Genesis 50
50
Jacob’s Funeral
1When Israel died, Joseph was very sad. He hugged his father and cried over him and kissed him. 2Joseph commanded his servants to prepare his father’s body. (These servants were doctors.) The doctors prepared Jacob’s body to be buried. They prepared the body in the special way of the Egyptians. 3When the Egyptians prepared the body in this special way, they waited 40 days before they buried the body. Then the Egyptians had a special time of sadness for Jacob. This time was 70 days.
4After the time of sadness was finished, Joseph spoke to Pharaoh’s officers and said, “Please tell this to Pharaoh: 5‘When my father was near death, I made a promise to him. I promised that I would bury him in a cave in the land of Canaan. This is the cave that he prepared for himself. So please let me go and bury my father. Then I will come back here to you.’”
6Pharaoh answered, “Keep your promise. Go and bury your father.”
7So Joseph went to bury his father. All of Pharaoh’s officials, personal advisors, and all the older leaders of Egypt went with Joseph. 8All the people in Joseph’s family, his brothers, and all the people in his father’s family went with him. Only the children and the animals stayed in the land of Goshen. 9So there was a large crowd of people with him. There was even a group of soldiers riding in chariots and some on horses.
10They went to Goren Atad,#50:10 Goren Atad Or “Atad’s threshing floor.” east of the Jordan River. There they had a long funeral service for Israel, which continued for seven days. 11When the people who lived in Canaan saw the funeral service at Goren Atad, they said, “This is a time of great sorrow for those Egyptians.” So now that place across the Jordan River is named Abel Mizraim.#50:11 Abel Mizraim This means “Egyptian time of sadness.”
12So Jacob’s sons did what their father told them. 13They carried his body to Canaan and buried it in the cave at Machpelah. This was the cave near Mamre in the field that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite. Abraham bought that cave to use as a burial place. 14After Joseph buried his father, he and everyone in the group with him went back to Egypt.
The Brothers Are Still Afraid of Joseph
15After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were worried. They were afraid that Joseph would still be mad at them for what they had done years before. They said, “Maybe Joseph still hates us for what we did.” 16So the brothers sent this message to Joseph: “Before your father died, he told us to give you a message. 17He said, ‘Tell Joseph that I beg him to please forgive his brothers for the bad things they did to him.’ So now Joseph, we beg you, please forgive us for the bad things we did to you. We are the servants of God, the God of your father.”
That message made Joseph very sad, and he cried. 18His brothers went to him and bowed down in front of him. They said, “We will be your servants.”
19Then Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. I am not God! I have no right to punish you. 20It is true that you planned to do something bad to me. But really, God was planning good things. God’s plan was to use me to save the lives of many people. And that is what happened. 21So don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your children.” And so Joseph said kind things to his brothers, and this made them feel better.
22Joseph continued to live in Egypt with his father’s family. He died when he was 110 years old. 23During Joseph’s life Ephraim had children and grandchildren. And his son Manasseh had a son named Makir. Joseph lived to see Makir’s children.
The Death of Joseph
24When Joseph was near death, he said to his brothers, “My time to die is almost here. But I know that God will take care of you and lead you out of this country. God will lead you to the land he promised to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
25Then Joseph asked his people to make a promise. Joseph said, “Promise me that you will carry my bones with you when God leads you out of Egypt.”
26Joseph died in Egypt when he was 110 years old. Doctors prepared his body for burial and put the body in a coffin in Egypt.
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Genesis 50: ERV
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© 1987, 2004 Bible League International
Genesis 50
50
Joseph had a big funeral for his father
1Then Joseph bent down and hugged his father’s body. He cried, and he kissed his father’s face. 2Then Joseph talked to some of his workers. Joseph said to them, “My father Jacob died. Now I want you to get his body ready for the funeral. I want you to look after his body in that special way that you do for important people.”
So those men worked on Jacob’s body to get it ready, then they put special oils and perfumes on his body, so that it will not rot away. Then they wrapped his body in long bits of cloth, and they put it in a special coffin. 3It took them 40 days to finish doing all those things.
The Egypt people cried for Jacob for 70 days.
4At the end of those 70 days, Joseph talked to Pharaoh’s important workers. Joseph said to them, “I want you to do something for me. Please be good to me, and do this thing that I ask. Please go to Pharaoh, and tell him that I said, 5‘My father talked to me before he died. He said, “I am going to die very soon. After I die, I want you to take my body to Canaan country, and put it in that grave that I got ready for myself.” And my father got me to promise that I will do that.#Genesis 47:29-31 So now, please let me go to Canaan country, so that I can bury my father there, just like he said. Then I will come back here.’ ”
6So Pharaoh’s workers went to Pharaoh, and they said everything Joseph asked them to say. And Pharaoh told them to say to Joseph, “Yes, you can go to Canaan country, and you can bury your father there, just like you promised him.”
7So Joseph left Egypt, and he started to go towards Canaan country. He took his father’s coffin with him, so that he could bury him in Canaan country. And lots of people went with Joseph. All of Pharaoh’s important workers went with him, and all the boss men from Egypt country went with him. 8And Joseph’s brothers, and the rest of his family, and his father’s relatives, they all went with Joseph too. Only the little kids and the animals stayed in Egypt country, that was all. They stayed there in the place where they were living, called Goshen. Everybody else went with Joseph to Canaan country. 9And some of Pharaoh’s soldiers went with Joseph too. Some of those soldiers rode on horses, and some of them rode in trailers with horses pulling them. All of that mob went with Joseph to Canaan country. It was a really big mob of people.
10After a while, Joseph and his mob got to the place called Atad, near the Jordan River. There was a place there with flat ground, where farmers sometimes sorted their plants. Joseph and his mob stopped there, and they cried loudly for Joseph’s father. Joseph and his mob cried for 7 days, and they did other things to show that they were very sad.
11The Canaan people lived in that land. They saw Joseph and his mob crying at the place called Atad, near the Jordan River. And they said to each other, “Look at that mob that came here from Egypt country. They are really sad.” So the Canaan people gave that place a new name. They called it Abel-Mizrayim. That name means the Egypt people are sad.
12-13Then Joseph and his brothers took their father’s coffin to the place in Canaan country that their father told them about. They put his coffin in the cave there, just like he told them to. Jacob’s family owned that cave and the land around it. You see, a long time before this, Abraham bought that land and that cave from a man from the Heth tribe. That man’s name was Efron. Abraham bought that cave to use it as a grave. It was at a place called Makpelah, to the east of Mamreh.#Acts 7:16
14That’s the story about how Joseph buried his father. After that, Joseph went back to Egypt country with his brothers, and with everybody else that came to Canaan country with him.
Joseph did not do payback to his brothers
15After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers started to worry, and they said to each other, “When our father was alive, Joseph was good to us. But maybe Joseph is still angry about all those bad things that we did to him. Now our father is dead, maybe Joseph will do payback to us.”
16So Joseph’s brothers sent a message to Joseph. This is what they said in that message, “Joseph, our father talked to us before he died. 17He told us to say to you, ‘I know that your brothers did really bad things to you. They went wrong, and they hurt you. Please let go of all those bad things that your brothers did, and don’t do payback to them.’ ”
Joseph’s brothers also said this in their message, “Please let go of all those bad things that we did, and don’t do payback to us. We respect God, just like our father did.”
Joseph listened to that message from his brothers, and he started to cry.
18Then his brothers came to him, and they quickly got down on their knees and put their faces near the ground, to show respect to Joseph. And they said to Joseph, “You are our boss, and we are your work-men.”
19But Joseph said to his brothers, “Don’t be frightened. God is the only true judge. I’m not God, so I will not judge you mob.”
20Then Joseph said, “You know, a long time ago, you mob made a plan to hurt me. But God had a plan too. His plan was good, and it was more powerful than your plan. You did bad things, but God used them to make good things happen. Yes, he brought me here to Egypt country, so that I helped lots of people stay alive when the food plants didn’t grow. And those people are still alive today. 21So don’t be frightened. I will not do payback to you mob. No, I will keep on looking after you and your little kids, and I will make sure that you always have enough food to eat.”
In that way, Joseph talked in a friendly way to his brothers, and he helped them feel happy again.
Joseph got old and died
22After that, Joseph kept on living in Egypt, and all his father’s family lived there too. And Joseph lived until he was 110 years old.
23While Joseph was still alive, his sons Ephraim and Manasseh had kids, and some of those kids had kids too. So Joseph got to see his great grand-kids. One of Manasseh’s sons was called Makir, and later on, Makir had his own kids. Then Joseph adopted Makir’s kids into his family, and they became like his own kids.
24Then one day, Joseph said to his brothers, “I am going to die very soon. But don’t worry. God is going to help you mob in a powerful way. Yes, one day, God will take all our mob out of this country, and he will give our mob all the land in Canaan country, just like he promised to our great grand-father Abraham, and our grand-father Isaac, and our father Jacob.”
25Then Joseph got his brothers to make a strong promise. He said, “You have to promise that you will not leave my body here in Egypt country. When God takes our mob back to Canaan country, they have to take my body with them.”#Exodus 13:19; Joshua 24:32; Hebrews 11:22
26Then Joseph died. He was 110 years old. The Egypt people put special oils and perfumes on Joseph’s body, so that it will not rot away. Then they wrapped his body in long bits of cloth, and they put it in a coffin in Egypt country.
(We have not yet translated the books called Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Some of the stories in those books tell us these things.
– Jacob’s family lived in Egypt for about 400 years, and became the nation called Israel. The families that came from his 12 sons became the 12 tribes in the Israel nation.
– Then God got an Israel man, called Moses, to take the Israel nation out of Egypt, into desert country, and God gave Moses his law for those people.
– After that, God gave them the country called Canaan. Today we call that country Israel. Sometimes we call the Israel people the Jewish people, or just the Jews.)
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