Genesis50chapter 50

The chapter's own account of a burial is where the classical readers put the rules of one. Sforno explains why Joseph sent word to Pharaoh through others rather than going himself: "he used intermediaries as a mourner in garments of mourning is not allowed to appear so before the King" (Sforno on Genesis 50:4:1, translated by Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). Rashi, on the carrying of the bier, hands on Jacob's own instruction as the rabbis preserved it, that the sons and not the grandsons were to carry him, "His sons and not his grandsons", and that no Egyptian was to bear it (Rashi on Genesis 50:13:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain). Of the embalming itself he says only what it was, "Embalming is a matter of using a mixture of aromatic spices", and that the days of it ran to forty (Rashi on Genesis 50:2:1 and 50:3:1).

Rashi reads the chapter as the brothers' fear answered twice, once by Joseph's words and once by his conduct. On Pharaoh's permission he notices the king's reluctance, "For except for that oath I would not permit you to do so", and that Pharaoh did not dare tell Joseph to break the oath (Rashi on Genesis 50:6:1). The threshing floor he explains by the thorn hedge around it and adds that the rabbis read the name another way (Rashi on Genesis 50:10:1). The brothers' seeing that their father was dead he takes as a change they noticed in Joseph's conduct rather than a fact they learned. Joseph's answer to their plea he reads as a question they should answer themselves, "Am I perhaps (do you think that I am) in His stead?" (Rashi on Genesis 50:19:1), and his comfort he fills out with what Joseph could say and no one else could: "Before you came down hither people spread rumours about me that I was born a slave", and their coming had put that to rest (Rashi on Genesis 50:21:1). Radak reads the opening fall upon the face as standing for all of them: Joseph is named "Seeing that he was the most highly placed of the brothers the Torah mentions him", and the rest wept with him (Radak on Genesis 50:1:1, translated by Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash, CC-BY). Malbim comments here at 50:1:1 and 50:22:1 and Ibn Ezra at 50:2:1, 50:7:1, 50:9:1, 50:20:1 and 50:26:1, and the corpus holds no English of either under a licence permitting quotation, so they stand as citations, the last of them on the closing verse of the book.

The corpus records forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, thirty-eight of them Midrash and two Talmud. Bereshit Rabbah closes the book with its own hundredth chapter and is cited at 100:1, 100:3, 100:4, 100:5, 100:8, 100:9, 100:10 and 100:12, with 84:6 drawn in at the embalming. Bereshit Rabbati is cited at Parashat Vayechi 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and 50 and at Parashat Vayetze 38, Midrash Sekhel Tov at Bereshit 50:4:1, 50:6:1 and 50:8:1, Midrash Aggadah at Genesis 50:2:1, 50:11:1 and 50:15:1, and Midrash Lekach Tov at Genesis 50:8:1 and 50:11:1. Aggadat Bereshit is cited at 29:3, 37:2, 47:1 and 52:1, Bamidbar Rabbah at 2:8, 13:3, 14:5 and 14:12, and Devarim Rabbah at 5:15. The Ein Yaakov collection is cited four times, at Sotah 7:22 and 1:38 and at Sotah 1:32 and 1:48 in the Glick edition, all of them on the funeral procession. The two Talmud locators are Avot DeRabbi Natan 36:3 at Jacob's charge about the grave and Avot DeRabbi Natan, Recension B 1:3 at the mourning at the threshing floor. Rashi hands on further sayings with their locators, among them Sotah 13a on the digging of the grave.