Genesis 50

God Meant It unto Good

Jacob is embalmed and carried up to the cave of Machpelah. With their father gone, Joseph’s brothers fear he will repay them, and he answers that God meant their evil for good. Genesis ends with Joseph’s oath, “God will surely visit you,” and his body in a coffin in Egypt.

Genesis chaptersChapter 50 of 50

Seventeen years after Jacob came to Egypt (Gen. 47:28) for his death and burial; Joseph lives to 110. The text gives no year. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Jacob died at the end of chapter 49, after blessing his sons and charging them to bury him in the cave of Machpelah (Gen. 49:29–33).

Jacob died at the end of chapter 49, after blessing his sons and charging them to bury him in the cave of Machpelah (Gen. 49:29–33). Chapter 50 is the last of Genesis. It buries Jacob, tests whether Joseph’s brothers can trust his forgiveness, and ends with Joseph’s own death in Egypt. The book that opened with the creation of the heavens and the earth closes with a coffin, a promise, and an oath.

Jacob had come to Egypt on God’s word, with the promise “I will also surely bring thee up again” (Gen. 46:4), and he had lived there seventeen years (Gen. 47:28). The question left open since Joseph made himself known (Gen. 45:1–15) is whether the reconciliation will hold without the father who stood behind it.

Genesis gives Joseph’s last words in three verses. Latter-day revelation gives more. The Joseph Smith Translation adds a long prophecy at verses 24–26, and Lehi quotes the same prophecy to his son from the plates of brass (2 Ne. 3:4–22; 2 Ne. 4:2). The New Testament remembers the end of this chapter as faith: “By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones” (Heb. 11:22). Exodus picks up where this chapter stops, when Moses carries the bones out of Egypt (Ex. 13:19).

The thread through the chapter

Genesis 50 asks what a family does with the wrong in its past and the promise in its future.

Genesis 50 asks what a family does with the wrong in its past and the promise in its future. It answers the first with God’s hand behind human choices, and the second with an oath.

After Jacob’s burial the brothers expect Joseph to settle accounts, and he answers with one Hebrew verb used twice: “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (verse 20). They planned, and God planned, and what came of it was “much people” kept alive. Joseph does not call the evil good, and he does not take the judge’s seat: “am I in the place of God?” (verse 19). Then he speaks to their hearts and promises to feed them (verse 21).

The oath carries the rest of the chapter. Jacob made Joseph swear to bury him in Canaan (verses 5–6). Joseph, dying in Egypt, makes Israel swear to carry his bones up (verse 25), on the strength of what God had sworn to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (verse 24). Through the burial and Joseph’s last words the same verb returns, “go up,” and it is the verb of God’s promise to Jacob in Gen. 46:4. So the book ends with a body waiting in a chest in Egypt, held to the promised land by a promise and not by possession. The Joseph Smith Translation lengthens Joseph’s last words into a prophecy that reaches from Moses to a latter-day seer, and it ties his “God will surely visit you” to a promise the Lord had sworn to Joseph himself.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–6

Mourning and permission

In plain words

Joseph threw himself on his father’s face, wept over him, and kissed him. He told the physicians in his service to embalm Jacob, and they did. The embalming took forty days, the usual time, and the Egyptians mourned Jacob for seventy. When the mourning was over, Joseph spoke to Pharaoh’s household: “If I have found favor with you, please tell Pharaoh that my father made me swear. He said, ‘I am about to die. Bury me in the grave I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.’ Let me go up and bury my father, and then I will come back.” Pharaoh answered, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear.”

1 And Joseph fell upon his father’s face, and wept upon him, and kissed him.

2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father: and the physicians embalmed Israel.

Context #

Why Jacob was embalmed

Jacob was embalmed because that was how Egypt prepared its dead, and Joseph, an Egyptian official, had his own staff do it.

Jacob was embalmed because that was how Egypt prepared its dead, and Joseph, an Egyptian official, had his own staff do it. Embalming was “the preparation of bodies for burial, for which the Egyptians had an elaborate procedure,” and this verse “is the only detailed reference in the Bible to Israelite use of the Egyptian system.” The Hebrew calls the men who did it Joseph’s “servants the physicians” (ha-rophe’im); the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, renders the word “embalmers.” Herodotus describes embalming in Egypt as the work of “men whose sole business this is and who have this special craft.”

Embalming a man from Canaan may seem odd. The embalming and sarcophagus of Joseph himself (verse 26) are “not what one might initially expect from someone who was not an Egyptian,” and yet “there is evidence from the time of Joseph for Canaanites in Egypt being embalmed and put into a sarcophagus.”

Sources: “Embalming”, Bible Dictionary. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 86, Trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920); read in the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. Scripture Central, “Why Do the Details of the Joseph Story Matter?”, KnoWhy #842, Mar. 5, 2026.

3 And 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.

Context #

Forty days and seventy

Genesis gives two periods for Jacob, forty days for the embalming and seventy for Egypt’s mourning, and Herodotus gives seventy for the embalming itself.

Genesis gives two periods for Jacob, forty days for the embalming and seventy for Egypt’s mourning, and Herodotus gives seventy for the embalming itself. In the Hebrew, forty days are “fulfilled” for “the embalming” (ha-chanutim), and “the Egyptians” wept for him seventy. Herodotus says the embalmers “conceal the body for seventy days, embalmed in saltpetre; no longer time is allowed for the embalming.” His seventy is the figure Genesis gives for the mourning, not for the embalming, and Genesis does not say how its two periods fit together.

What the seventy days show is honor: “It is here specially mentioned in honour of Jacob, that the Egyptian nation mourned him for 70 days.” By comparison Israel mourned Aaron and Moses thirty days each (Num. 20:29; Deut. 34:8).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 86, Trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920); read in the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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,

5 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 will come again.

Language #

Dug or bought?

Jacob’s “grave which I have digged” raises a small puzzle, because Genesis never says Jacob dug a grave.

Jacob’s “grave which I have digged” raises a small puzzle, because Genesis never says Jacob dug a grave. The Hebrew verb karah means “dig,” and the lexicon cites this verse for “dig a grave.” But the tomb Jacob had named to Joseph was his fathers’ (Gen. 47:30), and he told all his sons it was the cave Abraham “bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite” (Gen. 49:29–32; Gen. 23:17–20).

Genesis does not explain. The words may mean no more than that “either Jacob or his forefathers had thus provided a burial-place,” or Jacob “might possibly have hewn out a burial-place for himself in the rock of the cave.” The same Hebrew letters can also be read “bought,” so that “both meanings are possible”; the Septuagint has “dug.” The verse does not settle it. What it does settle is the place: Jacob’s grave is “in the land of Canaan,” and verse 13 puts him in Machpelah.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

6 And Pharaoh said, Go up, and bury thy father, according as he made thee swear.

Language #

The oath Pharaoh honors

The burial rests on an oath, and the Hebrew uses one verb, in a causative form, for both ends of it: Joseph tells the court, “My father made me swear” (hishbi‘ani, verse 5), and…

The burial rests on an oath, and the Hebrew uses one verb, in a causative form, for both ends of it: Joseph tells the court, “My father made me swear” (hishbi‘ani, verse 5), and Pharaoh answers, “according as he made thee swear” (hishbi‘ekha, verse 6). The lexicon lists both verses under “cause to take an oath.” Jacob had asked for this oath on his deathbed, with Joseph’s hand under his thigh (Gen. 47:29–31), and Pharaoh grants the leave because of it. The same verb returns at the end of the chapter, when Joseph “took an oath of the children of Israel” (verse 25), and in Exodus, where Moses takes Joseph’s bones “for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel” (Ex. 13:19). The two burials are held by the same kind of oath.

Joseph does not ask Pharaoh himself but “the house of Pharaoh” (verse 4). The text does not say why; one inference is that his deep mourning, “unshaven and unadorned,” kept him from the king’s presence. Joseph adds, “I will come again,” and he does (verse 14).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 7–14

The burial at Machpelah

In plain words

Joseph went up to bury his father. With him went all Pharaoh’s servants, the senior men of his court, and all the elders of Egypt, together with Joseph’s household, his brothers, and his father’s household. Only the children, the flocks, and the herds stayed in Goshen. Chariots and horsemen went up too, a very large company. At the threshing floor of Atad, beyond the Jordan, they held a long and bitter lament, and Joseph kept seven days of mourning for his father. The Canaanites living there saw it and said, “This is a deep mourning for the Egyptians,” so the place was named Abel-mizraim. Jacob’s sons did as he had told them. They carried him to Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, facing Mamre, which Abraham had bought from Ephron the Hittite as a burial place. Then Joseph went back to Egypt with his brothers and everyone who had gone up with him.

7 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,

8 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.

9 And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen: and it was a very great company.

10 And 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.

11 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.

Language #

A name that puns on mourning

The name Abel-mizraim is a pun, but where the place was is not known. In Hebrew ’evel means “mourning” and ’abel a “meadow,” and the Canaanites who watched the lament said “This…

The name Abel-mizraim is a pun, but where the place was is not known. In Hebrew ’evel means “mourning” and ’abel a “meadow,” and the Canaanites who watched the lament said “This is a grievous mourning to the Egyptians” (’evel kaved zeh le-Mitzrayim), “wherefore the name of it was called Abel-mizraim.” The lexicon gives the name as “meadow of Egypt,” “where interpreted as if” it meant “mourning of Egypt,” which is how the Septuagint reads it: “The mourning of Egypt.”

The geography is harder. The place “is nowhere else referred to.” “Beyond Jordan” (be‘ever ha-Yarden) normally means east of the river, and the lexicon puts the place “east of Jordan.” If that is right, the procession “did not take the shortest route by Gaza through the country of the Philistines” but “went round by the Dead Sea,” and one reading is that the Egyptians stopped at this border mourning, since verses 12–13 say only that Jacob’s “sons” carried him into Canaan. So long a detour has also been judged “extremely improbable,” and Genesis does not explain it.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

12 And his sons did unto him according as he commanded them:

13 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 buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite, before Mamre.

Context #

Up to the family tomb

Jacob is buried with his family in the cave Abraham bought. It is “the field and cave bought by Abraham,” where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and now Jacob were buried.

Jacob is buried with his family in the cave Abraham bought. It is “the field and cave bought by Abraham,” where Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, and now Jacob were buried. The verse repeats the purchase: “which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a buryingplace of Ephron the Hittite” (Gen. 23:17–20). Jacob had asked for it twice, of Joseph, “bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt” (Gen. 47:29–30), and of all his sons (Gen. 49:29–32).

The Hebrew tells the burial with one verb, “go up” (‘alah). Joseph asks “let me go up” (verse 5), Pharaoh says “Go up” (verse 6), Joseph “went up,” and with him all the servants of Pharaoh (verse 7), and the chariots (verse 9); those who “went up” return (verse 14). Egypt, in this language, is down: “I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again” (Gen. 46:4). Jacob’s body is brought up in this chapter. The same verb then carries the promise to the whole people in Joseph’s last words (verse 24).

Sources: “Machpelah”, Bible Dictionary. Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

14 And 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.

Verses 15–21

The brothers’ fear

In plain words

When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge and pays us back for all the wrong we did him?” So they sent word to him: “Before he died, your father commanded this. He said, ‘Tell Joseph: Please forgive the wrong of your brothers and their sin, the evil they did you.’ Now please forgive the wrong of the servants of your father’s God.” Joseph wept when they said this to him. Then the brothers came themselves and fell down before him. “We are your servants,” they said. Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about what has happened today, to keep many people alive. So do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.” He comforted them and spoke to their hearts.

15 And 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.

Context #

Why the brothers still feared

The brothers fear that Jacob alone had been holding Joseph back: with their father dead, Joseph “will no longer restrain his desire for revenge.”

The fear has a long history. “Their conscience cannot leave them alone,” as it had not in Gen. 42:28, Gen. 44:16, and Gen. 45:3. At their first meeting in Egypt they said, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother” (Gen. 42:21). Joseph had since kissed them and wept on them (Gen. 45:15) and had nourished his father and his brothers with bread (Gen. 47:12); Jacob had lived with them in Egypt seventeen years (Gen. 47:28). None of that settled the matter for them. Their dread says more about their guilt than about anything Joseph had done.

Sources: Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

16 And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying,

Context #

A command Genesis never records

Jacob’s message to Joseph appears only here, “an unrecorded dying charge,” and the narrator does not say whether Jacob gave it.

Jacob’s message to Joseph appears only here, “an unrecorded dying charge,” and the narrator does not say whether Jacob gave it. Jacob’s blessings in chapter 49 say nothing of the sale of Joseph. One reading takes that silence to show that Jacob “as their father had forgiven the sin of his sons,” and sees “no reason whatever for regarding the appeal to their father’s wish as a mere pretence.” The text leaves the question open.

What the message does is clear. It asks first for “thy brethren” and then for “the servants of the God of thy father” (verse 17), a stronger appeal than kinship: “They and Joseph serve one God.” Joseph weeps when he hears it. Genesis does not say why; in the same reading it is “at the fact that they could impute anything so bad to him.”

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

17 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.

18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we be thy servants.

19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God?

Language #

Declining the judge’s seat

Joseph answers the brothers’ fear by refusing the role they fear he will play.

Joseph answers the brothers’ fear by refusing the role they fear he will play. The Hebrew is hatachat Elohim ani, and Jacob had used the identical words to Rachel when she demanded children: “Am I in God’s stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?” (Gen. 30:2). In both places the speaker declines a position that belongs to God. Here the question means, “am I the person to punish for wrongdoing? God alone knows the hearts.”

The brothers have just fallen down before Joseph and said “we be thy servants” (verse 18), “a final reminiscence of Joseph’s dreams,” in which their sheaves and his father’s family bowed to him (Gen. 37:7; Gen. 37:10). But Joseph will not be master of their guilt. Latter-day revelation puts the same limit in the Lord’s voice: “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men” (D&C 64:10).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. March 16–22. “God Meant It unto Good”: Genesis 42–50, Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Old Testament 2026. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

20 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.

Language #

One verb for the brothers and for God

Joseph uses one Hebrew verb for what the brothers did and for what God did.

Joseph uses one Hebrew verb for what the brothers did and for what God did. Chashav is “ye thought” (chashavtem) and “God meant” (chashavah), and the KJV’s two English verbs hide it. The ESV keeps it: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” The lexicon gives the verb here as “devise evil against” and “devise, plan, mean… for good.”

The sentence does not excuse the brothers: “ye thought evil.” Nor does it make God the author of what they did. Joseph had said the same thing when he first told them who he was, “it was not you that sent me hither, but God” (Gen. 45:8), and those words “should not be misunderstood to mean that God caused Joseph’s brothers to sell him into slavery” (see the note on Gen. 45:5–8). Here Joseph says it again to the same men, once they have lost the protection of their father.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2016; on BibleGateway. Genesis 42–50, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025). The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Witness of Christ #

Joseph keeps many alive

Joseph names what the evil was turned to: “to save much people alive.”

Joseph names what the evil was turned to: “to save much people alive.” The Hebrew verb, lehachayot, is the “preserve alive” of Gen. 45:7, where Joseph said that God sent him ahead for that purpose. His story is “an illustration of the way in which God works in history, preserving his people.”

The likeness to Christ is drawn from that reversal: “In their very attempt to destroy Joseph, his brothers actually set up the conditions that would bring about their eventual temporal salvation—that is, Joseph, by virtue of being sold, would become their deliverer. Jesus, by His being given into the hands of the Gentiles, was crucified and completed the atoning sacrifice, becoming the Deliverer for all mankind.” That is a type. Genesis itself does not make the comparison, and “temporal salvation” marks what Joseph could give, which was life and bread.

21 Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.

Language #

Joseph answers a plea for forgiveness without the word

The brothers ask Joseph to “forgive” (verse 17), and in his reply he never uses the word.

The brothers ask Joseph to “forgive” (verse 17), and in his reply he never uses the word. His answer is “Fear not” (verses 19, 21), a statement of what God has done (verse 20), a promise, “I will nourish you, and your little ones,” and comfort. The Hebrew for “spake kindly” is literally “spoke to their heart” (‘al libbam), and “comforted” is a form of nacham.

Joseph’s forgiveness had already been shown by what he did. When he first made himself known he “forgave without bitterness, extended love when undeserved, and saw the Lord’s hand in all that happened”: “he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them” (Gen. 45:15), sent for their father and their families, and gave them food and places to live. This scene is “the second sign that Joseph had forgiven his brothers,” in which he “reassures his brothers that he has forgiven them.” His answer speaks to their fear and not to the offense.

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Genesis 37–50: Joseph: The Power of Preparation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003). John Gee, “Clothes and Cups: The Tangible World of Joseph”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 425–46. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Verses 22–26

Joseph’s last years and his oath

In plain words

Joseph lived in Egypt with his father’s household and reached the age of 110. He saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation, and the sons of Machir, Manasseh’s son, were born on his knees. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will surely visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then he made the sons of Israel swear: “God will surely visit you, and you must carry my bones up from here.” Joseph died at 110. They embalmed him and put him in a coffin in Egypt.

22 And Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he, and his father’s house: and Joseph lived an hundred and ten years.

23 And 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.

Language #

Born on Joseph’s knees

The KJV’s “brought up upon Joseph’s knees” softens a Hebrew phrase that says the children “were born on Joseph’s knees” (yulledu ‘al birkei Yosef), as the ESV’s footnote and the…

The KJV’s “brought up upon Joseph’s knees” softens a Hebrew phrase that says the children “were born on Joseph’s knees” (yulledu ‘al birkei Yosef), as the ESV’s footnote and the interlinear give it. The same idiom is in Gen. 30:3, where Rachel gives Bilhah to Jacob so that “she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.” On that pattern, one reading is that Joseph, “as head of the family, acknowledged and adopted the children.” Another finds “no reason for thinking of adoption” and takes the phrase to mean that he could “take them also upon his knees and show them his paternal love.” Genesis does not say more.

Either way, Jacob had blessed Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen. 48:19–20), and Joseph “lived to see the commencement of the fulfilment of his father’s blessing.”

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. English Standard Version, Crossway, 2016; on BibleGateway. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

24 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.

Language #

Joseph’s words become the Exodus’s words

Joseph’s promise is that God will “visit” them, and Moses is still quoting it in Exodus.

Joseph’s promise is that God will “visit” them, and Moses is still quoting it in Exodus. The Hebrew doubles the verb, paqod yifqod, “attending, he will attend.” The lexicon gives it here as “visit graciously” and lists this verse with Gen. 21:1 (the LORD visited Sarah) and Exodus 13:19. When Moses takes Joseph’s bones, the Hebrew of Joseph’s oath comes back word for word: “God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones” (Ex. 13:19). The Lord tells Moses to say to the elders, with the same doubled form, “I have surely visited you” (Ex. 3:16).

The rest of the promise reuses earlier words. “Bring you out” is the “go up” verb of the burial: God had told Jacob, “I will also surely bring thee up again” (Gen. 46:4). The land is the one “which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob”: the oath of Gen. 22:16–18, which the Lord told Isaac He would perform (Gen. 26:3).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Related Scriptures #

Joseph’s longer last words

The Joseph Smith Translation answers a question that Genesis 50 raises for a Latter-day Saint reader: where are the prophecies Lehi quotes?

The Joseph Smith Translation answers a question that Genesis 50 raises for a Latter-day Saint reader: where are the prophecies Lehi quotes? Genesis gives Joseph’s last words in three verses. But Lehi tells his son Joseph that Joseph of Egypt “truly saw our day,” and quotes his prophecies (2 Ne. 3:4–22), and Nephi says they “are written upon the plates of brass” (2 Ne. 4:2). They “were evidently on the brass plates that Lehi had but have been lost from our present Bible.” The Joseph Smith Translation restores them at this place as JST Genesis 50:24–38. President Russell M. Nelson called these additions “good examples of ‘plain and precious’ truths that have been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith.”

The added verses contain “the mission of Moses; the calling of a latter-day Joseph and the Restoration; writings which Joseph would be instrumental in bringing forth to be joined with those of Judah.” The “choice seer” is, in the Church’s reading, the Prophet Joseph Smith. The additions also fit the Genesis text closely. JST 50:34 says, “the Lord sware unto Joseph that he would preserve his seed forever,” and verse 36 then resumes the Genesis words: “Therefore, Joseph said unto his brethren, God will surely visit you.” In Genesis alone the ground of that promise is the oath to the fathers; in the Joseph Smith Translation it is also an oath to Joseph himself.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 50, Joseph Smith Translation Appendix, Gospel Library. Genesis 37–50: Joseph: The Power of Preparation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003). Russell M. Nelson, “Remnants Gathered, Covenants Fulfilled”, Address at the Sperry Symposium, Oct. 11, 1997; in The Voice of My Servants: Apostolic Messages on Teaching, Learning, and Scripture, ed. Scott C. Esplin and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), 181–98. George A. Horton Jr., “Insights into the Book of Genesis”, In The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Truths, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 51–70. Genesis 42–50, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).

25 And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence.

26 So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.

Context #

A coffin in Egypt

Genesis ends with Joseph’s body embalmed but unburied, waiting in a coffin in Egypt.

Genesis ends with Joseph’s body embalmed but unburied, waiting in a coffin in Egypt. “Coffin” is Hebrew ’aron, “chest”; the lexicon takes it here as “sarcophagus, mummy-case of Joseph,” and it is the word used for the “ark of the covenant.” Joseph is embalmed like his father but is not buried; “in keeping with his own previous request, he was kept from burial until Moses and the children of Israel took his bones to Canaan” (compare Ex. 13:19 and Josh. 24:32). The last Hebrew word of the book is “in Egypt.”

In one reading the coffin itself “became a standing exhortation to Israel, to turn its eyes away from Egypt to Canaan, the land promised to its fathers.” Hebrews counts Joseph’s command about his bones as an act of faith (Heb. 11:22). Joshua records the burial at Shechem, in the field Jacob had bought (Josh. 24:32; Gen. 33:19).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. “Joseph”, Bible Dictionary. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Seeing Christ in Genesis 50

Joseph, sold by his brothers and then their deliverer, is a type of the Savior (see the note on verse 20). “In many ways, Joseph was like Jesus Christ. Even though our sins caused Jesus great suffering, He offers forgiveness, delivering all of us from a fate far worse than famine.” In this chapter the brothers who did the evil come and bow, and the one they sold answers “Fear not” and promises them life: “I will nourish you, and your little ones” (verse 21).

Joseph’s promise that God would “visit” His people (verse 24) is the language Zacharias uses of the Savior’s coming: “he hath visited and redeemed his people” (Luke 1:68). The Joseph Smith Translation looks past the Exodus to the Messiah, as Lehi also teaches (2 Ne. 3:5). In the Joseph Smith Translation Joseph says his descendants “shall be remembered in the covenants of the Lord, when the Messiah cometh; for he shall be made manifest unto them in the latter days, in the Spirit of power; and shall bring them out of darkness into light.”

Worth exploring next

Joseph reveals himself. Read Gen. 45:1–15, and verses 19–21 beside Joseph’s words there, “God did send me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5–8).
Jacob’s charge. Gen. 47:29–31; Gen. 49:29–33; Abraham’s purchase of the cave in Gen. 23.
Joseph’s bones. Ex. 13:19; Josh. 24:32; Heb. 11:22.
Joseph’s prophecy in the Book of Mormon. 2 Ne. 3:4–22 and 2 Ne. 4:1–2, read beside JST Genesis 50:24–38 in the Appendix.
Forgiving. D&C 64:9–11.
Details of the Joseph story. KnoWhy #842, “Why Do the Details of the Joseph Story Matter?” (Scripture Central), sets the Egyptian details of the story beside what is known of Joseph’s time.

This chapter elsewhere in scripture

2 Ne. 3:4–22 — Lehi quotes Joseph of Egypt’s prophecy of Moses and of a latter-day seer named Joseph, which the Joseph Smith Translation restores at Gen. 50:24–38.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Westminster Leningrad Codex (the Masoretic Hebrew text), Read in the Hebrew–English interlinear on Bible Hub.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
The Septuagint (Rahlfs Greek text, with Brenton’s English translation), Elpenor Bilingual Septuagint.
English Standard Version, Crossway, 2016; on BibleGateway.
“Embalming”, Bible Dictionary.
“Machpelah”, Bible Dictionary.
“Joseph”, Bible Dictionary.
Joseph Smith Translation, Genesis 50, Joseph Smith Translation Appendix, Gospel Library.
Genesis 42–50, Scripture Helps: Old Testament (2025).
March 16–22. “God Meant It unto Good”: Genesis 42–50, Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Old Testament 2026.
Genesis 37–50: Joseph: The Power of Preparation, Old Testament Student Manual: Genesis–2 Samuel (Church Educational System, 2003).
Russell M. Nelson, “Remnants Gathered, Covenants Fulfilled”, Address at the Sperry Symposium, Oct. 11, 1997; in The Voice of My Servants: Apostolic Messages on Teaching, Learning, and Scripture, ed. Scott C. Esplin and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), 181–98.
George A. Horton Jr., “Insights into the Book of Genesis”, In The Joseph Smith Translation: The Restoration of Plain and Precious Truths, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Robert L. Millet (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1985), 51–70.
John Gee, “Clothes and Cups: The Tangible World of Joseph”, In From Creation to Sinai: The Old Testament through the Lens of the Restoration, ed. Daniel L. Belnap and Aaron P. Schade (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 425–46.
Scripture Central, “Why Do the Details of the Joseph Story Matter?”, KnoWhy #842, Mar. 5, 2026.
Herodotus, The Histories, Book 2, chapter 86, Trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920); read in the Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University.
Herbert E. Ryle, The Book of Genesis in the Revised Version, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: University Press, 1921); read on Bible Hub.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Genesis, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

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