Genesis 50:1-11 ▼

1 Joseph, realizing this, fell upon his father’s face, weeping and kissing him.

2 And he instructed his servant physicians to embalm his father with aromatics.

3 And while they were fulfilling his orders, forty days passed. For this was the method of embalming dead bodies. And Egypt wept for him for seventy days.

4 And when the time for mourning was fulfilled, Joseph spoke to the family of Pharaoh: “If I have found favor in your sight, speak to the ears of Pharaoh.

5 For my father made me swear, saying: ‘See, I am dying. You shall bury me in my sepulcher which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.’ Therefore, I shall go up and bury my father, and then return.”

6 And Pharaoh said to him, “Go up and bury your father, just as he made you swear.”

7 So as he went up, all the elders of the house of Pharaoh went with him, along with every patriarch in the land of Egypt,

8 and the house of Joseph with his brothers, except their little ones and flocks and also the herds, which they left behind in the land of Goshen.

9 Likewise, he had in his company chariots and horsemen. And it became a crowd without restraint.

10 And they arrived at the threshing place of Atad, which is situated beyond the Jordan. There they spent seven full days celebrating the funeral rites with a great and vehement lamentation.

11 And when the inhabitants of the land of Canaan had seen this, they said, “This is a great Lamentation for the Egyptians.” And for this reason, the name of that place was called, “The Lamentation of Egypt.”