Yoseph And The Death Of Yacob
Yoseph, A Very Clever Minister
Without doubt Pharaoh had made a fortunate choice: his food controller was also a first-rate financial expert. When the first year of scarcity began the Egyptians came to ask the government to provide them with a little grain lest they starve. According to Bereshith, it appears that in return for the corn Yoseph succeeded in diverting to the government treasury almost all the money in the country. This was, of course, of great advantage to the State.
In the second year the drought persisted as did the scarcity of food. But the Egyptians possessed no more precious metals to pay for the purchases of corn. Yoseph was unconcerned and asked for the Egyptians' livestock, horses and livestock, whether sheep or cattle, and... donkeys.
In the third year the summer was again unrelenting and the Nile did not rise sufficiently. There was nothing left to eat. The starving Egyptians came to implore Yoseph. They had no more money, and no more farm animals, but there still remained their land and their bodies. These they were willing to give. In exchange for something to sow Yoseph agreed to accept them and their land and to distribute corn from the granaries.
When the fourth year came the situation was unchanged. Yoseph offered the farmers, who were now reduced to the state of serfs, to provide them with grain on condition that at the harvest a fifth of it was to be given to Pharaoh.
The scribe who relates this story does not conceal his admiration for Yoseph and his effective measures. It was a primitive period and the times were hard, but a tax of twenty per cent on income seems surprising, though it must be admitted that since those days we have progressed.
Yacob Decides To Adopt Yoseph's Two Sons
For seventeen years Yacob, surrounded by his sons, had lived in the land of Goshen. He was now almost completely blind and feeling that death was near sent for his beloved son Yoseph and made him promise under oath not to bury him in the land of Egypt; the son of Yitschaq, the grandson of Abraham, desired to lie in the cave of Machpelah, near Hebron, in company with 'his fathers'. Before he died he asked for Yoseph's two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to be brought to him; he had decided to adopt them as his own. This provided the occasion for a curious ceremony which is summarily described in the Scriptures. For the occasion the two youths were placed in Yacob's lap (literally 'between the knees') while he sat on the edge of his bed. Yacob gave them the ritual kiss. Then Yoseph took them from his father's arms and with his sons bowed to the ground before him. For the blessing they rose to their feet. Yoseph was careful to place Manasseh, the elder, on Yisrael's right, and Ephraim, the younger, on his left. But the blind man crossed his hands, placing his right hand on the head of the younger and his left hand on the head of the firstborn, while pronouncing this imposed blessing:
May YAHWEH in whose presence my fathers Abraham and Yitschaq walked, may YAHWEH who has been my shepherd from my birth until this day, may the malak who has been my saviour from all harm, bless these boys, may my name live on in them, and the names of my fathers Abraham and Yitschaq. May they grow and increase on the earth.
Yoseph noticed the unusual position of Yacob's hands and this upset him. Of course, a blessing always remains valid, but one given with the right hand was reputed to be more efficacious. Yoseph pointed this out to his father 'Not like that, father! This one is the elder; put your right hand on his head.' But his father refused: 'I know, my son, I know,' he answered. And he went on to explain: 'He too shall become a people; he too shall be great. Yet his younger brother [this obviously referred to the tribe of Ephraim] shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.'
In fact, in the subsequent history of Yisrael the tribe of Ephraim was to play, as we shall have occasion to observe later on, a political, military and Spiritual role of primary importance.
'Now I am about to die,' Yacob said to Yoseph. 'But YAHWEH will be with you and take you back to the country of your fathers' (that is, the land of Canaan, modern Palestine). This was a prophecy of the Exodus from Egypt (which can be dated in about 1200, that is, something like four centuries after this prediction) and the settling of YAHWEH's people in the Promised Land.
Yacob's Oracles
Before breathing his last, the patriarch Yacob requested that his twelve sons should gather round his bed. There, in the presence of his sons he pronounced, not a series of blessings 21 but a series of oracles concerning the political and Spiritual future of the twelve tribes which were to be formed at a later date around their twelve chieftains. Of each of these groups which was to be formed Yacob traces a rapid but characteristic psychological portrait, embellishing it sometimes with certain geographical features concerning the territories which several centuries later they would occupy.
According to the beliefs of those days the prophetic utterances of the dying man not only revealed, but conditioned the destiny of his twelve sons and in this way we are given, even at this point, the principal features of that part of the history of Yisrael concerning the particular territory of Canaan occupied by the twelve tribes. It seems quite probable that on his deathbed Yacob was granted a vision.
Nevertheless it must be pointed out that certain Scriptural commentators, including some of the most conservative, are inclined to think that the series of oracles are an instance of literary transposition. In their opinion, it is quite possible that the story-tellers, and even the scribes, felt obliged to put into Yacob's mouth matters observed several centuries after his death. But the reader must not conclude that this is a case of literary fraud or trickery. In the East there was never any hesitation in inserting an event of one period into the history of another if it was thought better to do so; this was a perfectly acceptable historical method. It remains for the modern critic of the texts, with all prudence and circumspection, to reestablish the chronological order.
'Gather round, sons of Yacob, and listen; listen to Yisrael your father.'
At whatever date the reader decides to place the oracles of Yacob (either in about 1680, the time of his death, or in 1200-1000, the period when the twelve tribes of Yisrael settled in the land of Canaan) the interest of the information which they furnish about these Hebrew tribes is undeniable. Yacob speaks to us of his sons and of each of the tribes of Yisrael. Sometimes he apostrophizes them rather roughly, sometimes he uses language of great tenderness, according to the tribe of which he is speaking, These oracles form a series of moving passages which must be read in the Scriptures itself. They are not analyzed in detail here, for it would seem that the study of the oracles of Yacob falls naturally into place at the period of the Hebrews' settling in Palestine with Joshua and his successors.
21 The traditional title of this chapter of the Scriptures (Yacob's blessings) can well give a wrong impression. In fact among the twelve invocations uttered by the patriarch only two blessings are to be discerned -only Yahudah and Yoseph are solemnly placed under YAHWEH's protection In what refers to the ten other brothers Yacob merely pronounces oracles, as is pointed out.
Embalming And Funeral Of Yacob
On various occasions already it has been pointed out that the Semites in general, and the Hebrews in particular, buried their dead without endeavouring in any way to preserve the corpses from the normal and natural disintegration and decay. And yet the doctors embalmed Yisrael we find in Bereshith. This has caused some writers to assert that this detail of the Scriptural account is an obvious historical anachronism for, they say, at the time of the Pharaohs, doctors did not belong to the corporation of embalmers. But recent discoveries enable us to regard this intervention of the doctors as completely acceptable for we now know that a certain category of doctors was entitled to carry out this operation.
The few Scriptural scholars who have concerned themselves with this question seem scarcely to have arrived at the exact meaning of the sentence quoted above. The view put forward here is that Yoseph took good care not to entrust the patriarch's body to the Egyptian experts in mummification, for this was an essentially spiritual operation. Thus the body of the dead person was rubbed with a sacred oil. The thorax and the abdomen were emptied of their contents which were replaced by a whole collection of different statuettes, representing the tutelary deities. At carefully specified places figurines of scarabs, hawks and so forth were inserted. Each bandage had in it a magic inscription enabling the dead person to identify himself to Osiris, thus providing him with the means of obtaining entry through the gates of the Beyond.
Despite his high office at Pharaoh's court, Yoseph, we can be sure from many characteristic details, had remained entirely faithful to the religion of the patriarchs, his direct ancestors. He took good care not to profane his father's mortal remains by handing them over to idolatrous embalmers, who dabbled in occult powers and were the custodians of ritual formulas intended to open to the dead man the paradise of Osiris.
Yacob, the Scriptures informs us quite clearly, was not mummified in Egyptian fashion, but merely embalmed, just as is still done on occasion in modern civilization, by 'doctors'. These latter were only responsible for ensuring the preservation of the body which had to make the comparatively long journey through the desert of Zin, between the place where death took place (the land of Goshen) and the place determined for burial (Hebron).
It took them forty days, for embalming takes forty days to complete.
On this point the scribe is wrong: in Egypt mummification required seventy days' work (perhaps two days more or less). It is true that the preparation of Yacob's body was appreciably different from what was then current practice. In these circumstances the figure of forty days can be accepted, although it should perhaps be remembered that in the Old Covenant, and occasionally in the New, the number forty is often used as the synonym for a long time (the forty years of the Exodus, YAHSHUA' forty days' fast in the desert, etc.). At all events, the writer had no right to say that embalming takes forty days to complete in Egypt. This has raised objections from Egyptologists.
The Egyptians mourned him for seventy days
Egyptologists have also objected that in Egypt the mourning period was exactly the same length as that required for the preparation of the mummy. As Yacob’s embalming took forty days the mourning period ought not to have exceeded this length of time. But the fact remains that Yoseph, who had remained in his heart of hearts a Semite and a worshipper of YAHWEH, had not in any way to comply with the ritual requirements and funeral customs of the Egyptians.
As a high official of the pharaoh, and the governor of the Delta, Yoseph owed it to himself to give his father an imposing funeral. The whole family, therefore, went up to Hebron, with chariots. The scribe notes at this point, and with obvious satisfaction, that the procession was made up of all Pharaoh's servants and the palace dignitaries... [and] all the dignitaries of the land of Egypt. It almost seems surprising that Pharaoh did not go in person.
The funeral cortege arrived at Mamre in the oak grove where formerly Abraham had established his camp, and where Yitschaq and subsequently Yacob camped for some time. The organizers of the ceremony had arranged for a long and solemn lamentation to take place there. Then Yoseph observed three days' mourning for his father. Finally the mortal remains of the patriarch Yacob were placed in the cave of Machpelah which had been bought from Ephron the Hittite by Abraham. In this tomb, on stone benches, there lay already the bodies of Abraham and Sarah his wife, of Yitschaq and his wife Rebekah. And now, in his turn, Yacob was placed there. Subsequently, Leah was placed beside her husband, Yacob. Thus in the venerable crypt at Hebron nowadays forming part of the Haram el-Khalil mosque were laid the bodies of the three biblical patriarchs and their wives. Rachel is excepted, of course, for she had died during the journey of the clan from Haran, and Yacob was obliged to bury her at Ephrath by the side of the path.
Yoseph, who cannot be included among the patriarchs, was also brought back from Egypt. His body must have been embalmed, for it accompanied the Yisraelites on their wanderings across the Sinai wilderness during the forty years of the Exodus. His mummy finally found its resting place at Shechem, surrounded by the pastureland which Yacob before dying desired to bestow upon his son in addition to his legal share of the inheritance. A small white dome marks the traditional site of the tomb.
Yoseph Index Yoseph Sitemap Scripture History Through the Ages Yoseph Egyptian Adventure Yoseph Scriptures and Dreams The Plot Against Yoseph Yoseph's Brothers Cruel Seqel Yoseph In The House Of Potiphar Yoseph In Prison Pharaoh's Strange Dreams Yoseph Slave Becomes Viceroy Of Egypt Yoseph's Unexpected Family Reunion The Ten Brothers Before Yoseph Yacob Goes To Egypt Yoseph and the Death Of Yacob YAHWEH's Sword History Further Anxieties Of Yoseph's Brothers Yisraelites Remain In Egypt Period Of The Great Persecution