Do you have your burial plot picked out? Maybe know where you want your ashes scattered? I don't. I haven't really thought about it too much. I suppose after David and I are both gone, someone can co mingle our ashes and dump them in the woods somewhere. Or maybe a lake. Doesn't really matter.
Jacob was the last of the patriarchs to die. He wanted to be buried with his ancestors. Following Jacobs death was a lot of mourning and preparation. The body had to be embalmed and back then that took 40 days! We just had to wait a week to bury my Aunt because of Easter, I can't imagine waiting 40 days for a funeral. And then, that was just the start of the process to return Jacob to the land of Canaan.
Not me, no long drawn out mourning process please. Rejoice for me when I am gone, I'll be in the presence of Jesus!
Genesis 49:29-33 NLT
Jacob’s Death and Burial
29 Then Jacob instructed them, “Soon I will die and join my ancestors. Bury me with my father and grandfather in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite. 30 This is the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a permanent burial site. 31 There Abraham and his wife Sarah are buried. There Isaac and his wife, Rebekah, are buried. And there I buried Leah. 32 It is the plot of land and the cave that my grandfather Abraham bought from the Hittites.”
33 When Jacob had finished this charge to his sons, he drew his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and joined his ancestors in death.
Genesis 50:1-12 NLT
1 Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. 2Then Joseph told the physicians who served him to embalm his father’s body; so Jacob was embalmed. 3The embalming process took the usual forty days. And the Egyptians mourned his death for seventy days.
4 When the period of mourning was over, Joseph approached Pharaoh’s advisers and said, “Please do me this favor and speak to Pharaoh on my behalf. 5 Tell him that my father made me swear an oath. He said to me, ‘Listen, I am about to die. Take my body back to the land of Canaan, and bury me in the tomb I prepared for myself.’ So please allow me to go and bury my father. After his burial, I will return without delay.”
6 Pharaoh agreed to Joseph’s request. “Go and bury your father, as he made you promise,” he said. 7 So Joseph went up to bury his father. He was accompanied by all of Pharaoh’s officials, all the senior members of Pharaoh’s household, and all the senior officers of Egypt. 8 Joseph also took his entire household and his brothers and their households. But they left their little children and flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. 9 A great number of chariots and charioteers accompanied Joseph.
10 When they arrived at the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan River, they held a very great and solemn memorial service, with a seven-day period of mourning for Joseph’s father. 11 The local residents, the Canaanites, watched them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad. Then they renamed that place (which is near the Jordan) Abel-mizraim, for they said, “This is a place of deep mourning for these Egyptians.”
12 So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them. 13 They carried his body to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre. This is the cave that Abraham had bought as a permanent burial site from Ephron the Hittite.
Blessings, Cecilia
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