Genesis 48:21
And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers. And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.
The words belong to the time of the seven years of dearth foretold by Joseph, when dearth was in all lands but there was bread in all the land of Egypt through the storehouses opened by Joseph under Pharaoh. The famine reached Canaan and pressed hard where Jacob dwelt. On hearing of provision in Egypt, ten of Jacob's sons went there to buy grain and bowed with faces to the earth before Joseph as ruler. They did not know him, because his Hebrew name had been changed and he no longer looked like the youth sold to the Ishmaelites, while Joseph knew them and remembered his dreams as he saw them bowing and saw that Benjamin was missing.
The words are Jacob's dying assurance to Joseph, given after blessing Ephraim and Manasseh. They are a testimony of faith in the covenant promise that Israel will possess Canaan, declaring that though Jacob dies God will be with his offspring and bring them back to the land of their fathers. They were left for the generations to come to sustain them through long years of bondage and sorrow.