What Does Genesis 50:3 Mean?

Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days. The embalming takes forty days: the Egyptian standard for the mummification process. The Egyptian mourning period of seventy days follows. The seventy-day mourning for Jacob by the Egyptians is remarkable: the official mourning period for Pharaoh himself was seventy-two days. Egypt essentially mourns Jacob as a person of near-royal importance: the father of the prime minister who saved Egyptian civilization through the famine receives mourning at the highest cultural level Egypt offers.

"The Egyptians wept for him seventy days": the public mourning of Egypt for a foreign patriarch is the ultimate measure of Joseph's standing in Egyptian society and of the family's integration into Egyptian life during the seventeen years of Jacob's Egypt residence. The man who blessed Pharaoh in the court of Egypt is sent off by Egypt with near-royal mourning. The covenant patriarch who came to Egypt dying: "I will go and see him before I die": is mourned at the level at which Egypt honors its greatest.

The forty-days-plus-seventy-days sequence means the burial cannot happen for over three months after Jacob's death. The elaborate preparation and mourning that Egyptian protocol requires actually serves the family's interest: when Joseph eventually requests permission to travel to Canaan for the burial (verse 4 to 6), the mourning period is complete, the preparation is done, and the dignified escort of the body can proceed. Egypt's mourning rituals provide the time needed for the burial escort to be organized.