SYNOPSIS: Before dying Jacob asks his sons to bury him in the cave of Machpelah where his father and grandfather were buried. The grieving Joseph had his father's body embalmed Egyptian style, a process which took forty days, and his father was mourned for seventy days before Joseph sent word to Pharaoh to say he was taking his father back to Canaan to fulfil his last request. A large group went with them. After crossing the Jordan they held a memorial service. The local Canaanites were impressed by the solemnity of the funeral, and thinking they were Egyptians called the place thereafter Abel-Mitzraim ("Egyptian mourning"). Jacob's sons bury their father at Machpelah.
- Text of the passage (in Nawat)
Actually Jacob had already told Joseph that this was what he wanted in a more private and intimate scene (see ch. 47, end); there, indeed, he made his son swear he would do this. A note in EH suggest that this was really out of foresight on Jacob's part, because by having Joseph swear to him in his last days that he would fulfil his wish, when the time came - as it now does - Joseph would be in a stronger position when asking Pharaoh to permit him to carry it out. And sure enough, Joseph now speaks to Pharaoh in just those terms (50:5): avi hishbi‛áni lemor [etc.] w'‛atta e‛ele na... 'My father made me swear that (etc.) and now let me go...' The Pharaoh agrees (v. 6): ‛ale uq'vor et avíkha ka'asher hishbi‛èkha 'Go and bury your father as he made you swear.'
Given that Jacob had already made these arrangements with Joseph, the point of Jacob's final speech about the same question is not to make his wishes known (they already were); its literary function, at least, is surely more "atmospheric" than informative. The choice of topic, his place of burial, is of more than technical interest, it is an occasion to touch the alert audience's sensibilities at this critical moment in the story and to remind us of names and places that are emotionally charged and also of great symbolic significance: qivru oti el avotay 'Bury me with my fathers', bisde efron haxitti 'in the field of Ephron the Hittite', bisde hammakhpela 'in the field of Machpelah', ‛al p'ne mamre 'facing Mamre', b'‛éretz k'ná‛an 'in the land of Canaan', avraham 'Abraham', and then the litany of his forebears who were also buried in that tomb: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and his own wife Leah. He repeats himself, mentioning the cave and the field and Ephron and the Hittites several times as if to make sure the point is made, like a composer penning recurrent echoes of the main theme at the finale, until everybody in the audience is visualising Machpelah, the patriarchs' resting place in Canaan, and remembering and reminiscing with him, at the moment when Jacob expires (v. 33): waykhal ya‛aqov l'tzawwot et banaw waye'esof raglaw el hammiTTa wayigwa‛ wayye'ásef el ‛ammaw 'When Jacob finished his instructions to his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and, breathing his last,, he was gathered to his people.'
For source critics, on the other hand, the repetition of Jacob's instructions is naturally seen as evidence of distinct sources: in ch. 47 J was speaking, and here it is P.
Joseph has the Egyptian "physicians" (rof'im) embalm Jacob. There is a period of mourning in Egypt, and then a solemn procession including both the servants of Pharaoh and Jacob's family carry his embalmed body all the way to Canaan where, after another memorial service, he is taken the last leg of the journey to his final resting place in Hebron, where his sons bury him, fulfilling Joseph's promise, and the audience hears one last return of the refrain (50:13): 'in the cave of the field of Machpelah, the field near Mamre, which Abraham had bought for a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.'
49:28 kol élle shivTe yisra'el sh'nem asar
'All these were the tribes of Israel, twelve [in number].' This, referring to the foregoing recitation of the fortunes of Jacob's sons (or the tribes they represent), is the first unambiguous mention of the tribes of Israel and also the first explicit reference to the fact that the tribes numbered twelve.
w'zot asher dibber lahem avihem
The lahem can equally well be understood as 'to them' (= alehem) or 'concerning them'.
49:31
This is the only place where it is stated that Isaac, Rebecca and Leah were buried at Machpelah.
49:32 miqne hassade w'hamm'‛ara asher bo me'et b'ne xet
I would say that this doesn't quite make sense. It seems to say, literally: 'the livestock of the field and the cave (that is) in it from the sons of Heth (= the Hittites)', which is unintelligible and incoherent in the context, so it can't really mean that: the observation in CB that "the construction is awkward" is an understatement. It makes much better sense, both semantically and syntactically, if we read miqnat 'acquisition of' instead of miqne 'livestock of': 'the acquisition of the field and the cave (that is) in it from the Hittites.' In the absolute state the two words, 'livestock' and 'acquisition', are homonyms: miqne. Since the following word is hassade 'the field', perhaps an absent-minded copyist assumed that 'livestock of the field' was the more likely collocation; there is a difference of only one letter between the consonantal spellings of the two words. The LXX transalation assumes the meaning I propose: en ktêsei tou agrou..., while the Vulg. omits the entire verse!
49:33 wayyigwa‛
The non-hollow qal verb g-w-‛ is an alternative way of saying m-w-t 'to die`, which is usually translated as 'expire, breathe one's last, give up the ghost, pass away' or some such euphemism for death: wayyigwa‛ = wayyámot. It was used in the same form (the prefix perfect) in Genesis to describe the moments of death of Abraham (25:8, wayyigwa‛ wayyámot avraham), Ishmael (25:17, again wayyigwa‛ wayyámot) and Isaac (35:29, wayyigwa‛ yitzxaq wayyámot), followed in every case by the stock phrase wayye'asef el ‛amaw 'and was gathered to his people.' In the present verse wayyámot, the common way to say 'he died', is omitted, and the phrase wayye'esof raglaw el hammiTTa 'he drew his feet into the bed' (only here) is added. The verb g-w-‛ occurs just two other times in Genesis, both in the story of Noah and the Flood, once in the prefix imperfect, (6:17) kol asher ba'áretz yigwa‛ 'everything on earth will die', and once in the perfect, (7:21) wayyigwa‛ kol basar haromes ‛al ha'áretz 'all flesh that moves on the earth died.'
50:5 b'qivri asher karíti li
(JPS) 'In the grave which I made ready for myself.' The qal verb k-r-h 'to dig' also occurred in 26:25.
50:10 góren ha'aTad
The location has not been identified with certainty, but the meaning of góren is 'threshing floor'; here, however, it must be a place name. Acc. to EH it was probably Tell el-Ajjul, on the coast a little south of Gaza, and the note adds: "A little to the south of the town lies a Late Bronze Age cemetery, which was a burial ground for high-ranking Egyptians serving in Canaan and for Egyptianized Canaanite rulers and dignitaries."
asher b'‛éver hayyarden (and again in v. 11)
'Which is beyond the Jordan.' This geographical indiation doesn't seem coherent either with the location given for the place in EH (see above) or with the burial of Jacob in Mamre. Of course, we could be looking at variants from different sources there.
50:11 mitzráyim
Probably meaning mitzrim 'Egyptians' (people) rather than the country, 'Egypt.'
qara sh'mah
The 3s verb form (qara) sometimes, as here, acquires an impersonal meaning: not 'called' but 'was called', cf. the same thing with wayyómer (48:1 and elsewhere; see my note there). As for sh'mah, the feminine suffix no doubt implies ha‛ir 'the city.'
avel mitzráyim
['Mourning of Egypt']. Speiser doubts the veracity of the etiology, suggesting that the name is more likely to contain the word avel 'watercourse, brook', rather than ével 'mourning' (so: Egypt Brook).
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