Y aakov was one hundred thirty years old when the children of Yisrael came into Egypt. There they prospered during the remaining five years of famine, and continued to live in Goshen under Pharaoh’s benevolence.
After seventeen years in Egypt, at the age of one hundred forty-seven, Yaakov called his sons together. From Yosef he extracted a promise that he would not be buried in Egypt, but that his sons would carry his remains back to the Cave of Machpelah, the burial site of Avraham and Sarah, Yitzhak and Rebekah…and Lea.
Yaakov called for his sons, and blessed them, including the two sons of Yosef, Efrayim and Menashe. And because he understood that God had willed that Yosef be sold into slavery, he did not fault the sons of Lea for their betrayal. But in his final blessing he did not forget other sins of his sons’ younger days:
Re’uven lost the inheritance of the firstborn because he once slept with his father’s concubine.
Shim’on and Levi were passed over because they had killed men and cruelly maimed bulls.
A special blessing went to Yehuda, and from his descendants arose King David, and from David, a savior, Yeshua the Christ.
The firstborn’s double inheritance went to Yosef’s sons, Efrayim and Menashe.
Mandisa stood with the other women as Yisrael pronounced his final blessing. For an instant, as Yaakov harshly decried the past sins of Shim’on and Levi, the old unloved look shadowed her husband’s countenance.
But then Yaakov motioned toward his sons, and passed his hands of blessing over each of their heads, bestowing favor and forgiveness in one gesture. As Shim’on stood, his eye caught Mandisa’s, and his face lifted in a weary smile. The anger had disappeared from his eyes; forgiveness from a holy fountain had washed it away.
After Yaakov’s death, Yosef instructed the physicians of Egypt to embalm his father, and the people of the Black Land mourned seventy days. When the days of mourning had been fulfilled, Yosef, his brothers and their children and a company of Pharaoh’s servants went up to Canaan to bury Yaakov. When the Canaanites saw the great company, they remarked upon it and named the place where they mourned Abel-Mizraim, or “the mourning of Egypt.”
When the burial was done, Yosef, his family and the Egyptians returned to Mizraim, the black and fertile land of the south.