Genesis 50:26

Summary

The verse reports the death of Joseph at the age of 110 years, followed by the embalming of his body and its placement in a coffin in Egypt. It closes the narrative of Genesis with a brief notice of burial preparation rather than burial itself.

Key words

• va-yamot ("and he died", H4191) — qal narrative verb (vav-consecutive), marking the next event in the story sequence: Joseph's death.
• ben ("a son of", H1121L) — masculine singular construct noun, used idiomatically with a number of years to express age ("a son of 110 years" = "110 years old").
• va-yachantu ("and they embalmed", H2590A) — qal narrative verb, third person plural, with an unspecified subject ("people/they"), indicating an action performed on Joseph's body by unnamed agents.
• oto ("him", H0853 + suffix) — direct object marker with pronominal suffix, marking Joseph as the recipient of the embalming action.
• va-yisem ("and he was put", H3455) — qal narrative verb, third person singular, continuing the narrative chain; grammatically singular ("he put" or passive-like "he was put") though the subject is not named.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from three chained narrative verbs joined by the vav-consecutive (va-), a construction that presents events as a sequential chain: "and he died... and they embalmed... and he was put." This creates a terse, list-like report typical of Hebrew narrative closure formulas, without elaboration or extended description.

The age formula ben me'ah va-eser shanim ("a son of one hundred and ten years", H1121L + H3967 + H9002 + H6235 + H8141) uses the construct noun ben ("son of") idiomatically to express age, a common Biblical Hebrew pattern where a person is described as "a son of X years" rather than using a separate verb "to be aged."

The verb va-yachantu (H2590A) is plural, implying unnamed agents ("they") performed the embalming, while the following verb va-yisem (H3455) is singular in form, which in Hebrew narrative can function with an unspecified or impersonal subject ("one put him" / "he was put"), producing an effect close to a passive sense in English translation despite being grammatically active in Hebrew morphology. The location phrase be-Mitzrayim ("in Egypt", H4714G) closes the verse, anchoring the entire sequence geographically.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders va-yachantu oto ("they embalmed him") with ἔθαψαν ("they buried him"), using a verb of burial rather than embalming, while the Hebrew chanat (H2590A) specifically denotes embalming. The Vulgate and modern translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) follow the Hebrew sense of embalming rather than burial.