In return for the seventeen years that Jacob had devoted to the
bringing up of Joseph, he was granted seventeen years of sojourn with
his favorite son in peace and happiness. The wicked experience sorrow
after joy; the pious must suffer first, and then they are happy, for
all's well that ends well, and God permits the pious to spend the last
years of their lives in felicity.[344]
When Jacob felt his end approach, he summoned Joseph to his bedside,
and he told him all there was in his heart. He called for Joseph rather
than one of his other sons, because he was the only one in a position
to execute his wishes.
Jacob said to Joseph: "If I have found grace in thy sight, bury me not,
I pray thee, in Egypt. Only for thy sake did I come down into Egypt,
and for thy sake I spoke, Now I can die. Do this for me as a true
service of love, and not because thou art afraid, or because decency
demands it. And when I sleep with my fathers, thou shalt bury me in
their burying-place. Carry me out of the land of idolatry, and bury me
in the land where God hath caused His Name to dwell, and put me to rest
in the place in which four husbands and wives are to be buried, I the
last of them."
Jacob desired not to be buried in Egypt for several reasons. He knew
that the soil of Egypt would once swarm with vermin, and it revolted
him to think of his corpse exposed to such uncleanness. He feared,
moreover, that his descendants might say, "Were Egypt not a holy land,
our father Jacob had never permitted himself to be buried there," and
they might encourage themselves with this argument to make choice of
Egypt as a permanent dwelling- place. Also, if his grave were there,
the Egyptians might resort to it when the ten plagues came upon them,
and if he were induced to pray for them to God, he would be advocating
the cause of the Lord's enemies. If, on the other hand, he did not
intercede for them, the Name of God would be profaned among the
heathen, who would say, "Jacob is a useless saint!" Besides, it was
possible that God might consider him, the "scattered sheep" of Israel,
as a sacrifice for the Egyptians, and remit their punishment. From his
knowledge of the people, another fear was justified, that his grave
would become an object of idolatrous veneration, and the same
punishment is appointed by God for the idols worshipped as for the
idolaters that worship them.
If Jacob had good reasons for not wanting his body to rest in the soil
of Egypt, he had equally good reasons for wanting it to rest in the
Holy Land. In the Messianic time, when the dead will rise, those buried
in Palestine will awaken to new life without delay, while those buried
elsewhere will first have to roll from land to land through the earth,
hollowed out for the purpose, until they reach the Holy Land, and only
then will their resurrection take place. But over and beyond this,
Jacob had an especial reason for desiring to have his body interred in
Palestine. God had said to him at Beth-el, "The land whereon thou
liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed," and hence he made
every endeavor to "lie" in the Holy Land, to make sure it would belong
to him and his descendants.[345] Nevertheless he bade Joseph strew some
Egyptian earth over his dead body.[346]
Jacob expressed these his last wishes three times. Such is the
requirement of good breeding in preferring a request.
In the last period of Jacob's life, one can see how true it is that
"even a king depends upon favors in a strange land." Jacob, the man for
the sake of whose merits the whole world was created, for the sake of
whom Abraham was delivered from the fiery furnace, had to ask services
of others while he was among strangers,[347] and when Joseph promised
to do his bidding, he bowed himself before his own son, for it is a
true saying, "Bow before the fox in his day," the day of his
power.[348]
He was not satisfied with a simple promise from Joseph, that he would
do his wish; he insisted upon his taking an oath by the sign of the
covenant of Abraham, putting a hand under his thigh in accordance with
the ceremony customary among the Patriarchs![349] But Joseph said:
"Thou treatest me like a slave. With me thou hast no need to require an
oath. Thy command sufficeth." Jacob, however, urged him, saying: "I
fear Pharaoh may command thee to bury me in the sepulchre with the
kings of Egypt. I insist that thou takest an oath, and then I will be
at peace." Joseph gave in,[350] though he would not submit to the
ceremony that Eliezer had used to confirm the oath he took at the
request of his master Abraham. The slave acted in accordance with the
rules of slavery, the free man acted in accordance with the dictates of
freedom.[351] And in a son that thing would have been unseemly which
was becoming in a slave.[352]
When Joseph swore to bury his father in Palestine, he added the words,
"As thou commandest me to do, so also will I beg my brethren, on my
death-bed, to fulfil my last wish and carry my body from Egypt to
Palestine."[353]
Jacob, noticing the Shekinah over the bed's head, where she always
rests in a sick room, bowed himself upon the bed's head,[354] saying,
"I thank thee, O Lord my God, that none who is unfit came forth from my
bed, but my bed was perfect."[355] He was particularly grateful for the
revelation God had vouchsafed him concerning his first-born son Reuben,
that he had repented of his trespass against his father, and atoned for
it by penance. He was thus assured that all his sons were men worthy of
being the progenitors of the twelve tribes, and he was blessed with
happiness such as neither Abraham nor Isaac had known, for both of them
had had unworthy as well as worthy sons.[356]
Until the time of Jacob death had always come upon men suddenly, and
snatched them away before they were warned of the imminent end by
sickness. Once Jacob spoke to God, saying, "O Lord of the world, a man
dies suddenly, and he is not laid low first by sickness, and he cannot
acquaint his children with his wishes regarding all he leaves behind.
But if a man first fell sick, and felt that his end were drawing nigh,
he would have time to set his house in order." And God said, "Verily,
thy request is sensible, and thou shalt be the first to profit by the
new dispensation," and so it happened that Jacob fell sick a little
while before his death.[357]
His sickness troubled him grievously, for he had undergone much during
his life. He had worked day and night while he was with Laban, and his
conflicts with the angel and with Esau, though he came off victor from
both, had weakened him, and he was not in a condition to endure the
hardships of disease.[358]