Genesis · 26 verses
Genesis 50
Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.
The chapter
What happens here
Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.
After Jacob is dead, his sons send Joseph a message from their dead father, asking forgiveness for a command the chapter never lets Jacob speak. Joseph answers not with a reckoning but with tears, bowed brothers, and the remarkable question, “Am I in the place of God?”
The burial processionvv. 1–14
Joseph begins with his face against Israel’s, weeping and kissing him, then sets the Egyptian physicians to their solemn business. Forty days of embalming become seventy days of Egyptian mourning, after which Pharaoh permits the journey to Canaan. The funeral party is enormous—elders, household, brothers, chariots, and horsemen—though the children, flocks, and herds remain behind in Goshen. At the threshing floor of Atad, across the Jordan, the mourners make such a spectacle that the Canaanites name the place Abel-mizraim. The sons carry out their father’s charge and bury him at Machpelah; then Joseph and the whole company return to Egypt.
The message from the deadvv. 15–21
Once their father is gone, Joseph’s brothers become alarmed: perhaps the old evil has merely been waiting for its proper moment. They send him a message claiming that Jacob had commanded forgiveness before he died, though Jacob’s own lips are not heard giving that command. Joseph weeps when the message arrives. His brothers then appear in person, bowing and offering themselves as slaves, and Joseph replies that he is not God’s substitute. Their evil intention and God’s good intention are set side by side, and Joseph promises provision for the brothers and their little ones.
Joseph’s last requestvv. 22–26
Joseph remains in Egypt long enough to see three generations of Ephraim’s sons, while the sons of Machir are brought up on his knees—a wonderfully domestic detail in the midst of dynasties and coffins. At 110, Joseph announces his death and looks beyond Egypt toward the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He makes the sons of Israel swear that his bones will be carried up from Egypt. For the moment, however, the bones stay put: Joseph dies, is embalmed, and is placed in a coffin in Egypt.
The text
Read it
Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.
Gen 50:1Then Joseph fell upon his father’s face, wept over him, and kissed him.
Gen 50:2And Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So they embalmed him,
Gen 50:3taking the forty days required to complete the embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
Gen 50:4When the days of mourning had passed, Joseph said to Pharaoh’s court, “If I have found favor in your eyes, please tell Pharaoh that
Gen 50:5my father made me swear an oath when he said, ‘I am about to die. You must bury me in the tomb that I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.’ Now let me go and bury my father, and then return.”
Gen 50:6Pharaoh replied, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear to do.”
Gen 50:7Then Joseph went to bury his father, and all the servants of Pharaoh accompanied him—the elders of Pharaoh’s household and all the elders of the land of Egypt—
Gen 50:8along with all of Joseph’s household, and his brothers, and his father’s household. Only their children and flocks and herds were left in Goshen.
Gen 50:9Chariots and horsemen alike went up with him, and it was an exceedingly large procession.
Gen 50:10When they reached the threshing floor of Atad, which is across the Jordan, they lamented and wailed loudly, and Joseph mourned for his father seven days.
Gen 50:11When the Canaanites of the land saw the mourning at the threshing floor of Atad, they said, “This is a solemn ceremony of mourning by the Egyptians.” Thus the place across the Jordan is called Abel-mizraim.
Gen 50:12So Jacob’s sons did as he had charged them.
Gen 50:13They carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave at Machpelah in the field near Mamre, which Abraham had purchased from Ephron the Hittite as a burial site.
Gen 50:14After Joseph had buried his father, he returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had gone with him to bury his father.
Gen 50:15When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph bears a grudge? Then he will surely repay us for all the evil that we did to him.”
Gen 50:16So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Before he died, your father commanded,
Gen 50:17‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I beg you, please forgive the transgression and sin of your brothers, for they did you wrong.’ So now, Joseph, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.
Gen 50:18His brothers also came to him, bowed down before him, and said, “We are your slaves!”
Gen 50:19But Joseph replied, “Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God?
Gen 50:20As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this—to preserve the lives of many people.
Gen 50:21Therefore do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.” So Joseph reassured his brothers and spoke kindly to them.
Gen 50:22Now Joseph and his father’s household remained in Egypt, and Joseph lived to the age of 110.
Gen 50:23He saw Ephraim’s sons to the third generation, and indeed the sons of Machir son of Manasseh were brought up on Joseph’s knees.
Gen 50:24Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die, but God will surely visit you and bring you up from this land to the land He promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Gen 50:25And Joseph made the sons of Israel take an oath and said, “God will surely attend to you, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”
Gen 50:26So Joseph died at the age of 110. And they embalmed his body and placed it in a coffin in Egypt.
01 — Also here
Who else the chapter reaches
Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.
Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.
Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.
02 — Read alongside
Where this is echoed
Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 196 passages were voted onto 24 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.
- 20Romans 8:28And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.
- 20Psalms 119:71It was good for me to be afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.
- 20Genesis 45:5–8And now, do not be distressed or angry with yourselves that you sold me into this place, because it was to save lives that God sent me before you.
- 20Genesis 37:18–20Now Joseph’s brothers saw him in the distance, and before he arrived, they plotted to kill him.
- 20Acts 2:23He was delivered up by God’s set plan and foreknowledge, and you, by the hands of the lawless, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross.
- 20Psalms 105:16–17He called down famine on the land and cut off all their supplies of food.
- 20Acts 3:13–15The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus. You handed Him over and rejected Him before Pilate, even though he had decided to release Him.
- 20Genesis 37:4When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
- 20Acts 3:26When God raised up His Servant, He sent Him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.”
- 20Psalms 56:5All day long they twist my words; all their thoughts are on my demise.
- 20Isaiah 10:7But this is not his intention; this is not his plan. For it is in his heart to destroy and cut off many nations.
- 24Exodus 3:16–17Go, assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—has appeared to me and said: I have surely attended to you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt.
- 20Psalms 76:10Even the wrath of man shall praise You; with the survivors of wrath You will clothe Yourself.
- 25Exodus 13:19Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear a solemn oath when he said, “God will surely attend to you, and then you must carry my bones with you from this place.”
- 25Joshua 24:32And the bones of Joseph, which the Israelites had brought up out of Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the plot of land that Jacob had purchased from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of silver. So it became an inheritance for Joseph’s descendants.
- 24Genesis 35:12The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.”
Onward