Jacob’s body was taken to Canaan and buried there

50 Joseph leaned close to his father’s face and cried over him and kissed him. 2 Joseph commanded his servants who were morticians to ◄embalm his father’s body/put spices on his father’s body► to ◄preserve it/keep it from decaying►, and then wrap it with strips of cloth. 3 So the morticians did that. It took 40 days to embalm Jacob’s body, because that is the amount of time that was always required for them to embalm a body. And the people of Egypt mourned for 70 days because of Jacob’s death. 4 When the time of mourning was finished, Joseph said to the king’s officials, “If you are pleased with me, please take this message to the king: 5 ‘When my father was about to die, he told me to solemnly promise that I would bury his body in Canaan, in the tomb that he himself had prepared. So please let me go up to Canaan and bury my father’s body. Then I will return.’ ”

6 After they gave the king the message, he replied, “Tell Joseph, ‘Go up and bury your father’s body, as you ◄swore/solemnly promised► that you would do.’ ” 7 So Joseph went up to Canaan to bury his father’s body. All of the king’s officials, all the king’s advisors, and all the elders in Egypt went with him. 8 His own family’s small children and their sheep and goats and their cattle stayed in the Goshen region. But all the rest of Joseph’s family and his older brothers and younger brother and his father’s family went with him. 9 Men riding in chariots [MTY] and on horses also went along. It was a huge group.

10 They went to the east side of the Jordan River and arrived at Atad. There was a place there where people ◄threshed/beat the grain to separate the wheat from the chaff.► There they mourned loudly for Jacob for a long time. Joseph performed mourning ceremonies for his father for seven days. 11 When the Canaan people-group who lived there saw them mourning like that, they said, “This is a sad mourning place for the people of Egypt!” So they named the place Abel-Mizraim, which sounds like the Hebrew words that mean ‘mourning of the Egyptians.’

12 Then Jacob’s sons did for him what their father had commanded. 13 They crossed the Jordan River and carried Jacob’s body to Canaan. They buried it in the cave in the field at Machpelah, east of Mamre town. That was the field that Abraham had bought from Ephron, who was one of the Heth people-group, to use as a burial place.

14 After he had buried his father, Joseph and his older brothers and younger brother and all the others who had gone up to Canaan with him for the funeral returned to Egypt.