Hebrews Chapter Eleven, Joseph's Bones

 

Hebrews 11:22 By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.

 

This event occurs at the very end of the Genesis account. In Genesis 50:24, 25, it is written, “I am dying; but God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land to the land which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob…God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” Joseph attested that God spoke with all three of Israel’s founding fathers, promising them that He would give them the land of Canaan, but not until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete. Until then the Jews would remain segregated in Egypt, isolated from the moral disintegration that would spell the end for the seven nations Israel would later expel.

In the time of the patriarch’s wanderings in Canaan, there was no more mention of the giants that roamed the earth, Genesis 6:4. However, the author of Genesis did indicate that even after the Flood they returned, noting, “There were giants on the earth in those days (prior to the Flood), and also afterward.” “Afterward,” expresses that the giants existed after the Flood, further indicating a supernatural origin. This seemed to come about when the sons of God forsook their proper abode and went into the daughters of men, creating giants, the Nephilim or as Moses would later put it, the Anakim, Genesis 6:4, Jude 6. The giants are mentioned briefly when the spies scout out Canaan prior to the conquest, Numbers 13:22, referred to as the sons of Anak. They are referred to more explicitly in Numbers 13:33, where we read, “There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight,” NASB.

 

The Moabites named them the Emim, Deuteronomy 2:11. The Ammonites called them by a different name: the Zamzummim, Deuteronomy 2:20. Interestingly both of these peoples are the descendants of Lot, who invaded the land of the giants, drove them out and destroyed them. Nonetheless, the sons of the giant remained, and were apparently physically imposing and rather terrifying to the Hebrew scouts. Small wonder; Og of Bashan was Rephaim, or another giant slain by the Jewish army, and his bed—which seems to mean a coffin rather than an actual bed—was over 13 feet long and six feet wide, Deuteronomy 3:11. Goliath of Gath, a giant that was a contemporary of David, was 9 and a half feet tall, 1 Samuel 17:4.

 

My point in detouring here is to illuminate the fact that the mention of the giants seemed a visible cue that the time was short before God would flood the earth and cleanse it from the rampant evil man had willfully unleashed, Genesis 6:3-5. This malignant expression of rebellion resurfaced in Canaan, expressing that the iniquity of the Amorites (indicative of the Canaanites in toto) was full. It would be at that time Joseph predicted that God would visit His people and extract Israel from Egypt, leading them into Canaan to, on a more microcosmic level, drive the rebels out of the land.

 

Again, God swore to the patriarchs that He would give them Canaan. Joseph was merely reminding his siblings and their children of this indisputable fact. So confident was Joseph about this reality, that he made the Hebrews take an oath that when they were visited, they would exhume his body, bring it with, and bury it in the Promised Land. This they faithfully did when Joshua led Israel into Canaan and largely (but not completely) subdued it. “The bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel had brought up out of Egypt, they buried at Shechem,” Joshua 24:32. Joseph’s act of faith was perhaps more passive than his forebears’, but no less remarkable. He not only assured the people on his deathbed about their deliverance, but wanted his bones to be earthed in the soil of Canaan, where his ancestors were buried already. It was not a case of “if this comes to pass,” for him; it was a case of utmost certainty. “When this happens, do these things for me.” His final words were less prophetic, and more factual. Abraham attested to God’s fidelity. His testimony was buttressed by Isaac, and then Jacob. Three generations of his family had spoken to God, the true God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, and this same God promised them. Joseph believed, and in faith gave instructions concerning his bones.