Genesis 50:2 Commentary and Bible Study

It was very necessary for him to be embalmed they were going to take a very long journey and take him to a far country in a hot climate. Joseph commanded his servants the physicians, that is, those among his servants who were physicians, to embalm his father and they embalmed Israel, and that is so carefully expressed and for good reason. Joseph uses his staff physicians rather than the professional embalmers. It was to be done perfectly and properly, and the physicians, with their detailed knowledge of anatomy, would probably be better at the embalming process than actually the professional embalmers. But also the Egyptian embalmers would undoubtedly have used various cultic processes which reflected Egyptian religion. Who knows what they mixed into the materials used for embalming? We really have no idea, but that is possibly one reason why Joseph used his physicians rather than the embalmers – so that the process was free from Egyptian religious rites. ‘Joseph commanded his servants, the physicians.’ This idea is reinforced by the fact that at the end of the verse Moses writes, ‘the physicians embalmed Israel’, Jacob’s official name, which had to do with the coming of Messiah, and the typical church of God. So there was a religious reason why it was to be the physicians not the embalmers, it would appear.