JACOB WAS buried at the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. So, why did Joseph and his brothers take his body all the way around the other side of the Dead Sea and mourn for seven days at a threshing floor in the ruined city of Sodom?
We discuss the “physicians” of Joseph (ropheim in Hebrew) and the Rephaim of the Transjordan, explain why we believe the threshing floor of Atad was at the site of Sodom, and speculate as to why Joseph and the retinue mourned Jacob for seven days “beyond the Jordan.”
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Egyptians removed internal organs during the embalming process, but I don’t think it was done to Jacob…but that the embalming was needed because of the long journey through the hot desert.
I think the circuitous route was also chosen because they wanted to make sure that the Egyptians never entered the Promised Land. (Egyptians were an idiom of a life after the world.)
The thorn: here we have the “crown of thorns” protecting Israel; the Midrash shows that the Canaanites, who were prone to war, when they saw the crown of thorns around Jacob’s coffin, they dropped their weapons because Joseph was cast out of his father’s house just like Ishmael.
Abel Mizraim means “meadow between 2 kingdoms”
The brothers were still afraid (guilty conscience) of Joseph, even after 17 years of Joseph’s provision. They had a skewed paradigm of forgiveness and didn’t enjoy the cleansing power of grace.
See Exodus 3:16 about Joseph’s comment that God would visit them and bring them out of the land
Notice that Leah was buried in the cave, but Jacob’s favorite, Rachel, was not…she was buried in Bethlehem.
I like the comment about Joseph’s brothers having a skewed paradigm of for-
giveness and didn’t enjoy the cleansing power of grace. This is the first time I have been to this site. I love your programs on SkyWatch, and have recently bought some things from it.
Thank you!
Very interesting! Thanks for this perspective!
I enjoy the rabbit trails. It adds background history and context so that more can be gleaned from the passage. The new dig finds are the pieces that I truly look forward to because it shows/reveals that God’s Holy Scriptures are Truth! Please keep following those rabbit trails where ever they may lead so that your listeners can learn and mature in the history of the Holy Land. Thus enabling your audience to grow in their understanding of Yahweh and His ways and thereby, get to “the why” of what He did.