2. Then Joseph gave orders to embalm his father's body.
3. It took forty days, the normal time for embalming. The Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
4. When the time of mourning was over, Joseph said to the king's officials, “Please take this message to the king:
5. ‘When my father was about to die, he made me promise him that I would bury him in the tomb which he had prepared in the land of Canaan. So please let me go and bury my father, and then I will come back.’ ”
6. The king answered, “Go and bury your father, as you promised you would.”
7. So Joseph went to bury his father. All the king's officials, the senior men of his court, and all the leading men of Egypt went with Joseph.
8. His family, his brothers, and the rest of his father's family all went with him. Only their small children and their sheep, goats, and cattle stayed in the region of Goshen.