(Genesis) Genesis 50:4-13

Now, verse 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, 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'll come again. Pharaoh said, Go up and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.

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." You see, this man was greatly respected and loved and honored in the land of Egypt. This is probably the longest funeral procession the world's ever seen. When I say long, I mean by that it was all the way from Egypt up to Canaan to Hebron, and that's a pretty long funeral procession.

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. I don't know this, but I highly suspect that Pharaoh required this to make sure Joseph would come back. Pharaoh needed him.

Verse 9, "...and there went up with him both chariots and horsemen, and it was a very great company. And they came to the threshing floor 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.

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 Abel Mizraim, which is beyond Jordan. And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them. 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 burying place of Ephron the Hittite before Mamre." Now maybe this will answer the question that I'm sure several will ask, and that will be, well, what about Jacob? Why wasn't he buried with his lovely Rachel in Bethlehem? It was nearby, probably 20 more miles farther north.

Well, I think it's obvious now. Again and again we've been told that this is the place Abraham bought and Jacob wanted to be put in the place that was bought and paid for, to make sure he'd stay in that land. I think that's important to see.

That's the reason he was buried here with the other patriarchs. This was their hope.