And he said, Swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed’s head.
Genesis 47:31 stands in the last chapters of Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, in the rest of the story of Joseph and his brethren, which is full of surface lessons and deeper lessons. It belongs to the account of Israel's journey to Egypt and reception by Joseph and Pharaoh, leading to Jacob's prophetic blessing upon Joseph's sons and his own sons and to Jacob's death and burial. As part of the history of Joseph, it shows that God guided Joseph through a winding course to the place He had intended for him. It shows God's care for the preservation of the progenitors of the Seed.
The verse depicts the dying scene of Jacob in Egypt, when Joseph swore to bury him outside Egypt and Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head. The bowing means Jacob worshiped God while leaning upon the top of his staff in old age with the staff only for support, not that he worshiped the staff itself. It therefore gives no permission for hunting, keeping, or venerating relics. The honoring of the dying request proves that honor to parents as required in the fifth commandment was not new at Sinai but was already known and obeyed, for Joseph's care and sustenance of his aged father Jacob, Jacob's dying request, his funeral rites, and the funeral march to a distant foreign land to lay him in the cave of Machpelah beside the dust of his father show that God's chosen servants were controlled by that law.
The verse contains principles designed to guide the various contingencies of life, with underlying principles to be discovered so its example helps and guides anyone called to pass through a similar experience. It supplies a counterpart to human experience with practical lessons to be as familiar as one's own names, to be known for the good of the soul and for giving counsel to others in similar difficulties, as part of the Bible as a guidebook to be trusted with confidence till the very end and as one of the striking lessons from the life of Joseph. It shows a dying parent asking a son for a solemn promise to be kept after the parent is dead and buried, and the son giving it with uplifted resolve to be good and great and never disgrace that memory, so that the remembered vow stays with the son and keeps him from falling into evil ways.
Genesis 47:31 stands in the last chapters of Genesis, the Book of Beginnings, in the rest of the story of Joseph and his brethren, which is full of surface lessons and deeper lessons. It belongs to the account of Israel's journey to Egypt and reception by Joseph and Pharaoh, leading to Jacob's prophetic blessing upon Joseph's sons and his own sons and to Jacob's death and burial. As part of the history of Joseph, it shows that God guided Joseph through a winding course to the place He had intended for him. It shows God's care for the preservation of the progenitors of the Seed.
The verse depicts the dying scene of Jacob in Egypt, when Joseph swore to bury him outside Egypt and Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head. The bowing means Jacob worshiped God while leaning upon the top of his staff in old age with the staff only for support, not that he worshiped the staff itself. It therefore gives no permission for hunting, keeping, or venerating relics. The honoring of the dying request proves that honor to parents as required in the fifth commandment was not new at Sinai but was already known and obeyed, for Joseph's care and sustenance of his aged father Jacob, Jacob's dying request, his funeral rites, and the funeral march to a distant foreign land to lay him in the cave of Machpelah beside the dust of his father show that God's chosen servants were controlled by that law.
The verse contains principles designed to guide the various contingencies of life, with underlying principles to be discovered so its example helps and guides anyone called to pass through a similar experience. It supplies a counterpart to human experience with practical lessons to be as familiar as one's own names, to be known for the good of the soul and for giving counsel to others in similar difficulties, as part of the Bible as a guidebook to be trusted with confidence till the very end and as one of the striking lessons from the life of Joseph. It shows a dying parent asking a son for a solemn promise to be kept after the parent is dead and buried, and the son giving it with uplifted resolve to be good and great and never disgrace that memory, so that the remembered vow stays with the son and keeps him from falling into evil ways.