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Jacob leaves his hometown Be’er Sheva and
journeys Jacob lives the final 17 years of his life in
Egypt. Before his passing, he asks Joseph to take an
oath that he will bury him in the Holy Land. He blesses
Joseph’s two sons, Menasseh and Ephraim, elevating them
to the status of his own sons as progenitors of tribes
within the nation of Israel. The
patriarch desires to reveal the end of days to his
children, but is prevented from doing so. Jacob blesses
his sons, assigning to each his role as a tribe: Judah
will produce leaders, legislators and kings; priests
will come from Levi, scholars from Issachar, seafarers
from Zebulun, schoolteachers from Shimon, soldiers from
Gad, judges from Dan, olive growers from Asher, and so
on. Reuben is rebuked for “confusing his father’s
marriage”; Shimon and Levi for the massacre of Shechem
and the plot against Joseph. Naphtali is granted the
swiftness of a deer, Benjamin the ferociousness of a
wolf, and Joseph is blessed with beauty and fertility.
A large funeral procession consisting
of Jacob’s descendants, Pharaoh’s ministers, the leading
citizens of Egypt and the Egyptian cavalry accompanies
Jacob on his final journey to the Holy Land, where he is
buried in the Machpeilah Cave in Hebron.
Joseph, too, dies in Egypt, at the age
of 110. He, too, instructs that his bones be taken out
of Egypt and buried in the Holy Land, but this would
come to pass only with the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt
many years later. Before his passing, Joseph conveys to
the Children of Israel the testament from which they
will draw their hope and faith in the difficult years to
come: “G-d will surely remember you, and bring you up
out of this land to the land of which he swore to
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”
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