The Law · Chapter 50 of 50
Genesis 50
Joseph mourns and buries his father Jacob in Canaan with a great company. Afterward his brothers fear revenge, but Joseph weeps and reassures them, declaring that though they meant evil against him, God meant it for good to save many lives. He promises to nourish them and their children. Living to see his grandchildren, Joseph dies at a hundred and ten, foretelling God's deliverance and asking that his bones be carried to the promised land.
What happens in Genesis 50
Joseph weeps over his dead father, has the physicians embalm him, and the Egyptians mourn seventy days. With Pharaoh's permission Joseph leads a great company, including Egyptian officials, to bury Jacob in the cave of Machpelah in Canaan, keeping the oath his father required. After a solemn mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they bury him and return to Egypt. Now that their father is dead, Joseph's brothers fear he will finally take revenge, and they send word and fall down before him, offering to be his servants. Joseph weeps at their message and answers with famous words of grace: Fear not, am I in the place of God? Though they intended evil against him, God meant it for good, to save much people alive.
He promises to nourish them and their little ones and comforts them kindly. Joseph lives to a hundred and ten, seeing his great grandchildren. Before dying, he assures his brothers that God will surely visit them and bring them to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he makes them swear to carry his bones up from Egypt.
Genesis 50 in context
Genesis 50 closes the book, resolving the Joseph story and setting up the exodus to come. Jacob's family has settled in Egypt, where Joseph rose to power and preserved them through famine. The chapter answers the deep question left by the brothers' old betrayal: now that Jacob is gone, will Joseph forgive? His response, and his dying confidence in God's promise, ties the whole book back to the covenant made with Abraham and looks ahead to Israel's future deliverance.
Main themes of Genesis 50
Genesis 50 (KJV)
1And Joseph fell upon his father’s face, and wept upon him, and kissed him. 2And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel. 3And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days. 4And 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, 5My 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 will come again. 6And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear. 7And 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, 8And 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. 9And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company. 10And they came to the threshingfloor 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. 11And 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 Abelmizraim, which is beyond Jordan. 12And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them: 13For 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 buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre. 14And Joseph returned into Egypt, he, and his brethren, and all that went up with him to bury his father, after he had buried his father. 15And when Joseph’s brethren saw that their father was dead, they said, Joseph will peradventure hate us, and will certainly requite us all the evil which we did unto him. 16And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, 17So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. 18And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants. 19And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? 20But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. 21Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. 22And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father’s house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. 23And Joseph saw Ephraim’s children of the third generation: the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph’s knees. 24And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 25And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence. 26So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
Verses to carry from Genesis 50
“So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin; for they did unto thee evil: and now, we pray thee, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.”Genesis 50:17
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.”Genesis 50:20
“And Joseph said unto his brethren, I die: and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”Genesis 50:24
Christian typology
How Genesis 50 points to Jesus
Joseph's great confession, that what his brothers meant for evil God meant for good to save many people alive, offers one of the Old Testament's clearest previews of the cross. There the worst human sin, the betrayal and killing of the innocent Son of God, became the very means by which God saved a multitude. Joseph, wronged yet raised to power, chooses to forgive and to nourish those who betrayed him, embodying the mercy that Jesus perfects when he prays for those who crucify him and gives his life to feed the world.
Joseph's dying faith that God will surely visit his people and keep his promise reaches forward to the greater deliverance God accomplishes in Christ, who leads his people out of bondage to sin into the inheritance he has secured.
Questions about Genesis 50
What does Genesis 50:20 mean, you meant evil but God meant it for good?
Joseph tells his brothers that although they intended harm by selling him into slavery, God worked through those events for good, to preserve many lives during the famine. The verse does not excuse their sin but affirms God's providence, his power to weave even evil deeds into his saving purpose. It teaches that God can bring good out of the worst wrongs done to us.
Why did Joseph want his bones carried to the promised land?
As he was dying in Egypt, Joseph declared that God would surely visit his people and bring them to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He made his family swear to carry his bones there. It was an act of faith, staking his final wishes on God's promise, and it kept Israel's hope of deliverance alive through their long years in Egypt.
Reflection
Joseph looked back on the cruelest chapter of his life and could say that God had meant it for good. That perspective did not come cheaply or quickly. Is there a wound in your past you are still trying to understand? How might it change you to trust that God can weave even that into a purpose of life and rescue?
A prayer from Genesis 50
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