Great Moments in Bible History
Number 54
The End of an Era
Jacob’s story is the longest in the book of Genesis. The entire last half of the book is about him and his children. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the three patriarchs who lived their lives in the promised land (Canaan) waiting for God to bring about His promise and give them that land. By the time Jacob died, the family had moved to Egypt where Jacob’s son Joseph was second in command. No more would the family live as nomads in Canaan, waiting for God to give them that land. From a human perspective it looked unlikely that they would ever move back to the promised land. But Jacob—like his father and grandfather—believed God. God was the one who brought the family to Egypt, so God would be the one who would bring them out again.
Before Jacob died, he made Joseph and the rest of the family promise to bury him back in Canaan. His grandfather Abraham had purchased a cave as a burial place first for Abraham’s wife Sarah, then for the rest of the family as well. Jacob’s parents and grandparents as well as his wife Leah were already buried there. It was practically the only part of the promised land that the family owned, but Jacob had confidence that one day God would give them the whole land. His insistence that the family bury him there was a reminder to them that they all belonged there rather than in Egypt, and that one day God would bring them out of Egypt and give them that land.
Shortly after Jacob had given blessings to his sons, he died. Joseph got permission from Pharaoh to go and bury his father in Canaan. It was quite a funeral procession with high government officials and a military escort all making their way to Canaan to bury Joseph’s father. That burial marked the end of an era. Jacob was the last member of his family to be buried in Canaan for hundreds of years. When the next book after Genesis (the book of Exodus) opens, the family has been in Egypt for hundreds of years. It looked like an impossibility for them ever to move to Canaan as God had promised their ancestors. But the Bible is not the story of what humans were able to do on their own. It is the story of what God did for His people, in spite of their inability. God demonstrated His great ability throughout the book of Genesis, and He will continue demonstrating it throughout the rest of the Bible.
Payback Time?
When the head of a tightknit family dies, it changes things—and not always for the better. As soon as the family got back from burying Jacob, this issue came up. “When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him’” (Genesis 50:15). Their reasoning was that Joseph had only been kind to them out of concern for his father’s feelings. Now that his father was dead, the real Joseph would come out. As the second in command of Egypt, if Joseph wanted to pay his brothers back, he certainly could have.
“So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this command before he died: “Say to Joseph, ‘Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.’” And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father’” (verses 16-17). There is no record of Jacob ever saying such a thing. I suspect the brothers made it up to give authority to their plea for forgiveness.
Back when Joseph first revealed to them who he was (Genesis 45:4-8), he did everything he could to reassure them that they were forgiven. Their appeal to him after the death of Jacob shows that they doubted Joseph’s words. This was very painful to Joseph. “Joseph wept when they spoke to him.”
There was at least one good thing to come out of this. When Joseph originally revealed himself to the brothers, they had not confessed their sin. In today’s story they finally do. They say, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers.” This is a very important part of reconciliation, but unfortunately, it is not something we do very often. If I sin against you, it is very important that I confess that sin. I need to say, “I am sorry for what I did to you. Will you please forgive me?” And it is important for you to say, “Yes, I forgive you.”
“Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16).
How Can We Forgive?
Forgiveness is not easy. In Joseph’s case he had suffered a great deal from his brothers. If he was to forgive them, he would have to withdraw all claims against them for what they had done to him. He would no longer be able to demand payment from them. That is costly. It is easy for someone to say, “Just forgive and forget,” but how is that possible? Joseph’s explanation to his brothers is very helpful in answering that question.
“Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:19-20). This is the source of Joseph’s secret strength to forgive. He understood that God was in control. Where other people would have seen people being cruel to him, he saw God in His mysterious way bringing about good through painful events.
Joseph had a faith in God that we would do well to learn. Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29). If God must sign off on it (so to speak) before even a sparrow can die, then it is obvious that nothing ever happens to me that God has not also signed off on ahead of time. When someone sins against me, before I start thinking bitter thoughts, I need to remember that before that sin happened, God Himself said (in effect), “Yes, I’m okay with that sin being done against My servant. I will give him the strength to handle it and he will be able to glorify Me as a result.”
If I forget God in such a time and refuse to forgive, I am putting myself in the place of God. That was what Joseph wisely refused to do.
This does not mean that evil people will get away with their wicked behavior. Paul urged us, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19). God will repay evil. He is the Judge of all the earth. He will do His job. I am not qualified to do God’s work. When I try to do that work, I just mess it up.
I am thankful for Joseph’s marvelous example of faith in God which he demonstrated by forgiving his brothers.
A Strange Way to End a Book
After the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers, Moses wraps the book up quickly. He tells us that Joseph instructed his relatives, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here” (Genesis 50:25). Instead of having them make a special trip to bury him in Canaan like he had done for his father, he told them to wait until God led them out of Egypt and to bring his bones with them then.
The last verse of the book of Genesis reads, “So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.” The end! What a contrast this makes with the beginning of the book. In the first couple chapters the earth was full of wonderful life. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). All that beauty got messed up in chapter 3 when the serpent told Eve, “You will not surely die.” Once Eve and then Adam ate the forbidden fruit, everything changed. The rest of the book is full of rebellion, ugliness, and death. God promised to fix the problem (3:15; 12:1-3 and similar promises), but at the end of the book it is obvious that fix has not yet come. The book ends with one of the greatest heroes of the book lying dead in a coffin.
It is obvious that Moses (the author of Genesis) did not intend this book to stand alone. It was merely the first of five books that he wrote. Each of those books carries on where the previous one left off. Even at the end of his five books, the promised solution to sin and death still has not arrived. We do not find out who is going to bring that solution until the New Testament with the Gospels about Jesus. Even then we do not have the final fulfilment to the problem of sin and death. Book after book of the Bible follows until finally at the very end of the last book, the Book of Revelation, we read, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city” (Revelation 22:1-2). A beautiful description of that place follows. It sounds like a return to Genesis 1-2, which is what it is.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible.