Hl. 50. Art. 1. 2. And Joseph fell on his father's face, weeping (bitterly) for him, and kissed him. And Joseph commanded his servant to bury his father: and he buried the gravers of Israel.

Joseph falls on his father's face, of course, in order to close his eyes, as the Lord promised Jacob, comforting him (Gen. 46:4). By the burial, which Joseph ordered to be arranged for his father, it is not understood that the body was transferred with the usual ceremonies to the tomb, which, as we shall see, was performed later, but the actual preparation for the burial. This preparation consisted of embalming. Burials are a class of people who practiced this art in order to protect bodies from rotting. For this purpose they used various incense resins and balms, and with them they rubbed the corpses on the outside and filled them inside, for which purpose they first removed the brain from the head through the nostrils, and the inside of the womb through the opening in the left side. The embalmed body was immersed in saltpeter, then wrapped in linen, covered with a resinous substance and placed in a box. The bodies thus prepared are called mummies, which are still in Egypt today. Among the Egyptians, embalming was associated with the belief that the soul does not leave the body until it rots. Joseph, no doubt, did not share this belief and ordered the embalming of his father's body only so that it would not emit an unpleasant smell during the long rites of mourning for him and transferring him to Canaan. Burials (embalmers) were, as a rule, free people and received an agreed payment for their work. But for such a nobleman as Joseph, they belonged to the number of his slaves.

3. And he was fulfilled with forty days: for thus are the days of burial. And Egypt wept for him seventy days.

The embalming of Jacob lasted forty days, but the mourning lasted seventy days, including 40 days of embalming. The mourning of the dead consisted of the following rites: men and women stained their faces and heads with mud, walked through the city with loose hair, in holey rags, struck themselves on the bare chest, filled the air with cries of extreme sorrow, withdrew from baths, wine, meat and all kinds of bliss. The Egyptians thus mourned a stranger to them solely out of respect for their benefactor, Joseph.

4. 5. 6. And when the days of mourning had passed, Joseph spake unto the nobles of Pharaoh, saying, If thou hast found grace before you, speak for me in the ears of Pharaoh, saying, My father hath cursed me before he was finished, saying, In the tomb which thou hast dug for thyself in the land of Canaan, there thou shalt bury me. Now I have gone up to the burial of my father, and I will return. And he spoke to Pharaoh according to the word of Joseph.

And Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Arise, bury thy father, as thou hast cursed."

Joseph said to the nobles of Pharaoh, "Speak for me in the ears of Pharaoh." Since Joseph, at the end of the days of general mourning for Jacob, found it necessary for himself to continue mourning for his father until his burial in the land of Canaan, and walked uncombed, in sorrowful clothes, unwashed, etc., it seemed unseemly for him to appear in person to Pharaoh in such a state with a petition for permission to transfer the body of Jacob to Canaan, and as all relations with Pharaoh in general he conducted at that time through others, so also for this intercession he used intermediaries. In the same way, Pharaoh, through others, conveyed to Joseph his permission to transfer the body of Jacob to the land of Canaan for burial in the common family tomb, in which Jacob had dug up beforehand, and a room had been prepared for himself.

7. 8. And Joseph went up to bury his father. And all Pharaoh's servants, and the elders of his house, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Joseph, and his brethren, and all his father's house, and his kinswomen, joined with him. And he left the sheep and oxen in the land of Goshen.

In the funeral procession with the body of Jacob, in addition to all the members of Joseph's family and his relatives, for the sake of honor, participated all the rabbis of Pharaoh, i.e., the court ranks, and the elders of his house, i.e., the heads of the court ranks, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, i.e., high persons as representatives of all Egyptian state and civil institutions. Since the purpose of the journey to the land of Canaan was solely the burial of the remains of Jacob, and not the settlement of Jacob's children and relatives in it, they did not consider it necessary to take livestock with them. Their young children also remained in Egypt, as it is said in the Hebrew text.

9. And the chariots and the cavalry were with him (Joseph), and the army was great.

Chariots and horsemen were needed not only to increase the solemnity of the procession, but also to cover the travelers from attacks in the Arabian desert, through which the path lay. From this, the funeral procession resembled the movement of a large militia.