R.C. Sproul

Now, there's something in this text that may sound a little macabre at the outset.

We are told that when Jacob died, Joseph kissed him.

We're squeamish about kissing corpses.

Something happens instantly upon death.

The very outward appearance of a dead person is strange and frightening when life has left their body.

It's even worse after rigor mortis has set in.

But that particular passage spoke to me because I was present in the room when my father died, just as Joseph was present when his father died.

And I remember what I did after my father breathed his last breath.

And I was standing there by his bed looking at his lifeless body.

Instinctively, naturally, because I didn't know what else to do,

I simply leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

That was my last outward expression of affection for the man who meant more to me than anybody in my life.

It just strikes me that that custom

has gone on for thousands of years and that what I was doing was not something extraordinary, unusual, or weird.

It was done here by Joseph who kissed his father goodbye.

Now, when the days of his mourning were passed, Joseph spoke to the household of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found favor in your eyes, please speak in the hearing of Pharaoh, saying, My father made me swear, saying, Behold, I am dying.

In my grave, which I dug for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.

Now, therefore, please let me go up and bury my father, and I will come back.

Joseph asked for a leave of absence, for a brief time of departure and release from his duties as prime minister.

He says to Pharaoh, let me go back to Canaan that I might bury my father there.