Genesis 50:4-14 - Frederick Brotherton Meyer's Commentary

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Jacob Mourned and Buried

Genesis 50:4-14

The days of mourning for Jacob were only two less in number than for a king. Three hundred miles were traversed by that splendid funeral cavalcade, which included not only the family of Israel, but the magnates of Egypt. The words, beyond Jordan (Genesis 50:10), indicate that this book was finished on the further side of Jordan, where Moses afterward died.

The evident grief with which the precious remains were laid beside the great dead, reminds us that when God wills to do honor to any servant of His, He can secure it in remarkable ways-and ways which are entirely independent of human methods and reasoning. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” At birth He cared for your helpless body; when you die He will see to its sepulcher. The bones of the saints hold the earth for the ultimate reign of Christ!

Related Commentaries of Genesis 50:4

Genesis 50:4-14

4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak, I pray you, in the ears of Pharaoh, saying,

5 My father made me swear, saying, Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore let me go up, I pray thee, and bury my father, and I will come again.

6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.

7 And Joseph went up to bury his father: and with him went up all the servants of Pharaoh, the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt,

8 And all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and his father's house: only their little ones, and their flocks, and their herds, they left in the land of Goshen.

9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.

10 And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.

11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians: wherefore the name of it was called Abelmizraim,b which is beyond Jordan.

12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them:

13 For his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.

14 And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father.