The Israelites are finally free. Pharaoh has told them to leave, so they packed up their belongings, “plundered” their neighbors, and left Egypt for good.
Can you imagine Moses’ to-do list? Not only is he responsible for getting himself out the door, but he also is responsible for getting the entire nation out, too. There’s probably a few things he needs to check off to accomplish that.
One of those is taking Joseph’s bones with him. 430 years earlier, when Joseph died, he made his descendants promise to take his bones from Egypt when God fulfilled the promise of leaving Egypt. The charge to fulfill that promise fell to Moses, who had to (somehow) get Joseph’s body out of Egypt and carry it with them in the desert.
This is no small task. According to Genesis 50:26, Joseph’s body was embalmed, which means he probably didn’t decay at the same rate as normal human remains. Egyptian embalming was so advanced that we are still finding mummies that look “fresh” thousands of years later. There’s no telling what Moses found when he opened that coffin.
Furthermore, how do you convince the people that are in charge of the crypts to let you carry the body out? Grave robbing was just a big of a problem then as it has been throughout history, so I can’t imagine the guards were keen on letting Moses, who most Egyptians were scared of, just walk in and take a body.
We’re not privy to the mechanics of how Moses took Joseph’s bones, all we know is that he did. Later, it would be Joshua who actually buried Joseph’s bones in Canaan at the conclusion of the conquest (Joshua 24:32).
Why did Joseph want his bones removed so badly? He spent the vast majority of his life in Egypt—why not let his body stay in Egypt?
Fortunately, Hebrews 11:22 gives us the answer: “By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel, and gave orders concerning his bones.” According to that Text, Joseph operated on faith. But how does faith fit into a promise about final burial spots?
If you back up to Hebrews 11:16, the specific type of faith that is mentioned by Joseph is that he desired “a better country.” He, like others, were not looking for a physical location to fulfill them, but God Himself. It’s why Moses had no problem throwing in his lot with the Israelites, rather than staying in Pharaoh’s house (Hebrews 11:24-27).
Joseph didn’t live to see the Exodus, but his faith told him that it would happen, because he trusted in God to make it happen. And when it did, he didn’t want to miss out.
We should look at Heaven the same way.
