Death of Joseph

Joseph dies at age 110 in Egypt, having made his brothers swear to carry his bones back to the Promised Land when God delivers them. His body is embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Joseph's deathbed request expresses faith that God will fulfill His promise to bring Israel back to Canaan.

Key Verses

Background

Joseph had lived 110 years — a number the ancient Egyptians regarded as the ideal lifespan of a blessed man — and he had witnessed four generations of his descendants: "Joseph saw Ephraim's children to the third generation. The children of Makir son of Manasseh were also placed on Joseph's knees at birth" (Genesis 50:22–23). He had watched the covenant family multiply and flourish in Goshen throughout the remaining decades of his life. The narrative that began with a seventeen-year-old dreamer sold into slavery concludes with a patriarch at peace, his life a long testament to the faithfulness of God. Yet his final words were not a summary of his own achievements but a declaration of future promise.

The Event

On his deathbed, Joseph spoke with the confident authority of one whose entire life had taught him to trust God's word: "I am about to die. But God will certainly come to your aid and bring you up from this land to the land he swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (Genesis 50:24). He then extracted an oath from his brothers' descendants that his bones would not remain in Egypt permanently: "When he does, you must carry my bones up from this place" (50:25). At the age of 110, Joseph died, was embalmed in Egyptian fashion, and was placed in a coffin in Egypt — a preserved body waiting in an alien land for the fulfillment of a promise.

Theological Significance

The author of Hebrews lifts Joseph's final act as a defining example of faith: "By faith Joseph, near the end of his life, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions concerning his bones" (Hebrews 11:22). His deathbed request was not a sentimental attachment to ancestral land but a theological statement — an act of trust that the covenant promise to Abraham ("to your offspring I will give this land") was as certain as if it had already been fulfilled. The request also cast a long shadow across subsequent history: Moses remembered the oath at the Exodus (Exodus 13:19), and centuries later, Joshua buried Joseph's bones at Shechem, on the land Jacob had purchased (Joshua 24:32). Joseph's coffin waiting in Egypt became a physical symbol of Israel's pilgrim identity and their expectation of return to the promised land — a faith that sustained them through the long centuries of bondage that would follow.