Many of us have learned that someone in our family or congregation is very ill and taken the time to visit them. We may have faced the difficult reality of saying a final farewell to one or more of our parents or other loved ones. This passage contains a reminder of moments like those.

When Joseph learned that his father Jacob was dying, he took his own sons and went to say farewell to his father. Jacob used this opportunity to remind them of the promises that God had made to him in the land of Canaan long before Joseph or the other members of his family traveled to Egypt (Gen. 28:13).

Jacob chooses this moment to formally adopt his two grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as his own sons, giving them an equal inheritance with his other sons.

Jacob also reminds Joseph that he had already promised his father that he would not bury him in Egypt but would instead return his body to be buried with his ancestors in the land that was to be their permanent home. We learn here that Joseph did indeed fulfill that promise when the time came, accompanied by a large procession of family and of Egyptians!

This passage reminds us that while the people of God multiplied and flourished in Egypt under Joseph’s leadership, that was not the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Abraham or God’s promise to Jacob himself. God’s people would not remain in Egypt forever. They would still inherit the land that God had promised to Abraham and would certainly continue to multiply in numbers so that the covenant God made with Abraham would be fulfilled (Gen. 15).