TOPIC: A Promise Fulfilled!

READ: Genesis 50:1-14 (NKJV)

1. Then Joseph fell on his father’s face, and wept over him, and kissed him.
2. And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel.
3. Forty days were required for him, for such are the days required for those who are embalmed; and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
4. And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying,
5. ‘My father made me swear, saying, “Behold, I am dying; in my grave which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.” Now therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back.’ “
6. And Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear.”
7. So 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. as well as all the house of Joseph, his brothers, and his father’s house. Only their little ones, 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 gathering.
10. Then they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which [is] beyond the Jordan, and they mourned there with a great and very solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father.
11. And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This [is] a deep mourning of the Egyptians.” Therefore its name was called Abel Mizraim, which [is] beyond the Jordan.
12. So his sons did for him just as he had commanded them.
13. For his sons carried him to the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpelah, before Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite as property for a burial place.
14. And after he had buried his father, Joseph returned to Egypt, he and his brothers and all who went up with him to bury his father.