And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him,.... His sons must act a most hypocritical part in this affair; and as for his daughters, it is not easy to say who they were, since he had but one daughter that we read of, whose name was Dinah: the Targum of Jonathan calls them his sons wives; but it is a question whether any of his sons were as yet married, since the eldest of them was not more than twenty four years of age; and much less can their daughters be supposed to be meant, as they are by some. It is the opinion of the Jews, that Jacob had a twin daughter born to him with each of his sons; these his sons and daughters came together, or singly, to condole his loss, to sympathize with him, and speak a word of comfort to him, and entreat him not to give way to excessive grief and sorrow:
but he refused to be comforted; to attend to anything that might serve to alleviate his mind, and to abstain from outward mourning, and the tokens of it; he chose not to be interrupted in it:
and he said, for I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning; the meaning is, not that he would by any means hasten his own death, or go down to his son in the grave, strictly and literally taken; since, according to his apprehension of his son's death he could have no grave, being torn to pieces by a wild beast; but either that he should go into the state of the dead, where his son was, mourning all along till he carne thither; or rather that he would go mourning all his days "for [his] son" e, as some render it, till he came to the grave; nor would he, nor should he receive any comfort more in this world:
thus his father wept for him; in this manner, with such circumstances as before related, and he only; for as for his brethren they hated him, and were glad they had got rid of him; or, "and his father", c. f his father Isaac, as the Targum of Jonathan, he wept for his son Jacob on account of his trouble and distress; as well as for his grandson Joseph; and so many Jewish writers g interpret it; and indeed Isaac was alive at this time, and lived twelve years after; but the former sense seems best.
e אל בני "propter filium suum", Grotius, Quistorpius; so Jarchi and Abendana. f ויבך "et flevit", Pagninus, Montanus, &c. g Jarchi, Aben Ezra, and Abendana, in loc.