Gen. xlix. 10, especially after the theory, that is but has been most properly אֲשֶׁר לוֹ = שֶׁלּוֹ = שֶׁלה another form of ה given up as utterly fallacious. Moreover, we should altogether abstain from attributing to the prophet Ezekiel such a play upon words, as Hengstenberg imputes to him when he says (p. 86): "the words pipi, which Ezekiel puts in the place of Shiloh, on the ground of Ps. lxxii., allude to the letters of the latter word which form the initials (?) of the words in Ezekiel. That is the main letter in is shown by the common abbreviation of it into, and that the in is unessential, is proved by the circumstance, that the name of the place is often written." If the passage in Ezekiel bore any conscious reference to Gen. xlix. 10, and this I no longer dispute, it is not to be regarded as an explanation or confirmation of it, but simply as a free allusion to the passage, which the prophet has enriched with the fulness of his own more expanded views in relation to the coming Messiah. DEATH OF JACOB AND JOSEPH. § 4. (Gen. xlix. 28—1. 26).—When the patriarch had thus looked forward with prophetic eye; had seen his descendants in possession of the land of his pilgrimage; and had announced in prophetic words the vision he had seen: he concluded by uttering with renewed earnestness the last wish of his life, that he might be buried there, in the land of his reminiscences and hopes, and in the family grave of his fathers. The execution of this wish, of which Joseph had already given him an assurance on oath, he now pressed most urgently upon all his sons. His account with life was closed, and he died at the age of 147 years. (1). Joseph had the body embalmed by his physicians in the Egyptian mode, and after the usual period of mourning, obtained Pharaoh's permission, and went with all his brethren and their households to convey the corpse to its place of destination. The Israelites were accompanied to the borders of the promised land, by a solemn and numerously attended funeral procession of Egyptian courtiers and officers of state. There they remained for seven days mourning together; after which the Egyptians departed, and left the members of the family to bury the corpse in the cave of Machpelah. (2). The guilty conscience of Joseph's brethren now began to trouble them again, and they became uneasy, lest Joseph should perhaps have only deferred their well-merited punishment till their aged father's death. But the noble-minded deliverer and protector of his family anticipated their fears, and dispelled them with words of comfort: "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." Joseph lived sufficiently long to witness the commencement of the fulfilment of his father's blessing, for he saw his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; and as his end approached, looking with faith at the promises of the future, he took an oath of the children of Israel, that whenever these promises were fulfilled, they would carry his bones with them to the promised land. years. He died at the His body was embalmed and placed in a mummy-case for preservation. (3). (1). On chap. xlix. 33. "And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost," Calvin correctly observes: non est supervacua locutio, nempe qua exprimere vult Moses placidam sancti viri mortem, ac si dixisset, sanctum senem tranquillo animi statu membra direxisse quo volebat, qualiter sani et vegeti se ad somnum componere solent;" and M. Baumgarten adds: "Jacob is the only one of the Old Testament patriarchs, whom we are able to accompany to his very last hour. And here we see how the Old Testament death-bed was surrounded by brightness and peace, the fear of death being swallowed up in the certain hope of the rest that remaineth for the people of God."-On the family-vault and the interest attaching to it in the minds of the patriarchs, see Vol. i. § 66. (2). For the Egyptian customs referred to here, consult Hengstenberg's Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 66 sqq. (translation). The fact that Joseph is said to have possessed a large number of physicians, may be explained from Herodotus (ii. 84), where we read that there were special physicians in Egypt for every disease. On the different modes in which the mummies were prepared, see Herodotus (ii. 86-88) and Diodorus (i. 91). Compare also Friedreich on the Bible (ii. 199 sqq.). The difference between the account given here, that Joseph's physicians embalmed his father, and the statement of Diodorus (1. c.) to the effect that there was a regularly organised, hereditary guild appointed for that purpose, and that the different departments were assigned to different individuals, may easily be explained, if we take into consideration the different periods to which the two accounts refer. Hengstenberg is certainly correct in saying (p. 67) that "it is quite natural to suppose, that in the most ancient times this operation was performed by those to whom any one entrusted it; but that afterwards, when the embalming was executed more according to the rules of art, a distinct class of operators gradually arose." There is a striking coincidence between the statement made here, that the whole period of mourning, evidently including the forty days of embalming, extended to seventy days, and the account given by Diodorus (i. 72, 91). Hengstenberg (p. 68) has shown that there is no discrepancy between Herodotus, ii. 85, and Diodorus, i. 72, 91. The extravagances of the funeral rites of the Egyptians are depicted in both these passages, and their monuments show the intensity and solemnity of their lamentations (vid. Wilkinson, i. 256). Joseph appeals to the courtiers to intercede for him, and obtain Pharaoh's permission to bury the corpse in Canaan. The reason why Joseph did not lay his own request before the king, has been correctly explained by Hengstenberg (ut supra) on the ground that, according to Egyptian customs, Joseph allowed his hair and beard to grow during the term of mourning (Herod. ii. 36), and that no one was permitted to enter the presence of the king in this unseemly condition (Gen. xli. 14). Moreover, the request had reference to Joseph himself, for as a matter of course, the minister of a well organised state could not leave the country without the knowledge and consent of the king. The rest of the brethren required no royal permission to bury the body in Canaan and accompany it thither. The fact that so numerous and influential a body of the Egyptians, viz. the elders of the house of Pharaoh (i.e. the officers of the court), and the elders of the land of Egypt (the state officials), accompanied the procession, most likely with an armed guard, shows how highly Joseph was esteemed and beloved by both the court and the king. "The custom of funeral-processions,” says Rossellini, ii.3, p. 395. "existed in every province of Egypt and in every age of its history. We have seen representations of them in the oldest graves of Elethyas; there are similar ones in those of Saqqarah and Gizzeh, and others also exactly like them in the tombs of Thebes, which belong to the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties." To this, Hengstenberg adds, "When we look at the representations of processions for the dead upon the monuments, we can fancy we see the funeral train of Jacob (vid. Taylor, p. 182)."—As the threshing-floor Atad ( the buck-thorn threshing-floor), at which the Egyptians turned back after seven days' mourning, is on the other side, i.e. the east, of the Jordan, the procession did not take the nearest road, by Gaza and through the territory of the Philistines, but went by a long circuitous route round the Dead Sea, and so crossed the Jordan and entered Canaan on the eastern side. The reason of this may be attributable to political circumstances, with which we are unacquainted. So large a procession, attended by an armed guard, would probably have met with difficulties from the contentious Philistines. It is a remarkable coincidence, however, that Jacob's corpse should have taken, or have been compelled to take, the same road, which his descendants were afterwards obliged to follow in their journey to the promised land. We should not be surprised to find some critic detecting in this an unmistakeable proof, that the road, by which the legend states that the body of Jacob was carried, was first taken from the journey of the Israelites. For our part, however, we do not hesitate to express our opinion most freely, that we discover in this similarity of route one of those events, unintentional and therefore apparently accidental, that abound in history in general, but particularly in sacred history, and from the stand-point of the observer are proofs of the prophetic character with which the biblical history is always secretly pervaded. Tuch (p. 593), with his usual delight at the discovery and imputation of crudities, says that ᄂ the Egyptian escort is described in the Saga as stopping short before reaching the Jordan, because "the foreign attendants could not be allowed to tread the holy promised land;" and so important does he consider the discovery, that he has had the words printed in italics. But where do we find, in any part of the Old Testament, the least trace of so harsh and trivial an idea? And how particularly crude and absurd would such a notion have been, at a time when the "holy promised land" was entirely in the possession and occupation of foreigners. But Tuch himself assigns the true and perfectly satisfactory reason for the departure of the Egyptians, when he says: "the actual interment of the corpse was a matter for the family alone." This sufficiently explains, why the Egyptians only accompanied them to the frontier of Canaan. Had so numerous an escort gone further, it might have excited political disturbances in Canaan. From the very nature of the case, too, an escort only goes, as a rule, to the line which separates their own from a foreign land. But in this instance the procession had hitherto passed only through a desert, in which there were none but nomad-hordes, and therefore the boundary of Canaan, at which the escort stopped, might be regarded in a certain sense as the boundary of Egypt, especially when we consider, that it was their intention to pay the greatest honour to the funeral procession, by going as far as they possibly could. No one will consider it an improbable thing, that the place where the Egyptians encamped, by the floor of Atad, may have received the name "meadow of the Egyptians," from the fact that this splendid procession sojourned there for seven days; and it will hardly be regarded as a crime, either against the grammar or the lexicon, that the author should have laid stress upon the paronomasia between this name and "the mourning of the Egyptians." We have no means of determining the site of the threshingfloor of Atad with exactness. Jerome identifies it with Beth-Hogla, two miles from the Jordan on the road to Jericho, i.e. to the west of the Jordan (vid. Onomast. art. Area Atad), but this is at variance with the evident meaning of the text. (3). In v. 23 we read that the children of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph's lap. From chap. xxx. 3 it is . |