What Does Genesis 50:24 Mean?

And Joseph said to his brothers, "I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." Joseph's death speech parallels Jacob's death speech: an announcement of impending death followed by a covenant declaration about God's future action. "God will visit you": the divine visitation (paqad: to visit, to attend to, to intervene) is the Exodus event proleptically announced. Joseph does not know when it will happen; he knows it will happen. The covenant promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob carries the certainty of God's intention to bring the family to the promised land.

"Bring you up out of this land": the Exodus is named in Joseph's dying speech, four hundred years before it happens. The man who went down to Egypt as a slave, who became the prime minister who settled his family in Goshen, who forgave the brothers who sold him: dies with the declaration that this Egypt chapter is not the final chapter. Egypt is not Canaan; sojourn is not settlement; the God who made the covenant to Abraham about the land will bring the family up from Egypt to Canaan. Joseph dies with the Exodus as his confident expectation.

"The land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob": the covenant oath that runs through the three generations of patriarchs is the ground of Joseph's confidence in the coming visitation. God's oath is the guarantee of the land: the same covenant that shaped Abraham's migration, Isaac's continued dwelling, Jacob's return from Laban, and the family's Egypt-sojourn as explicitly temporary: this oath is what Joseph cites in his dying declaration. The covenant promise that opened the patriarchal narrative in Genesis 12 is the last word of Genesis 50: God swore it to Abraham; God will do it.