Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Genesis, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
God, Humanity, and Creation
Mistrust, Disobedience, and Death
Covenants and Faith in God’s Promises
The Role of Women
Summary
Analysis
Weeping, Joseph kisses his father’s face. He orders the physicians to embalm Jacob, which takes 40 days, and the Egyptians mourn him for 70 days. Then Pharaoh gives Joseph permission to carry his father’s body back to Canaan. Pharaoh’s servants and household elders, as well as his brothers’ households minus the children, all journey with him—a vast company. They all take Jacob’s body to the cave at Machpelah, as he had commanded.
Jacob is honored according to Egyptian burial customs, but Pharaoh also honors his wishes to be buried in Canaan. His esteem for Joseph is reflected in the way Pharaoh facilitates this burial journey.
Themes
After Jacob dies, Joseph’s brothers fear that he will bear a grudge against them and avenge himself. So they ask Joseph for forgiveness, explaining that this was their father’s dying wish; they all weep together, and the brothers offer themselves as Joseph’s slaves. But Joseph tells them not to be afraid, explaining that although they’d intended him harm, God meant it for good, so that God’s people would be preserved.
Jacob has stood as a kind of buffer between Joseph and the rest of his sons. Now that Jacob has died, the brothers fear that Joseph might finally get his revenge. Movingly, they offer themselves as slaves to the brother they’d enslaved. But Joseph concisely sums up God’s intention throughout his enslavement, and indeed throughout the history of his people: God brings about good where human beings intend harm.
Themes
Joseph lives for 110 years, seeing several generations of offspring. Before he dies, he tells his brothers that God will surely bring them up from this land to the land he’d promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He makes the Israelites swear to carry his bones to Canaan “when God comes to you.” Then Joseph dies; he is embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.
Like Jacob before him, Joseph asks to be buried in the land of Canaan. Unlike his father, he tells his brothers to carry him home only when God has come to them in Egypt. The original audience would have known that God did not bring Israel up from Egypt for hundreds of years to come. So when Joseph makes his brothers swear, it’s a testimony to his faith that, once again, God will loyally fulfill the covenant he has made with them—to make them a great nation within the promised land. Thus the ending of Genesis finds the Israelites in Egypt, transitioning to the next book of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament: Exodus.
Themes
