidence. On this subject an elegant poet has spoken with his usual point and discernment:—

Exemplo quodcumque malo committitur, ipsi

Displicet auctori. Prima est haec ultio, quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur, improba quamvis

Gratia fallaci Prætoris vicerit urna.

JUV. Sat. xiii. 1, &c.

Happily metaphrased by Mr. Dryden:—

He that commits a fault shall quickly find

The pressing guilt lies heavy on his mind.

Though bribes, or favour shall assert his cause, Pronounce him guiltless, and elude the laws,

None quits himself; his own impartial thought

Will damn, and conscience will record the fault. This, first, the wicked feels.

We have seen this in the preceding history often exemplified in the case of Joseph’s brethren.

Verses 15, 16. Joseph will peradventure hate us — While their father lived, they thought themselves safe under his shadow; but now he was dead, they feared the worst. A guilty conscience exposeth men to continual frights; those that would be fearless must keep themselves guiltless. Thy father did command — Thus, in humbling ourselves to Christ by faith and repentance, we may plead that it is the command of his Father and our Father we should do so.

FEARS OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN, 15-21.

15. Joseph will peradventure hate us — The Hebrew here is a conditional, unfinished sentence: If Joseph should hate us, and return with intensity (verb in inf. absolute to express idea of intensity or emphasis) to us all the evil which we have done him — what could we do? How helpless our condition! The whole is equivalent to an exclamation of alarm: What if Joseph should hate us, etc? The deep consciousness of guilt prompted the words.

V. 16. Thy father did command-Thus in humbling ourselves to Christ by faith and repentance, we may plead that it is the command of his father and our father we should do so.

Verse 16. Thy father did command] Whether he did or not we cannot tell. Some think they had feigned this story, but that is not so likely. Jacob might have had suspicions too, and might have thought that the best way to prevent evil was to humble themselves before their brother, and get a fresh assurance of his forgiveness.

Verses 15, 16. Joseph will peradventure hate us — While their father lived, they thought themselves safe under his shadow; but now he was dead, they feared the worst. A guilty conscience exposeth men to continual frights; those that would be fearless must keep themselves guiltless. Thy father did command — Thus, in humbling ourselves to Christ by faith and repentance, we may plead that it is the command of his Father and our Father we should do so.

16. They sent a messenger — Literally, they commanded, or gave a charge to Joseph. “They charged Joseph, in their father’s name, probably by an embassy sent from Goshen to Memphis, the seat of government, although the text says nothing about messengers. Perhaps Benjamin first pleaded for them, and then they all came into his presence. Verse 18. Whether Jacob actually left this message for Joseph is doubtful. If he really had such fears, he would have been likely to entreat Joseph personally, as he freely charged him concerning other things which pertained to the family welfare. It was, of course, Jacob’s wish that there should be perfect and perpetual reconciliation among his children, which often may have been expressed; but the precise form of this petition to Joseph was probably suggested by the guilty fears of the brethren, who could not fully understand the generosity and magnanimity of Joseph. They knew that Joseph would sacredly heed his father’s charge and so offered their petition in his name.” — Newhall.

V. 17. We are the servants of the God of thy father-Not only children of the same Jacob, but worshippers of the same Jehovah. Though we must be ready to forgive all that injure us, yet we must especially take heed of bearing malice towards any that are the servants of the God of our father; those we should always treat with a peculiar tenderness, for we and they have the same master.

He wept when they spake to him-These were tears of sorrow for their suspicion of him, and tears of tenderness upon their submission.

Verse 17. The servants of the God of thy father.] These words were wonderfully well chosen, and spoken in the most forcible manner to Joseph’s piety and filial affection. No wonder then that he wept when they spake to him.

Verse 17. Forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father — Not only children of the same Jacob, but worshippers of the same Jehovah. Though we must be ready to forgive all that injure us, yet we must especially take heed of bearing malice toward any that are the servants of the God of our father; those we should always treat with a peculiar tenderness, for we and they have the same Master. He wept when they spake to him — These were tears of sorrow for their suspicion of him, and tears of tenderness upon their submission.

17. Forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father — “All the arguments that would touch Joseph are woven into a few words with great pathos and power. They cast themselves absolutely upon his mercy, and call up before him his venerated father, and his father’s God, whose servants they also are. Joseph replied in a way to scatter all doubt and soothe all fear — he wept. At first he made no answer in words, but his tears were richer to them than speech. It was the golden silence, that cannot, from very fulness, speak.” — Newhall.

FEARS OF JOSEPH’S BRETHREN, 15-21.

15. Joseph will peradventure hate us — The Hebrew here is a conditional, unfinished sentence: If Joseph should hate us, and return with intensity (verb in inf. absolute to express idea of intensity or emphasis) to us all the evil which we have done him — what could we do? How helpless our condition! The whole is equivalent to an exclamation of alarm: What if Joseph should hate us, etc? The deep consciousness of guilt prompted the words.

V. 19. Am I in the place of God?-He in his great humility thought they shewed him too much respect, and faith to them in effect, as Peter to Cornelius, Stand up, I myself also am a man. Make your peace with God, and then you will find it an easy matter to make your peace with me.

Verse 19. Am I in the place of God?] These words may be understood either as a question, or an affirmative proposition. How should I take any farther notice of your transgression? I have passed it by, the matter lies now between God and you. Or, in the order of Divine providence I am now in God’s place; he has furnished me with means, and made me a distributor of his bounty; I will therefore not only nourish you, but also your little ones, Genesis 50:21: and therefore he spake comfortably unto them, as in Genesis 45:8, telling them that he attributed the whole business to the particular providence of God rather than to any ill will or malice in them, and that, in permitting him to be brought into Egypt, God had graciously saved their lives, the life of their father, the lives of the people of Canaan, and of the Egyptians: as therefore God had honoured him by making him vicegerent in the dispensations of his especial bounty towards so many people, it was impossible he should be displeased with the means by which this was brought about.

Verse 19. Am I in the place of God? — Dare I usurp the prerogative of God, to whom it belongs to take vengeance? Or, can I do what I please with you, without God’s leave? Fear him rather than me, and upon your experience of his wonderful care of and kindness to you, be persuaded he will still befriend you, and therefore I will. Or, perhaps, in his great humility, he thought they showed him too much respect, and saith to them, in effect, as Peter to Cornelius, “Stand up; I myself also am a man.” Make your peace with God, and then you will find it an easy matter to make your peace with me.

19. Am I in the place of God — “It is true that you have sinned, but it is not mine to punish; God is your judge and mine.” — Newhall.

V. 20. Ye thought evil, but God meant it unto good-In order to the making Joseph a greater blessing to his family than otherwise he could have been.

Verses 20, 21. Ye thought evil, but God meant it unto good — In order to the making Joseph a greater blessing to his family than otherwise he could have been. Fear not, I will nourish you — See what an excellent spirit Joseph was of, and learn of him to render good for evil. He did not tell them they were upon their good behaviour, and he would be kind to them, if he saw them carry themselves well: no, he would not thus hold them in suspense, nor seem jealous of them, though they had been suspicious of him. He comforted them — And, to banish all their fears, he spake kindly to them. Those we love and forgive we must not only do well for, but speak kindly to.

20. Ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good — “He accepts their confession of sin, but now again, as when he first made himself known to them, (Genesis 45:5-8,) generously strives to mitigate their pain by showing them how God has overruled evil for good. Man devises evil, and in the device is sin: but when it comes to action, it can bring only good to them who trust God. Thus man’s wrath praises him.” — Newhall.

V. 21. Fear not, I will nourish you-See what an excellent spirit Joseph was of, and learn of him to render good for evil. He did not tell them they were upon their good behaviour, and he would be kind to them if he saw they carried themselves well: no, he would not thus hold them in suspence, nor seem jealous of them, though they had been suspicious of him. He comforted them, and, to banish all their fears, he spake kindly to them. Those we love and forgive we must not only do well for, but speak kindly to.

Verses 20, 21. Ye thought evil, but God meant it unto good — In order to the making Joseph a greater blessing to his family than otherwise he could have been. Fear not, I will nourish you — See what an excellent spirit Joseph was of, and learn of him to render good for evil. He did not tell them they were upon their good behaviour, and he would be kind to them, if he saw them carry themselves well: no, he would not thus hold them in suspense, nor seem jealous of them, though they had been suspicious of him. He comforted them — And, to banish all their fears, he spake kindly to them. Those we love and forgive we must not only do well for, but speak kindly to.

21. Spake kindly unto them — Hebrews, spake to their heart, as in the margin; a beautiful form of speech, which it would have been well to retain in translation.

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.

DEATH OF JOSEPH, 22-26.

22. Hundred and ten years — Compare the same age of Joshua when he died. Joshua 24:29.

Verse 23. Were brought up upon Joseph’s knees.] They were educated by him, or under his direction; his sons and their children continuing to acknowledge him as patriarch, or head of the family, as long as he lived.

Ver. 23. Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation. Ephraim was born when Joseph was about thirty six years of age. From his living to see the third generation we may justly conclude, that they then began to marry at about the age of twenty five, or before that time. The patriarch Jacob, and his twelve patriarchal sons, lived to see the dawn of the promise, that their “seed should be as the stars of heaven.”

23. Ephraim’s children of the third generation — That is, “his great great grandchildren (literally, the sons of the sons of the third generation, as Gesenius shows from Exodus 20:5, and 34:7; but Furst and others understand the Hebrew to mean great grandchildren.) He took upon his knees also his great grandchildren in the line of Manasseh. It was a serene and trustful old age.” — Newhall.

V. 24. I die, but God will surely visit you-To this purpose Jacob had spoken to him, Genesis 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.

Verse 24. Joseph said-I die] That is, I am dying; and God will surely visit you-he will yet again give you, in the time when it shall be essentially necessary, the most signal proof of his unbounded love towards the seed of Jacob.

And bring you out of this land] Though ye have here every thing that can render life comfortable, yet this is not the typical land, the land given by covenant, the land which represents the rest that remains for the people of God.

Verse 24. I die; and God will surely visit you — To this purpose Jacob had spoken to him, Genesis 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.

DEATH OF JOSEPH, 22-26.

22. Hundred and ten years — Compare the same age of Joshua when he died. Joshua 24:29.

V. 25. And ye shall carry up my bones from hence-Herein he had an eye to the promise, Genesis 15:13,14, and in God’s name assures them of the performance of it. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably, and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a plain burial in Canaan, and that deferred almost two hundred 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, Hebrews 11:22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake, that God will surely visit Israel, and bring them to Canaan.

Verse 25. Ye shall carry up my bones] That I may finally rest with my ancestors in the land which God gave to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and which is a pledge as it is a type of the kingdom of Heaven. Thus says the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 11:22: “By FAITH Joseph, when he died, (teleutwn, when dying,) made mention of the departure (exodou, of the EXODUS) of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones. From this it is evident that Joseph considered all these things as typical, and by this very commandment expressed his faith in the immortality of the soul, and the general resurrection of the dead. This oath, by which Joseph then bound his brethren, their posterity considered as binding on themselves; and Moses took care, when he departed from Egypt, to carry up Joseph’s body with him, Exodus 13:19; which was afterwards buried in Shechem, Joshua 24:32, the very portion which Jacob had purchased from the Amorites, and which he gave to his son Joseph, Genesis 48:22; Ac 7:16. See the reason for this command as given by Chrysostom, vol. ii., p. 695, sec. D.E.

Verse 25. And ye shall carry up my bones from hence — Herein he had an eye to the promise, (Genesis 15:13, 14,) and in God’s name assures them of the performance of it. In Egypt they buried their great men very honourably, and with abundance of pomp; but Joseph prefers a plain burial in Canaan, and that deferred almost two hundred 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, Hebrews 11:22. He dies in Egypt; but lays his bones at stake, that God will surely visit Israel, and bring them to Canaan.

Ver. 25. Carry up my bones. Joseph believed in the promised Seed; in the coming and kingdom of the Messiah. Therefore he wished his bones to lie with his holy sires, that he might rise with them in the resurrection. This hope was so strongly enrooted in his heart, as to form the cheering theme of conversation when dying, nor could he be satisfied without an oath that his brethren would perform his last request. Princely honours could not naturalize this stranger to the land of Egypt.

25. Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel — “He could have commanded them to carry his body immediately to Canaan, as he had already carried that of Israel there; but he commanded that it should stand swathed in its mummy bands, in the sepulchral chamber, waiting for the time of its burial in their true national home. The Egyptians were accustomed to keep the mummies of their friends standing for some time, before final burial, in a small room attached to the tomb, whence it was often brought forth to receive priestly benedictions. Wilkinson. Thus, after his death the body of Joseph constantly exhorted and inspirited Israel to remember God’s covenant with their fathers.” — Newhall.

V. 26. He was put in a coffin in Egypt-But not buried till his children had received their inheritance in Canaan, Joshua 24:32. If the soul do but return to its rest with God, the matter is not great, though the deserted body find not at all, or not quickly, its rest in the grave. Yet care ought to be taken of the dead bodies of the saints, in the belief of their resurrection; for there is a covenant with the dust which shall be remembered, and a commandment given concerning the bones.

Verse 26. Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old] שנים rc[w ham בנ ben meah vaeser shanim; literally, the son of a hundred and ten years. Here the period of time he lived is personified, all the years of which it was composed being represented as a nurse or father, feeding, nourishing, and supporting him to the end. This figure, which is termed by rhetoricians prosopopæia, is very frequent in Scripture; and by this virtues, vices, forms, attributes, and qualities, with every part of inanimate nature, are represented as endued with reason and speech, and performing all the actions of intelligent beings.

They embalmed him] See Clarke on “Genesis 50:2”. The same precautions were taken to preserve his body as to preserve that of his father Jacob; and this was particularly necessary in his case, ‘because his body was to be carried to Canaan a hundred and forty-four years after; which was the duration of the Israelites’ bondage after the death of Joseph. And he was put in a coffin in Egypt.] On this subject I shall subjoin some useful remarks from Harmer’s Observations, which several have borrowed without acknowledgment. I quoted my own edition of this Work, vol. iii., p. 69, &c. Lond. 1808.

“There were some methods of honouring the dead which demand our attention; the being put into a coffin has been in particular considered as a mark of distinction.

“With us the poorest people have their coffins; if the relations cannot afford them, the parish is at the expense. In the east, on the contrary, they are not always used, even in our times. The ancient Jews probably buried their dead in the same manner: neither was the body of our Lord put in a coffin, nor that of Elisha, whose bones were touched by the corpse that was let down a little after into his sepulchre, 2 Kings 13:21. That coffins were anciently used in Egypt, all agree; and antique coffins of stone and of sycamore wood are still to be seen in that country, not to mention those said to be made of a sort of pasteboard, formed by folding and gluing cloth together a great number of times, curiously plastered, and then painted with hieroglyphics.

“As it was an ancient Egyptian custom, and was not used in the neighbouring countries, on these accounts the sacred historian was doubtless led to observe of Joseph that he was not only embalmed, but was also put in a coffin, both being practices almost peculiar to the Egyptians. “Mr. Maillet conjectures that all were not inclosed in coffins which were laid in the Egyptian repositories of the dead, but that it was an honour appropriated to persons of distinction; for after having given an account of several niches which are found in those chambers of death, he adds: ‘But it must not be imagined that the bodies deposited in these gloomy apartments were all inclosed in chests, and placed in niches. The greater part were simply embalmed and swathed, after which they laid them one by the side of the other, without any ceremony. Some were even put into these tombs without any embalming at all, or with such a slight one that there remains nothing of them in the linen in which they were wrapped but the bones, and these half rotten. It is probable that each considerable family had one of these burial-places to themselves; that the niches were designed for the bodies of the heads of the family; and that those of their domestics and slaves had no other care taken of them than merely laying them in the ground after being slightly embalmed, and sometimes even without that; which was probably all that was done to heads of families of less distinction.’-Lett. 7, p. 281. The same author gives an account of a mode of burial anciently practised in that country, which has been but recently discovered: it consisted in placing the bodies, after they were swathed up, on a layer of charcoal, and covering them with a mat, under a bed of sand seven or eight feet deep.

“Hence it seems evident that coffins were not universally used in Egypt, and were only used for persons of eminence and distinction. It is also reasonable to believe that in times so remote as those of Joseph they might have been much less common than afterwards, and that consequently Joseph’s being put in a coffin in Egypt might be mentioned with a design to express the great honours the Egyptians did him in death, as well as in life; being treated after the most sumptuous manner, embalmed, and put into a coffin.”

It is no objection to this account that the widow of Nain’s son is represented as carried forth to be buried in a sopov or bier; for the present inhabitants of the Levant, who are well known to lay their dead in the earth uninclosed, carry them frequently out to burial in a kind of coffin, which is not deposited in the grave, the body being taken out of it, and placed in the grave in a reclining posture. It is probable that the coffins used at Nain were of the same kind, being intended for no other purpose but to carry the body to the place of interment, the body itself being buried without them. It is very probable that the chief difference was not in being with or without a coffin, but in the expensiveness of the coffin itself; some of the Egyptian coffins being made of granite, and covered all over with hieroglyphics, the cutting of which must have been done at a prodigious expense, both of time and money; the stone being so hard that we have no tools by which we can make any impression on it. Two of these are now in the British Museum, that appear to have belonged to some of the nobles of Egypt. They are dug out of the solid stone, and adorned with almost innumerable hieroglyphics. One of these, vulgarly called Alexander’s tomb, is ten feet three inches and a quarter long, ten inches thick in the sides, in breadth at top five feet three inches and a half, in breadth at bottom four feet two inches and a half, and three feet ten in depth, and weighs about ten tons. In such a coffin I suppose the body of Joseph was deposited; and such a one could not have been made and transported to Canaan at an expense that any private individual could bear. It was with incredible labour and at an extraordinary expense that the coffin in question was removed the distance of but a few miles, from the ship that brought it from Egypt, to its present residence in the British Museum. Judge, then, at what an expense such a coffin must have been digged, engraved, and transported over the desert from Egypt to Canaan, a distance of three hundred miles! We need not be surprised to hear of carriages and horsemen, a very great company, when such a coffin was to be carried so far, with a suitable company to attend it. Joseph’s life was the shortest of all the patriarchs, for which Bishop Patrick gives a sound physical reason-he was the son of his father’s old age. It appears from Archbishop Usher’s Chronology that Joseph governed Egypt under four kings, Mephramuthosis, Thmosis, Amenophis, and Orus. His government, we know, lasted eighty years; for when he stood before Pharaoh he was thirty years of age, Genesis 41:46, and he died when he was one hundred and ten.

On the character and conduct of Joseph many remarks have already been made in the preceding notes. On the subject of his piety there can be but one opinion. It was truly exemplary, and certainly was tried in cases in which few instances occur of persevering fidelity. His high sense of the holiness of God, the strong claims of justice, and the rights of hospitality and gratitude, led him, in the instance of the solicitations of his master’s wife, to act a part which, though absolutely just and proper, can never be sufficiently praised. Heathen authors boast of some persons of such singular constancy; but the intelligent reader will recollect that these relations stand in general in their fabulous histories, and are destitute of those characteristics which truth essentially requires; such, I mean, as the story of Hippolytus and Phædra, Bellerophon and Antea or Sthenobæa, Peleus and Astydamia, and others of this complexion, which appear to be marred pictures, taken from this highly finished original which the inspired writer has fairly drawn from life.

His fidelity to his master is not less evident, and God’s approbation of his conduct is strongly marked; for he caused whatsoever he did to prosper, whether a slave in the house of his master, a prisoner in the dungeon, or a prime minister by the throne, which is a full proof that his ways pleased him; and this is more clearly seen in the providential deliverances by which he was favoured.

On the political conduct of Joseph there are conflicting opinions. On the one hand it is asserted that “he found the Egyptians a free people, and that he availed himself of a most afflicting providence of God to reduce them all to a state of slavery, destroyed their political consequence, and made their king despotic.” In all these respects his political measures have been strongly vindicated, not only as being directed by God, but as being obviously the best, every thing considered, for the safety, honour, and welfare of his sovereign and the kingdom. It is true he bought the lands of the people for the king, but he farmed them to the original occupiers again, at the moderate and fixed crown rent of one-fifth part of the produce. “Thus did he provide for the liberty and independence of the people, while he strengthened the authority of the king by making him sole proprietor of the lands. And to secure the people from farther exaction, Joseph made it a law over all the land of Egypt, that Pharaoh (i.e. the king) should have only the fifth part; which law subsisted to the time of Moses, Genesis 47:21-26. By this wise regulation,” continues Dr. Hales, “the people had four-fifths of the produce of the lands for their own use, and were exempted from any farther taxes, the king being bound to support his civil and military establishment out of the crown rents.” By the original constitution of Egypt established by Menes, and Thoth or Hermes his prime minister, the lands were divided into three portions, between the king, the priests, and the military, each party being bound to support its respective establishment by the produce. See the quotations from Diodorus Siculus, in the note on Genesis 47:23. See Clarke “Genesis 47:23”. It is certain, therefore, that the constitution of Egypt was considerably altered by Joseph, and there can be no doubt that much additional power was, by this alteration, vested in the hands of the king; but as we do not find that any improper use was made of this power, we may rest assured that it was so qualified and restricted by wholesome regulations, though they are not here particularized, as completely to prevent all abuse of the regal power, and all tyrannical usurpation of popular rights. That the people were nothing but slaves to the king, the military, and the priests before, appears from the account given by Diodorus; each of the three estates probably allowing them a certain portion of land for their own use, while cultivating the rest for the use and emolument of their masters. Matters, however, became more regular under the administration of Joseph; and it is perhaps not too much to say, that, previously to this, Egypt was without a fixed regular constitution, and that it was not the least of the blessings that it owed to the wisdom and prudence of Joseph, that he reduced it to a regular form of government, giving the people such an interest in the safety of the state as was well calculated to insure their exertions to defend the nation, and render the constitution fixed and permanent. It is well known that Justin, one of the Roman historians, has made particular and indeed honourable mention of Joseph’s administration in Egypt, in the account he gives of Jewish affairs, lib. 36. cap. 2. How the relation may have stood in Trogus Pompeius, from whose voluminous works in forty-four books or volumes Justin abridged his history, we cannot tell, as the work of Trogus is irrecoverably lost; but it is evident that the account was taken in the main from the Mosaic history, and it is written with as much candour as can be expected from a prejudiced and unprincipled heathen.

Minimus ætate inter fratres Joseph fruit, &c. “Joseph was the youngest of his brethren, who, being envious of his excellent endowments, stole him and privately sold him to a company of foreign merchants, by whom he was carried into Egypt; where, having diligently cultivated magic arts, he became, in a short time, a prime favourite with the king himself. For he was the most sagacious of men in explaining prodigies; and he was the first who constructed the science of interpreting dreams. Nor was there any thing relative to laws human or Divine with which he seemed unacquainted; for he predicted a failure of the crops many years before it took place; and the inhabitants of Egypt must have been famished had not the king, through his counsel, made an edict to preserve the fruits for several years. And his experiments were so powerful, that the responses appear to have been given, not by man, but by God.” Tantaque experimenta ejus fuerunt, ut non ab homine, sed a Deo, responsa dari viderentur. I believe Justin refers here in the word experimenta, to his figment of magical incantations eliciting oracular answers. Others have translated the words: “So excellent were his regulations that they seemed rather to be oracular responses, not given by man, but by God.”

I have already compared Joseph with his father Jacob, See Clarke on “Genesis 48:12”, and shall make no apology for having given the latter a most decided superiority. Joseph was great; but his greatness came through the interposition of especial providences. Jacob was great, mentally and practically great, under the ordinary workings of Providence; and, towards the close of his life, not less distinguished for piety towards God than his son Joseph was in the holiest period of his life. THUS terminates the Book of GENESIS, the most ancient record in the world; including the history of two grand subjects, CREATION and PROVIDENCE, of each of which it gives a summary, but astonishingly minute, and detailed account. From this book almost all the ancient philosophers, astronomers, chronologists, and historians have taken their respective data; and all the modern improvements and accurate discoveries in different arts and sciences have only served to confirm the facts detailed by Moses; and to show that all the ancient writers on these subjects have approached to or receded from TRUTH and the phenomena of nature, in proportion as they have followed the Mosaic history.

In this book the CREATIVE POWER and ENERGY of GOD are first introduced to the reader’s notice, and the mind is overwhelmed with those grand creative acts by which the universe was brought into being. When this account is completed, and the introduction of SIN, and its awful consequences in the destruction of the earth by a flood, noticed, then the Almighty Creator is next introduced as the RESTORER and PRESERVER of the world; and thus the history of Providence commences: a history in which the mind of man is alternately delighted and confounded with the infinitely varied plans of wisdom and mercy in preserving the human species, counteracting the evil propensities of men and devils by means of gracious influences conveyed through religious institutions, planting and watering the seeds of righteousness which himself had sowed in the hearts of men, and leading forward and maturing the grand purposes of his grace in the final salvation of the human race.

After giving a minutely detailed account of the peopling of the earth, ascertaining and settling the bounds of the different nations of mankind, the sacred writer proceeds with the history of one family only; but he chooses that one through which, as from an ever-during fountain, the streams of justice, grace, goodness, wisdom, and truth, should emanate. Here we see a pure well of living water, springing up into eternal life, restrained in its particular influence to one people till, in the fulness of time, the fountain should be opened in the house of David for sin and for uncleanness in general, and the earth filled with the knowledge and salvation of God; thus by means of one family, as extensive a view of the economy of providence and grace is afforded as it is possible for the human mind to comprehend. In this epitome how wonderful do the workings of Providence appear! An astonishing concatenated train of stupendous and minute events is laid before us; and every transaction is so distinctly marked as everywhere to exhibit the finger, the hand, or the arm of God! But did God lavish his providential cares and attention on this one family, exclusive of the rest of his intelligent offspring? No: for the same superintendence, providential direction, and influence, would be equally seen in all the concerns of human life, in the preservation of individuals, the rise and fall of kingdoms and states, and in all the mighty REVOLUTIONS, natural, moral, and political, in the universe, were God, as in the preceding instances, to give us the detailed history; but what was done in the family of Abraham, was done in behalf of the whole human race. This specimen is intended to show us that God does work, and that against him and the operations of his hand, no might, no counsel, no cunning of men or devils, can prevail; that he who walks uprightly walks securely; and that all things work together for good to them who love God; that none is so ignorant, low, or lost, that God cannot instruct, raise up, and save. In a word, he shows himself by this history to be the invariable friend of mankind, embracing every opportunity to do them good, and, to speak after the manner of men, rejoicing in the frequent recurrence of such opportunities; that every man, considering the subject, may be led to exclaim in behalf of all his fellows, BEHOLD HOW HE LOVETH THEM!

On the character of Moses as a HISTORIAN and PHILOSOPHER (for in his legislative character he does not yet appear) much might be said, did the nature of this work admit. But as brevity has been everywhere studied, and minute details rarely admitted, and only where absolutely necessary, the candid reader will excuse any deficiencies of this kind which he may have already noticed.

Of the accuracy and impartiality of Moses as a historian, many examples are given in the course of the notes, with such observations and reflections as the subjects themselves suggested; and the succeeding books will afford many opportunities for farther remarks on these topics.

The character of Moses as a philosopher and chronologist, has undergone the severest scrutiny. A class of philosophers, professedly infidels, have assailed the Mosaic account of the formation of the universe, and that of the general deluge, with such repeated attacks as sufficiently prove that, in their apprehension, the pillars of their system must be shaken into ruin if those accounts could not be proved to be false. Traditions, supporting accounts different from those in the sacred history, have been borrowed from the most barbarous as well as the most civilized nations, in order to bear on this argument. These, backed by various geologic observations made in extensive travels, experiments on the formation of different strata or beds of earth, either by inundations or volcanic eruption, have been all condensed into one apparently strong but strange argument, intended to overthrow the Mosaic account of the creation. The argument may be stated thus: “The account given by Moses of the time when God commenced his creative acts is too recent; for, according to his Genesis, six thousand years have not yet elapsed since the formation of the universe; whereas a variety of phenomena prove that the earth itself must have existed, if not from eternity, yet at least fourteen if not twenty thousand years.” This I call a strange argument, because it is well known that all the ancient nations in the world, the Jews excepted, have, to secure their honour and respectability, assigned to themselves a duration of the most improbable length; and have multiplied months, weeks, and even days, into years, in order to support their pretensions to the most remote antiquity. The millions of years which have been assumed by the Chinese and the Hindoos have been ridiculed for their manifest absurdity, even by those philosophers who have brought the contrary charge against the Mosaic account. So notorious are the pretensions to remote ancestry and remote eras, in every false and fabricated system of family pedigree and national antiquity, as to produce doubt at the very first view of their subjects, and to cause the impartial inquirer after truth to take every step with the extreme of caution, knowing that in going over such accounts he everywhere treads on a kind of enchanted ground.

When in the midst of these a writer is found who, without saying a word of the systems of other nations, professes to give a simple account of the creation and peopling of the earth, and to show the very conspicuous part that his own people acted among the various nations of the world, and who assigns to the earth and to its inhabitants a duration comparatively but as of yesterday, he comes forward with such a variety of claims to be heard, read, and considered, as no other writer can pretend to. And as he departs from the universal custom of all writers on similar subjects, in assigning a comparatively recent date, not only to his own nation, but to the universe itself, he must have been actuated by motives essentially different from those which have governed all other ancient historians and chronologists. The generally acknowledged extravagance and absurdity of all the chronological systems of ancient times, the great simplicity and harmony of that of Moses, its facts evidently borrowed by others, though disgraced by the fables they have intermixed with them, and the very late invention of arts and sciences, all tend to prove, at the very first view, that the Mosaic account, which assigns the shortest duration to the earth, is the most ancient and the most likely to be true. But all this reasoning has been supposed to be annihilated by an argument brought against the Mosaic account of the creation by Mr. Patrick Brydone, F.R.S., drawn from the evidence of different eruptions of Mount Ætna. The reader may find this in his “Tour through Sicily and Malta,” letter vii., where, speaking of his acquaintance with the Canonico Recupero at Catania, who was then employed on writing a natural history of Mount Ætna, he says: “Near to a vault which is now thirty feet below ground, and has probably been a burying-place, there is a draw-well where there are several strata of lavas, (i.e., the liquid matter formed of stones, &c., which is discharged from the mountain in its eruptions,) with earth to a considerable thickness over each stratum. Recupero has made use of this as an argument to prove the great antiquity of the eruptions of this mountain. For if it requires two thousand years and upwards to form but a scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have been more than that space of time between each of the eruptions which have formed these strata. But what shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci, of a great depth? They pierced through seven distinct lavas, one under the other, the surfaces of which were parallel, and most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth. Now, says he, the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least fourteen thousand years ago! Recupero tells me, he is exceedingly embarrassed by these discoveries, in writing the history of the mountain; that Moses hangs like a dead weight upon him, and blunts all his zeal for inquiry, for that he really has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world.

“The bishop, who is strenuously orthodox, (for it is an excellent see,) has already warned him to be upon his guard; and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses, nor to presume to urge any thing that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory to his sacred authority.” Though Mr. Brydone produces this as a sneer against revelation, bishops, and orthodoxy, yet the sequel will prove that it was good advice, and that the bishop was much better instructed than either Recupero or Brydone, and that it would have been much to their credit had they taken his advice. I have given, however, this argument at length; and even in the insidious dress of Mr. Brydone, whose faith in Divine revelation appears to have been upon a par with that of Signior Recupero, both being built nearly on the same foundation; to show from the answer how slight the strongest arguments are, produced from insulated facts by prejudice and partiality, when brought to the test of sober, candid, philosophical investigation, aided by an increased knowledge of the phenomena of nature. “In answer to this argument,” says Bishop Watson, (Letters to Gibbon,) “It might be urged that the time necessary for converting lavas into fertile fields must be very different, according to the different consistencies of the lavas, and their different situations with respect to elevation and depression, or their being exposed to winds, rains, and other circumstances; as for instance, the quantity of ashes deposited over them, after they had cooled, &c., &c., just as the time in which heaps of iron slag, which resembles lava, are covered with verdure, is different at different furnaces, according to the nature of the slag and situation of the furnace; and something of this kind is deducible from the account of the canon (Recupero) himself, since the crevices in the strata are often full of rich good soil, and have pretty large trees growing upon them. But should not all this be thought sufficient to remove the objection, I will produce the canon an analogy in opposition to his analogy, and which is grounded on more certain facts. “Ætna and Vesuvius resemble each other in the causes which produce their eruptions, in the nature of their lavas, and in the time necessary to mellow them into soil fit for vegetation; or, if there be any slight difference in this respect, it is probably not greater than what subsists between different lavas of the same mountain. This being admitted, which no philosopher will deny, the canon’s (Recupero’s) analogy will prove just nothing at all if we can produce an instance of seven different lavas, with interjacent strata of vegetable earth, which have flowed from Mount Vesuvius within the space, not of fourteen thousand, but of somewhat less than one thousand seven hundred years; for then, according to our analogy, a stratum of lava may be covered with vegetable soil in about two hundred and fifty years, instead of requiring two thousand for that purpose.

“The eruption of Vesuvius, which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii, is rendered still more famous by the death of Pliny, recorded by his nephew in his letter to Tacitus. This event happened A. D. 79; but we are informed by unquestionable authority, (Remarks on the nature of the soil of Naples and its vicinity, by Sir William Hamilton, Philos. Transact., vol. lxi., p. 7,) that the matter which covers the ancient town of Herculaneum is not the produce of one eruption only, for there are evident marks that the matter of six eruptions has taken its course over that which lies immediately over the town, and was the cause of its destruction. The strata are either of lava or burnt matter with veins of good soil between them. You perceive,” says the bishop, “with what ease a little attention and increase of knowledge may remove a great difficulty; but had we been able to say nothing in explanation of this phenomenon, we should not have acted a very rational part in making our ignorance the foundation of our infidelity, or suffering a minute philosopher to rob us of our religion.” In this, as well as in all other cases, the foundation stands sure, being deeply and legibly impressed with God’s seal. See also Dr. Greaves’s Lectures on the Pentateuch. There is a very sensible paper written by Don Joseph Giœni (The Chevalier Giœni was an inhabitant of the first region of Ætna.) on the eruption of Ætna in 1781; in which, among many other valuable observations, I find the following note: “I was obliged to traverse the current of lava made by the eruption of 1766, the most ancient of any that took this direction, viz., Bronte. I saw several streams of lava which had crossed others, and which afforded me evident proofs of the fallacy of the conclusions of those who seek to estimate the period of the formation of the beds of lava from the change they have undergone. Some lava of earlier date than others still resist the weather, and present a vitreous and unaltered surface, while the lava of later date already begin to be covered with vegetation.” -See Pinkerton on Rock, vol. ii., p. 395. On the geology and astronomy of the book of Genesis, much has been written, both by the enemies and friends of revelation; but as Moses has said but very little on these subjects, and nothing in a systematic way, it is unfair to invent a system pretendedly collected out of his words, and thus make him accountable for what he never wrote. There are systems of this kind, the preconceived fictions of their authors, for which they have sought support and credit by tortured meanings extracted from a few Hebrew roots, and then dignified them with the title of The Mosaic System of the Universe. This has afforded infidelity a handle which it has been careful to turn to its own advantage. On the first chapter of Genesis, I have given a general view of the solar system, without pretending that I had found it there. I have also ventured to apply the comparatively recent doctrine of caloric to the Mosaic account of the creation of light previous to the formation of the sun, and have supported it with such arguments as appeared to me to render it at least probable: but I have not pledged Moses to any of my explanations, being fully convinced that it was necessarily foreign from his design to enter into philosophic details of any kind, as it was his grand object, as has been already remarked, to give a history of CREATION and PROVIDENCE in the most abridged form of which it was capable. And who, in so few words, ever spoke so much? By Creation I mean the production of every being, animate and inanimate, material and intellectual. And by Providence, not only the preservation and government of all being, but also the various and extraordinary provisions made by Divine justice and mercy for the comfort and final salvation of man. These subjects I have endeavoured to trace out through every chapter of this book, and to exhibit them in such a manner as appeared to me the best calculated to promote glory to GOD in the highest, and upon earth PEACE AND GOOD WILL AMONG MEN.

Observations on the Jewish manner of DIVIDING and READING the LAW and the PROPHETS.

The ancient Jews divided the whole law of Moses into fifty-four sections, which they read in their synagogues in the course of the fifty-two Sabbaths in the year, joining two of the shortest twice together, that the whole might be finished in one year’s space; but in their intercalated years, in which they added a month, they had fifty-four Sabbaths, and then they had a section for each Sabbath: and it was to meet the exigency of the intercalated years that they divided the law into fifty-four sections at first. When Antiochus Epiphanes forbade the Jews on pain of death to read their law, they divided the prophets into the same number of sections, and read them in their synagogues in place of the law; and when, under the Asmoneans, they recovered their liberty, and with it the free exercise of their religion, though the reading of the law was resumed, they continued the use of the prophetic sections, reading them conjointly with those in the law. To this first division and mode of reading the law there is a reference, Acts 15:21: For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being READ IN THE SYNAGOGUES EVERY SABBATH DAY. To the second division and conjoint reading of the law and the prophets we also find a reference, Acts 13:15; And after the reading of the LAW AND THE PROPHETS, the rulers of the synagogue sent unto them, saying, &c. And that the prophets were read in this way in our Lord’s time, we have a proof, Luke 4:16, &c., where, going into the synagogue to read on the Sabbath day, as was his custom, there was delivered unto him the book of the Prophet Isaiah: and it appears that the prophetical section for that Sabbath was taken from the sixty-first chapter of his prophecies. Of these sections the book of Genesis contains twelve:

The FIRST, called tyvrb bereshith, begins Genesis 1:1, and ends Genesis 6:8.

The SECOND, called jn Noach, begins Genesis 6:9, and ends Genesis 11:32.

The THIRD, called Ël Ël lech lecha, begins Genesis 12:1, and ends Genesis 18:1.

The FOURTH, called aryw vaiyera, begins Genesis 18:1, and ends Genesis 22:24.

The FIFTH, called hrc yyj chaiyey Sarah, begins Genesis 23:1, and ends Genesis 25:18.

The SIXTH, called tdlwt toledoth, begins Genesis 25:19, and ends Genesis 28:9.

The SEVENTH, called axyw vaiyetse, begins Genesis 28:10, and ends Genesis 32:3.

The EIGHTH, called jlvyw vaiyishlach, begins Genesis 32:4, and ends Genesis 36:43.

The NINTH, called bvyw vaiysheb, begins Genesis 37:1, and ends Genesis 40:23.

The TENTH, called xqm mikkets, begins Genesis 41:1, and ends Genesis 14:17.

The ELEVENTH, called vgyw vaiyiggash, begins Genesis 44:18, and ends Genesis 47:27.

The TWELFTH, called yjyw vayechi, begins Genesis 47:28, and ends Genesis 50:26.

These sections have their technical names, from the words with which they commence; and are marked in the Hebrew Bibles with three ppp pe’s, which are an abbreviation for hvrp parashah, a section or division; and sometimes with three sss samech’s, which are an abbreviation for the word rds seder, or ards sidra, an order, a full and absolute division. The former are generally called twyvrp parashioth, distinctions, divisions, sections; the latter µyrds sedarim, orders, arrangements; as it is supposed that the sense is more full and complete in these than in the parashioth. See the Tables, &c., at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy, where all these matters, and others connected with them, are considered in great detail.

MASORETIC Notes on the Book of GENESIS.

At the end of all the books in the Hebrew Bible, the Masoretes have affixed certain notes, ascertaining the number of greater and smaller sections, chapters, verses, and letters. These they deemed of the greatest importance, in order to preserve the integrity of their law, and the purity of their prophets. And to this end they not only numbered every verse, word, and letter, but even went so far as to ascertain how often each letter of the alphabet occurred in the whole Bible! Thus sacredly did they watch over their records in order to prevent every species of corruption. The sum of all the VERSES in Bereshith (Genesis) is 1534. And the memorial sign of this sum is dl Ëa-aleph a signifying 1000; final caph Ë 500; lamed l 30, and daleth d 4.=1534.

The middle verse of Genesis is the fortieth of chap. xxvii.: By thy sword shalt thou live.

The PARASHIOTH, or greater sections; are twelve. The symbol of which is the word hz zeh, THIS, Exodus 3:15: And THIS is my memorial to all generations. Where zain z stands for 7, and he h, for 5.=12. The SEDARIM, or orders, (see above) are forty-three. The symbol of which is the word גם gam. Genesis 27:33: YEA (גם gam) and he shall be blessed. Where gimel g stands for 3, and mem m for 40.=43. The PERAKIM, or modern division of chapters, are fifty; the symbol of which is Ël lecha, Isaiah 33:2: We have waited FOR THEE. Where lamed l stands for 30, and caph Ë for 20.=50.

The open sections are 43, the close sections 48, total 91: the numerical sign of which is ax tse, GET THEE OUT, Exodus 11:8, where tsaddi x stands for 90, and aleph a for 1.=91.

The number of letters is about 52,740; but this last is more a matter of conjecture and computation than of certainty, and on it no dependence can safely be placed, it being a mere multiplication by twelve, the number of sections, of 4395, the known number of letters in the last or twelfth section of the book. On this subject see Buxtorf’s Tiberias, p. 181.

Verse 26. Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old — So for about thirteen years of affliction he enjoyed eighty years of honour, and as much happiness as earth could afford him. He was put in a coffin in Egypt — But not buried till his children had received their inheritance in Canaan, Joshua 24:32. If the soul do but return to its rest with God, the matter is not great, though the deserted body find not at all, or not quickly, its rest in the grave. Yet care ought to be taken of the dead bodies of the saints, in the belief of their resurrection; for there is a covenant with the dust which shall be remembered, and a commandment given concerning the bones.

Ver. 26. A coffin. The Hebrews buried their dead, as did the Egyptians. Among some nations, cremation, or burning the dead, was probably introduced because God had accepted the sacrifices of men on special occasions, by fire from heaven; and therefore the body was offered by fire, as the final oblation; and the ashes put into an urn. Many such urns have been found in our English barrows. The Americans used to lay the body on the ground, and raise a heap of stones around it. At Kennet, near Marlborough, there are very large stones, [greyweathers] which have been dug out of barrows. These honours, whether splendid or humble, alike indicate a belief in the life to come.

26. They embalmed him — See on verse 2. He was put in a coffin — “Rather, in the coffin, that is, the customary Egyptian coffin, or mummy chest, usually made of sycamore wood, which, though porous, was so durable that coffins of the time of the Pharaohs are freely used for fuel in Egypt to-day. Cedar coffins are also found, though less generally. The mummy chests of kings were often placed in a stone sarcophagus. “Here, at the sepulchre of Joseph, endeth the great Book of Generations, wherein are laid the historical, doctrinal, and ethical foundations of Divine revelation. In Egypt are the significant closing words, for there the posterity of Jacob now vanish from our sight for centuries; but through those ages of servile travail, the mummy of Joseph, wrapped in its fragrant cerements, a mute but eloquent admonition and prophecy, stands calmly waiting in its niche for the birth of the NATION OF ISRAEL.” — Newhall.