A Real Mannamed Joseph

After Joseph successfully reunited with his family and settled his father, Jacob (Israel), and his brothers in the fertile land of Goshen, his story continues through the final chapters of the Book of Genesis.

The accounts detail several major events in Joseph’s life, focusing on his ongoing leadership in Egypt, his final years with his father, and his own legacy.

1. Consolidating Wealth and Land for Pharaoh

The seven-year famine continued to ravage the region after Jacob’s arrival. As the overseer of Egypt’s grain reserves, Joseph managed the crisis by systematically restructuring the Egyptian economy:

• The Currency Runs Out: When the people ran out of money to buy grain, Joseph accepted their livestock (horses, flocks, cattle, and donkeys) as payment.
• The Land and the People: A year later, with no livestock left, the citizens offered their land and their labor to Pharaoh in exchange for food. Joseph purchased all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh (except for the land belonging to the priests, who received a direct food allotment from the king).
• The Tax System: Joseph redistributed seed to the people so they could farm, establishing a permanent law that 20% (one-fifth) of all crop yields belonged to Pharaoh, while the remaining 80% belonged to the people for food and future seeding.

2. Caring for His Family

While the rest of Egypt and Canaan faced extreme poverty and sold their possessions, Joseph ensured his own family was well provided for. The Israelites thrived in Goshen, acquiring property, remaining insulated from the worst of the economic collapse, and growing rapidly in number.

3. Receiving Jacob’s Final Blessing

Jacob lived in Egypt for 17 years before passing away at the age of 147. When Jacob’s health began to fail, Joseph brought his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to his father’s bedside:

• Adoption and Blessing: Jacob adopted Ephraim and Manasseh as his own, elevating them to the status of full tribal patriarchs alongside Joseph’s brothers.
• The Crossed Hands: When blessing them, Jacob intentionally crossed his hands—placing his right hand on the younger brother, Ephraim, and his left on the older, Manasseh. Though Joseph tried to correct his father, Jacob insisted that Ephraim’s descendants would become the greater nation.

4. Burying His Father in Canaan

Before his death, Jacob made Joseph swear a strict oath not to bury him in Egypt, but rather in the Cave of Machpelah in Canaan, alongside Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, and Leah.

• Joseph ordered the Egyptian physicians to embalm Jacob (a process taking 40 days), and the Egyptians mourned him for 70 days.
• With Pharaoh’s explicit permission, Joseph led a massive funeral procession—including Egyptian officials, chariots, cavalry, and the entire house of Jacob—back to Canaan to fulfill his promise and bury his father.

5. Reassuring His Brothers

After Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers panicked, fearing that Joseph had only treated them well for their father’s sake and would now finally seek revenge for selling him into slavery years prior. They sent a message begging for forgiveness and threw themselves at his feet. Joseph wept and famously reassured them with a core theme of the Genesis narrative:

“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:19–20)

6. Joseph’s Final Years and Death

Joseph lived out the rest of his days in Egypt, reaching the age of 110. He lived long enough to see the third generation of Ephraim’s children and the children of Manasseh’s son.
On his deathbed, Joseph made a prophetic statement to his brothers, expressing absolute faith that God would eventually bring the Israelites out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land. He made them take a solemn oath:
“God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.” (Genesis 50:25)

Joseph was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. Centuries later, during the Exodus, Moses kept this promise and carried Joseph’s remains out of Egypt, eventually burying them at Shechem in the land of Israel.

Moral: A real man keeps his word and never takes advantage of his position to mistreat others.

Who do I think of on Father’s Day? The great ones who succeed because they are truly strong with favor that is pristine. It’s easy for them not to be Diddy or Epstein. They are not tempted to abuse nor are they fodder for lesser men. Those are the men I honor on Father’s Day.