2. Then Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father, so the physicians embalmed Israel.
3. They took 40 days for him, because that is how long embalming takes, and Egypt wept 70 days.
4. When the days of formal weeping passed, Joseph spoke to Pharaoh’s house saying, “If I’ve found favor in your eyes, please say in Pharaoh’s ears,
5. “My father made me take an oath saying, ‘Behold, I am about to die. In my tomb—which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan—there you must bury me.’ So now, please allow me to go up and bury my father, and then return.”
6. Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father just as he made you swear on oath.”
7. So Joseph went up to bury his father. Also all of Pharaoh’s servants, the elders of his household and all the elders of the land of Egypt went up with him,
8. along with all of Joseph’s house, his brothers, and his father’s household. Only their children and their flocks and cattle were left in the land of Goshen.
9. Chariots and horsemen also went up with him—it was a very impressive company.
10. When they came to the threshing floor of the bramble on the other side of the Jordan, they mourned there—a very great and solemn lamentation. He observed seven days of mourning for his father.
11. When the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning ritual at the threshing floor of the prickly bush, they said, “A solemn mourning ritual this is for the Egyptians.” That is why it is named Abel-Mizraim, which is on the other side of the Jordan.