Scripture Daily

Context No. 2674 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 50:1-5: in context

1Joseph fell on his father’s face, wept on him, and kissed him. 2Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. 3Forty days were used for him, for that is how many days it takes to embalm. The Egyptians wept for Israel for seventy days. 4When the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph spoke to Pharaoh’s staff, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, 5‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying. Bury me in my grave which I have dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come again.’”

When his father Jacob dies, Joseph, by then second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, does not carry on as a busy statesman. He falls on his father's face and weeps and kisses him. He has him embalmed, and mourns him with a full seventy days of grief. Then he asks Pharaoh's leave to carry his father's body up to Canaan, to bury him in the grave Jacob had prepared, keeping the oath he had sworn.

Two things stand out in a leading man's grief. Joseph does not rush his mourning; he gives it its full time, seventy days of it, letting the loss be what it is rather than hurrying past it back to his duties. And he keeps faith with his father even in death, honoring the promise to bury him in the land, going to trouble and expense to do it right. Grief honored, and a promise kept. It is a quiet rebuke to the instinct to rush past sorrow and get on with things. Love does not hurry its mourning, and it keeps its word to those it has lost, even when they can no longer hold us to it.

Do I give grief its due time and honor, and keep faith with those I have lost, or rush past mourning to get back to my duties?

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