Study Desk

And when they said to Jacob, Your son Joseph is coming to see you: then Israel, getting all his strength together, had himself lifted up in his bed.

And Joseph said to his father, They are my sons, whom God has given me in this land. And he said, Let them come near me, and I will give them a blessing.

So he gave them his blessing that day, saying, You will be the sign of blessing in Israel, for they will say, May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh; and he put Ephraim before Manasseh.

Take no part in their secrets, O my soul; keep far away, O my heart, from their meetings; for in their wrath they put men to death, and for their pleasure even oxen were wounded.

There Abraham and Sarah his wife were put to rest, and there they put Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I put Leah to rest.

And Joseph gave orders to his servants who had the necessary knowledge, to make his father's body ready, folding it in linen with spices, and they did so.

And all the family of Joseph, and his brothers and his father's people: only their little ones and their flocks and herds they did not take with them from the land of Goshen.

And they came to the grain-floor of Atad on the other side of Jordan, and there they gave the last honours to Jacob, with great and bitter sorrow, weeping for their father for seven days.

And when the people of the land, the people of Canaan, at the grain-floor of Atad, saw their grief, they said, Great is the grief of the Egyptians: so the place was named Abel-mizraim, on the other side of Jordan.

For they took him into the land of Canaan and put him to rest in the hollow rock in the field of Machpelah, which Abraham got with the field, for a resting-place, from Ephron the Hittite at Mamre.

You are to say to Joseph, Let the wrongdoing of your brothers be overlooked, and the evil they did to you: now, if it is your pleasure, let the sin of the servants of your father's God have forgiveness. And at these words, Joseph was overcome with weeping.

So Joseph came to his death, being a hundred and ten years old: and they made his body ready, and he was put in a chest in Egypt.

Let us take care for fear that their numbers may become even greater, and if there is a war, they may be joined with those who are against us, and make an attack on us, and go up out of the land.

So they put overseers of forced work over them, in order to make their strength less by the weight of their work. And they made store-towns for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses.

But the more cruel they were to them, the more their number increased, till all the land was full of them. And the children of Israel were hated by the Egyptians.

And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do:

And they said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are strong, and the birth takes place before we come to them.

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came to get water for their father's flock.

And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that you have come back so quickly today?

And they said, An Egyptian came to our help against the keepers of sheep and got water for us and gave it to the flock.