January 21 - Genesis 47:29-50:26

Jacob and Joseph die.  Jacob does an odd thing.  He blesses Joseph's youngest son with his right hand even though Joseph tries to correct the mistake.  But Jacob refuses.  Jacob, the younger, who stole his brother Esau's birthright and blessing now gives his blessing to the younger son of Joseph.  God's ways are not man's ways.  This nice tidy order and sense we try to make God conform to is tossed aside at every turn.  It is the things we think foolish or odd that God makes himself known through.  

Then Jacob in his blessing of all of his sons recorded here seems to take the opportunity to trot out all of their sins.  Did they think they'd gotten away with all of this?  Did they think their elderly and feeble father had forgotten?  And then to hear him haul out all of their sins that they thought long past and secret.  Rueben who had defiled his father's bed (Rueben sleeps with his father's concubine Bilhah and "Israel heard of it.")  Simeon and Levi who'd violently killed (the men of Schechem and Schechem who'd raped their sister Dinah in Genesis 34).

Joseph and his father are embalmed by the Egyptians.  Is their a possibility that we might one day discovered their mummified bodies?