For 20 plus years, Jacob had been living under the impression that his beloved Joseph was dead and gone forever. His grandfather, Abraham, was given the command to take Isaac, Jacob’s father, to Mount Mariah and offer him up as a sacrifice. The book of Hebrews tells us he considered Isaac to be dead and that when God intervened, he received him back from the dead. In Genesis 45:27, Jacob finally learns the truth, and the text said when his sons convinced him that Joseph was still alive, “the spirit of their father revived.” Jacob was revived by what must have seemed to him to be the resurrection of the dead, Just as his grandfather received Jacob’s father Isaac back from the dead. I just heard a scholar tell me that the Old Testament had very few references to the resurrection of the dead. He suggested there might be one in Job, but even that is subject to interpretation. Wow! The Old Testament does not come out and say, “you will be raised from the dead.” But it’s unmistakable if you have “eyes to see” and “ears to hear,” as Jesus said to the well-educated religious leaders of his day.
Please notice that in Genesis 45:27, It is “Jacob” who revives at the news of his son Joseph who is still living. But then, in verse 28, the text says it is “Israel” that says, “It’s enough; Joseph my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.” Guzik observes, “This testimony of faith comes from Israel, not Jacob. When Jacob was in charge, we saw a whining, self-pitying, complaining, unbelieving type of man. In contrast, Israel, the man God had conquered, had a testimony of faith.”1 The handbook for translators has some interesting advice for translators. “Jacob does not mean that he will go at some distant time. In 42:38, he has already spoken of himself as being old and of his death. Jacob’s going to Egypt is urgent. Today’s English Version, the New Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible, and even the German Common Language Version all express it well: “I must go and see him before I die” or “I must go and see him now before I die.” Some translations express this more fully or more idiomatically; for example: (1) “It will not be long before I die. I must go and see him first!” (2) “I must go quickly to Egypt, in case I die before I see him.” (3) “I’ll have to go and see him while my eyes have not closed yet.”2
Rev. Carl Burnham, beloved pastor of the Chapel on Fir Hill in Akron, Ohio, wrote in 1962, just before his Homegoing, “When I die, if my family wishes to inscribe anything on my gravestone, I would like it to be the promise of Jesus Christ in Hebrews 13:5, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” For in due season, the springtime will arrive…Then, when the resurrection sings itself in the robin’s joyful song, and bursting buds defy the death grip of winter, and you walk upon the yielding earth near my grave—remember that my soul is not there, but rather it is absent from the body, present with the Lord. And somewhere, the atoms that make up my brain, my heart—my body—will be sending out resurrection radiations of a frequency too high for any earthly Geiger counter to record. But if you place the meters of God’s Word alongside that cemetery plot and adjust the settings to Hebrews 13:5, you will receive this reading: “He hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Jacob learned the truth of Hebrews 13:5, for God appeared to him in chapter 46 and said, “Jacob, Jacob…I am the God of your father. Don’t be afraid…I myself will go down with you…” Even in death, you can trust God; He will never leave or forsake you.
1 David Guzik, Genesis, David Guzik’s Commentaries on the Bible (Santa Barbara, CA: David Guzik, 2013), Ge 45:25–28.
2 William David Reyburn and Euan McG. Fry, A Handbook on Genesis, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1998), 1021.