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Verse 28. - All these are the twelve tribes of Israel (the underlying thought is that in blessing his sons Jacob was really blessing the future tribes): and this is it that their father spake unto them, and blessed them; every one according to his blessing he blessed them (i.e. every one received his own appropriate benediction).

Verses 29, 30. - And he charged them, and said unto them, I am to be gathered unto my people (vide on Genesis 15:15): bury me with my fathers - thus laying on them the injunction he had previously, with the super-added solemnity of an oath, laid on Joseph (Genesis 47:29-31) - in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mature, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a burying-place (vide Genesis 23:16-20). Jacob had learnt from his father and had carefully preserved all the details relating to the purchase of their family sepulcher. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried Leah. From this it would appear that Leah had not descended into Egypt.

Verse 32. - The purchase of the field and of the cave that is therein was from the children of Heth. Kalisch connects the present verse with the 30th, and reads ver. 31 as a parenthesis.

Verse 33. - And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed (having on the arrival of Joseph strengthened himself and sat up upon the bed, probably with his feet overhanging its edge), and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people (vide on Genesis 25:8; 35:29).

Verse 1. - And Joseph fell upon his father's face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. Joseph had no doubt closed the eyes of his revered and beloved parent, as God had promised to the patriarch that he would (Genesis 46:4), and now, in demonstration both of the intensity of his love and of the bitterness of his sorrow, he sinks upon the couch upon which the lifeless form is lying, bonding over the pallid countenance with warm tears, and imprinting kisses of affection on the cold and irresponsive lip. It is neither unnatural nor irreligious to mourn for the dead; and he must be callous indeed who can see a parent die without an outburst of tender grief.

Verse 2. - And Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians - literally, the healers, הָרֹפְאִים from רָפָא, to sew together, to mend, hence to heal, a class of persons which abounded in Ancient Egypt, each physician being only qualified to treat a single disorder (Herod., 2:84). The medical men of Egypt were held in high repute abroad, and their assistance was at various times required by persons from other countries, as, e.g., Cyrus and Darius (Herod., 3:1, 132). Their knowledge of medicines was extensive, and is referred to both in sacred (Jeremiah 66:11) and profane (Homer, 'Odyssey" 4 . 229) writings. The Egyptian doctors belonged to the sacerdotal order, and were expected to know all things relating to the body, and diseases and remedies contained in the six last of the sacred books of Hermes. According to Pliny (7:56), the study of medicine originated in Egypt (vide Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol 2. pp. 116, 117). The physicians employed by Joseph were those attached to his own household, or the court practitioners - to embalm his father: - literally, to spice or season (the body of) his father, i.e. to prepare it for burial by means of aromatics; ut aromatibus condirent (Vulgate); ἐνταφιάσαι τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῦ (LXX.), which is putting part of a proceeding for the whole (Tayler Lewis). According to Herodotus (2:86), the embalmers belonged to a distinct hereditary class or guild from the ordinary physicians; but either their formation into such a separate order of practitioners was of later origin (Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Kalisch), or Jacob was embalmed by the physicians instead of the embalmers proper because, not being an Egyptian, he could not be subjected to the ordinary treatment of the embalming art ('Speaker's Commentary') - and the physicians embalmed Israel. The method of preparing mummies in Ancient Egypt has been elaborately described, both by Herodotus (2:86) and Diodorus Sieulus (1:91), and, in the main, the accuracy of their descriptions has been confirmed by the evidence derived from the mummies themselves. According to the most expensive process, which cost one talent of silver, or about £250 sterling, the brain was first extracted through the nostrils by means of a crooked piece of iron, the skull being thoroughly cleansed of any remaining portions by rinsing with drugs; then, through an opening in the left side made with a sharp Ethiopian knife of agate or of flint, the viscera were removed, the abdomen being afterwards purified with palm wine and an infusion of aromatics; next, the disemboweled corpse was filled with every sort of spicery except frankincense, and the opening sewed up; after that the stuffed form was steeped for seventy days in natrum or subcarbonate of soda obtained from the Libyan desert, and sometimes in wax and tanning, bitumen also being employed in later times; and finally, on the expiration of that period, which was scrupulously observed, the body was washed, wrapped about with linen bandages, smeared over with gum, decorated with amulets, sometimes with a network of porcelain bugles, covered with a linen shroud, and, in due course, transferred to a mummy case (vide Wilkinson's 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians,' vol. 3. p. 471, ed. 1878; Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. 2. pp. 118-123).

Verse 3. - And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned (literally, wept) for him threescore and ten days - i.e. the whole period of mourning, including the forty days for embalming, extended to seventy days, a statement which strikingly coincides with the assertion of Diodorus Siculus (1:72), that the embalming process occupied about thirty days, while the mourning continued seventy-two days; the first number, seventy, being seven decades, or ten weeks of seven days, and the second 12 x 6 = 72, the duodecimal calculation being also used in Egypt (vide Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. 2. p. 121; and in ' Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians: vol. 3. p. 471, et seqq., ed. 1878). The apparent discrepancy between the accounts of Genesis and Herodotus will disappear if the seventy days of the Greek historian, during which the body lay in antrum, be viewed as the entire period of mourning (Hengstenberg's 'Egypt and the Books of Moses,' p. 68; Sir G. Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. 2. p. 121), a sense which the words ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσαντες ταριχεύουσι λίτρῳ κρίηψαντες ἡμέρας ἐβδομήκοντα (Herod. 2:86)will bear, though Kalisch somewhat arbitrarily, but unconvincingly, pronounces it to be "excluded both by the context and Greek syntax."

Verses 4, 5. - 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, - that Joseph did not address himself directly to Pharaoh, but through the members of the royal household, was not owing to the circumstance that, being arrayed in mourning apparel, he could not come before the king (Rosenmüller), since it is not certain that this Persian custom (Esther 4:2) prevailed in Egypt, but is supposed to have been due, either to a desire on Joseph's part to put himself on a good understanding with the priesthood who composed the courtly circle, since the interment of the dead was closely connected with the religious beliefs of Egypt (Havernick), or, what was more likely, to the fact that Joseph, having, according to Egyptian custom (Herod. 2:36), allowed his beard and hair to grow, could not enter the king's presence without being both shaven and shorn (Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Keil). It has been suggested (Kalisch) that Joseph's power may have been restricted after the expiration of the famine, or that another Pharaoh may have succeeded to the throne who was not so friendly as his predecessor with the grand vizier of the realm; but such conjectures are not required to render Joseph's conduct in this matter perfectly intelligible - saying, My father made me swear (Genesis 47:29), saying (i.e. my father saying), Lo, I die: in my grave which I have digged for me - not bought (Onkelos, Drusius, Ainsworth, Bohlen, and others), but digged, ὤρυξα (LXX.), fodi (Vulgate). Jacob may have either enlarged the original cave at Machpelah, or prepared in it the special niche which he designed to occupy - in the land of Canaan, there shalt thou bury me. Now therefore (literally, and now) let me go up, I pray thee (the royal permission was required to enable Joseph to pass beyond the boundaries of Egypt, especially when accompanied by a large funeral procession), and bury my father, and I will come again.