Embalming

How Nave’s arranged it

• Of JacobGenesis 50:2Genesis 50:3
• Of JosephGenesis 50:26
• Of Asa2 Chronicles 16:14
• Of JesusMark 15:46Mark 16:1

The passages, in Bible order (6)

The same references, sorted Genesis to Revelation. The first 6 are quoted in full; the rest are one click beneath them, book by book.

1. Genesis 50:2

   And Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So they embalmed him,

   ›Commentary on Genesis 50:22 voices

   “The physicians - רפאים ropheim, the healers, those whose business it was to heal or restore the body from sickness by the administration of proper medicines; and when death took place, to heal or preserve it from dissolution by embalming, and thus give it a sort of immortality or everlasting duration. The original word חנט chanat, which we translate to embalm, has undoubtedly the same meaning with the Arabic hanata, which also signifies to embalm, or to preserve from putrefaction by the application of spices, etc., and hence hantat, an embalmer.

   “Thirty days were alloted for the completion of this process; forty more were spent in anointing it with spices; the body, tanned from this operation, being then washed, was wrapped in numerous folds of linen cloth--the joinings of which were fastened with gum, and then it was deposited in a wooden chest made in the form of a human figure.

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2. Genesis 50:3

   taking the forty days required to complete the embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.

   ›Commentary on Genesis 50:32 voices

   “Forty days - The body it appears required this number of days to complete the process of embalming; afterwards it lay in natron thirty days more, making in the whole seventy days, according to the preceding accounts, during which the mourning was continued.

   “Forty days were fulfilled for him,....

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3. Genesis 50:26

   So Joseph died at the age of 110. And they embalmed his body and placed it in a coffin in Egypt.

   ›Commentary on Genesis 50:262 voices

   “Thy father did command - Thus in humbling ourselves to Christ by faith and repentance, we may plead that it is the command of his father and our father we should do so. We are the servants of the God of thy father - Not only children of the same Jacob, but worshippers of the same Jehovah.

   “So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old,.... The exact age assigned him by Polyhistor (x), from Demetrius an Heathen.

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4. 2 Chronicles 16:14

   And he was buried in the tomb that he had cut out for himself in the City of David. They laid him on a bier that was full of spices and various blended perfumes; then they made a great fire in his honor.

   ›Commentary on 2 Chronicles 16:142 voices

   “And they buried him in his own sepulchres which he had made for himself in the city of David,....

   “And laid him in the bed - It is very likely that the body of Asa was burnt; that the bed spoken of here was a funeral pyre, on which much spices and odoriferous woods had been placed; and then they set fire to the whole and consumed the body with the aromatics. Some think the body was not burned, but the aromatics only, in honor of the king. How the ancients treated the bodies of the illustrious dead we learn from Virgil, in the funeral rites paid to Misenus.

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5. Mark 15:46

   So Joseph bought a linen cloth, took down the body of Jesus, wrapped it in the cloth, and placed it in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance to the tomb.

   ›Commentary on Mark 15:462 voices

   “This above all shows the foolishness of those who say that the Word was changed into bones and flesh. For if this had been so, there would have been no need of a tomb. For the body would have gone by itself to preach to the spirits in Hades. But as it was, he himself went to preach, while the body that Joseph wrapped in a linen cloth laid away at Golgotha. And so it is demonstrated to all that the body was not the Word, but body of the Word.

   “And he bought fine linen,....

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6. Mark 16:1

   When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so they could go and anoint the body of Jesus.

   ›Commentary on Mark 16:12 voices

   “See this passage explained in the notes at Mat 28:1-8. Mar 16:1 Sweet spices - “Aromatics.” Substances used in embalming. The idea of sweetness is not, however, implied in the original. Many of the substances used for embalming were “bitter” - as, for example, myrrh - and none of them, perhaps, could properly be called “sweet.” The word “spices” expresses all that there is in the original. Anoint him - Embalm him, or apply these spices to his body to keep it from putrefaction.

   “In the time of the old covenant, the sabbath was highly revered. Now under the gospel the sabbath has been recast, now viewed as the Lord's resurrection day. The sabbath formerly had pertained to the pedagogy and rudiments of the law. When the great master himself came and fulfilled them all for us, all that had prefigured his coming was transformed. The old sabbath was like a candle lit in the night before the rising and appearing of the sun.

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