So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt. The closing image of Genesis — Joseph in a coffin in Egypt — is the image of unfinished promise. The covenant family is in Egypt; the covenant land is in Canaan; the bones of the covenant keeper are in a coffin waiting. The application: Genesis ends not with triumph but with anticipation. The coffin in Egypt is waiting for the Exodus that has not yet come. The story is not finished. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not finished.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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