Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women

The Bones of Joseph

114 So Joseph made the Children of Israel swear, saying: “When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here.” Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years, and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. —GENESIS 50:25–26 How did Moses know where Joseph’s grave was to be found? They say that only Serach daughter of Asher had survived from that generation, and that she revealed to Moses where Joseph’s grave was located. The Egyptians had made a metal coffin for him and then sunk it into the Nile. Moses went to the bank of the Nile . . . and called out “Joseph, Joseph, the time has come for the Holy One, blessed be He, to redeem his children. The Shekhinah and Israel and the clouds of glory await you. If you will reveal yourself, good, but if not, we shall be free of your vow.” Whereupon Joseph’s coffin floated to the surface. —MIDRASH TAN . HUMA YELAMMEDENU EXODUS 4:2 T he lead coffin rested on the bank. It seemed to Moses that the noise it had made as he set it down still echoed beneath the voices of the night insects. It was a wet noise, THE BONES OF JOSEPH k the noise of tearing earth, of burial. Beside him, Serach panted in the darkness. Her lined and sweating face glinted in the splendor of the full moon. It was the night of the final plague. Slavery was dying. The sleepy buzzing of the night insects was its eulogy. Serach tapped on the coffin gently with a long fingernail. She touched the gold skin of the bull that decorated its lid. She turned to Moses. Her hair, still black after many years of life, danced gently in the breeze. “We can’t carry this,” she stated flatly. “It’s too heavy for a tired prophet and an old harpist. We’ll have to take him out.” Moses, who after ten plagues had thought that nothing could shock him anymore, was aghast. “He’s a sacred ancestor, a prince. We can’t just prop him between us like an old board.” “Plenty of Hebrew slaves have been carried that way to their final rest,” Serach told him. “He’ll be glad to be free of that box after all this time. Leave it to me.” Serach began to hoist the heavy lid with her spidery fingers. Moses leaped to help her, honoring the will of Asher’s daughter, but his heart grieved. He did not want to see his ancestor, his hero, as an embalmed Egyptian nobleman. It reminded him of what he might have been. He turned away his face as the lid slid off and thudded into the reeds. A tender sound from Serach startled him. He glanced at her face, then into the coffin, his breath caught in his throat. The embalming work had been undone. Inside the lead box lay a pile of bones. It was a small pile, for Joseph had been a small man. The wrappings had dried and faded, and lay in small fragments on the floor of the coffin. “God brings us back to ourselves at the last,” Serach said. Moses felt the hand that had clamped his heart for such a long time suddenly release. “Sometimes before that,” he added. 115 M I D W I V E S : The Bones of Joseph Then his face fell again. “But how will we carry him now?” he asked, his voice full of frustration. The people would already be gathering to leave, and he was needed among them. Yet he knew the promise to Joseph must be fulfilled. Could he simply gather the bones up in his arms? There was a sudden rustle from the reeds nearby. A shawled form came to stand near Moses and Serach on the bank. It was Yocheved, the mother of Moses, who had nursed Moses as a baby, who had saved his life. Serach nodded to her. “Then it has happened as my father told me it would,” Yocheved whispered. Moses remembered that Yocheved was a daughter of Levi, of the same generation as Serach, privy to many secrets. He raised his eyes and saw that in his mother’s hands was a worn, woven basket, pitched with bitumen, with a blanket nestled inside. 116 S I S T E R...