Genesis 50:10 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Genesis 50:10
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.
heavy · conjunction + adjective, masculine singular absolute
lamentation
מִסְפֵּ֛דmis.Ped
H4553
a lamentation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
made
וַיַּ֧עַשׂvai.Ya.'as
H6213
to do or make · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
mourning
אֵ֖בֶל'E.vel
H60
lamentation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
father
לְאָבִ֛יוle.'a.Viv
H1
father · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
seven
שִׁבְעַ֥תshiv.'At
H7651
seven (as the sacred full one) · cardinal number, both genders singular construct
days
יָמִֽיםya.Mim
H3117
a day (as the warm hours) · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Job 2:13 So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very…
Acts 8:2 And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.
2 Samuel 1:17 And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and over Jonathan his son:
1 Samuel 31:13 And they took their bones, and buried them under a tree at Jabesh, and fasted seven days.
Genesis 50:4 And when the days of his mourning were past, Joseph spake unto the house of Pharaoh, saying, If now I have found grace in your eyes, speak,…
Genesis 50:11 And when the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in the floor of Atad, they said, This is a grievous mourning to the E…
Numbers 19:11 He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days.
Deuteronomy 1:1 These be the words which Moses spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in the wilderness, in the plain over against the Red sea, between P…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Genesis 50:7-14
We have here an account of Jacob's funeral. Of the funerals of the kings of Judah, usually, no more is said than this, They were buried with their fathers in the city of David: but the funeral of the patriarch Jacob is more largely and fully described, to show how much better God was to him than he expected (he had spoken more than once of dying for grief, and going to the grave bereaved of his children, but, behold, he dies in honour, and is followed to the grave by all his children), and also because his orders concerning his burial were given and observed in faith, and in expectation both of the earthly and of the heavenly Canaan. Now, 1. It was a stately funeral. He was attended to the g…
they came to the threshing-floor of Atad, &c.--"Atad" may be taken as a common noun, signifying "the plain of the thorn bushes." It was on the border between Egypt and Canaan; and as the last opportunity of indulging grief was always the most violent, the Egyptians made a prolonged halt at this spot, while the family of Jacob probably proceeded by themselves to the place of sepulture.
Adam Clarke on Genesis 50:10
The threshing-floor of Atad - As אטד atad signifies a bramble or thorn, it has been understood by the Arabic, not as a man's name, but as the name of a place; but all the other versions and the Targums consider it as the name of a man. Threshing-floors were always in a field, in the open air; and Atad was probably what we would call a great farmer or chief of some clan or tribe in that place. Jerome supposed the place to have been about two leagues from Jericho; but we have no certain information on this point. The funeral procession stopped here, probably as affording pasturage to their cattle while they observed the seven days' mourning which terminated the funeral solemnities, after which…
For your part, however, dearly beloved, don't simply pass this by on hearing it; instead, consider the time when it happened and absolve Joseph of all blame. I mean, the gates of the underworld were still not broken or the bonds of death loosed. Nor was death yet called sleep. Hence, because they feared death, they acted this way; today, on the contrary, thanks to the grace of God, since death has been turned into slumber and life's end into repose and since there is great certitude of resurrection, we rejoice and exult at death like people moving from one life to another. Why do I say from one life to another? From a worse to a better, from a temporary to an eternal, from an earthly to a heavenly.
MYSTERIOUS REASON FOR THE PATH FOLLOWED TO BURY JACOB. — What does the Scripture mean when they were to bury Jacob: And they came to the age of Ahaz, which is beyond the Jordan ? As those who know the place say, those men went more than fifty miles beyond the place where they had to bury the dead man. This is the distance that is more or less from the place where the patriarchs are buried, including Jacob, to this place where they arrived, as the Scripture says. After a great mourning and grief there, they returned to the place which they had left behind, going back across the Jordan. Someone, however, can say that, to avoid the presence of enemies, they returned with the body through the desert, to the same place where the people of Israel were also led by Moses when he brought them out of Egypt. In fact, there is a great detour along that road, and through the Jordan one arrives at the siege of Abraham, where the bodies of the patriarchs are (Cf. Gen. 50:13), that is, the land of Canaan. But in any way this has happened, the fact of going so far to the east, beyond those places, and the fact of returning to them through the Jordan, we must understand that it was made by some meaning, that is, that by the Jordan would come later to those lands Israel with their children. [
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Abel-mizraim — Meadow of Egypt, or mourning of Egypt, a place “beyond,” i.e., on the west of Jordan, at the “threshing-floor of Atad.” Here the Egyptians mourned seventy days for Jacob (Gen. 50:4-11). Its site is…
Alliances — On the first establishment of the Hebrews in Palestine no connections were formed between them and the surrounding nations. But with the extension of their power under the kings alliances became…
Atad — Buckthorn, a place where Joseph and his brethren, when on their way from Egypt to Hebron with the remains of their father Jacob, made for seven days a “great and very sore lamentation.” On this…
Beyond — When used with reference to Jordan, signifies in the writings of Moses the west side of the river, as he wrote on the east bank (Gen. 50:10, 11; Deut. 1:1, 5; 3:8, 20; 4:46); but in the writings of…
Joseph — Remover or increaser. (1.) The elder of the two sons of Jacob by Rachel (Gen. 30:23, 24), who, on the occasion of his birth, said, “God hath taken away [Heb. ‘asaph] my reproach.” “The Lord shall add…
Mourning — One marked feature of Oriental mourning is what may be called its studies publicity and the careful observance of the prescribed ceremonies. (Genesis 23:2; Job 1:20; 2:12)
Atad · The place where the — The place where the
Burial · Attended by: Great lamentation at — Attended by: Great lamentation at
Dead, The · Mourning for, often: Lasted many days — Mourning for, often: Lasted many days
Egypt · History of Israel in: Jacob’s death and burial — History of Israel in: Jacob’s death and burial
Mourning · .Lamentations — .Lamentations
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad,.... Which was either the name of a man the owner of it, or of a place so called from the thorns and brambles which grew here, and with which the threshingfloor was surrounded, as Jarchi says, see Judges 9:14 and it was usual to make a hedge of thorns round about a threshingfloor (o), that it might be preserved; mention is made in the Talmud (p) of the wilderness of Atad, perhaps so called from the thorns and brambles in it: Jerom says (q) it was three miles from Jericho and two from Jordan, and was in his time called Bethagla, the place of a circuit, because there they went about after the manner of mourners at the funeral of Jacob. This, accordin…
And Joseph went up. Moses gives a full account of the burial. What he relates concerning the renewed mourning of Joseph and his brethren, as well as of the Egyptians, ought by no means to be established as a rule among ourselves. For we know, that since our flesh has no self government, men commonly exceed bounds both in sorrowing and in rejoicing. The tumultuous glamour, which the inhabitants of the place admired, cannot be excused. And although Joseph had a right end in view, when he fixed the mourning to last through seven successive days, yet this excess was not free from blame. Nevertheless, it was not without reason that the Lord caused this funeral to be thus honorably celebrated: for…
Thus they came to Goren Atad beyond the Jordan, as the procession did not take the shortest route by Gaza through the country of the Philistines, probably because so large a procession with a military escort was likely to meet with difficulties there, but went round by the Dead Sea. There, on the border of Canaan, a great mourning and funeral ceremony was kept up for seven days, from which the Canaanites, who watched it from Canaan, gave the place the name of Abel-mizraim, i.e., meadow (אבל with a play upon אבל mourning) of the Egyptians. The situation of Goren Atad (the buck-thorn floor), or Abel-mizraim, has not been discovered. According to Gen 50:11, it was on the other side, i.e., the e…
This journey into Canaan was made in sorrow to bury a man; the next journey into the land would be to live there.
Rashi on Genesis 50:10
גרן האטד THE THRESHING FLOOR OF ATAD — It was so called because it was surrounded by a hedge of (אטדין) thorns (not because thorns were threshed there) Our Rabbis explained that it was so called in consequence of an incident that occurred there — that all the kings of Canaan and the princes of Ishmael came to wage war against them, but as soon as they saw Joseph’s crown hanging over Jacob’s coffin they all rose and hung their crowns on it and thus wreathed it with crowns like a threshing floor that is surrounded with a hedge of thorns (Sotah 13a).
Seven · .Mourning for Jacob lasted for — .Mourning for Jacob lasted for
Threshing · Floors for — Floors for
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
