‘And he himself charged us before he died,’ they said, ‘to give thee this message. “Say unto my beloved son Joseph,” he said. “Forgive, I pray thee, the evil which thy brothers did against thee, and all the misery that came of it.” We entreat thee then to heed the words of our father and of thy father, and to forgive us the evils of which we were guilty against the God he worshipped.’

Joseph was distressed that they mistrusted him. He at once sent for them all, and they were brought into his presence where he sat alone. They prostrated themselves before him and made obeisance as of old.

‘Behold,’ they said, ‘we are the servants of the God of thy father. Do with us as seems best to thee.’

And Joseph reassured them. It grieved him to the heart to see them humbling themselves before him.

‘Put away your fears,’ he said. ‘Think you that I stand here in God’s stead to judge and to punish whom I may? Surely it is not so. For even though in the days that are gone and best forgotten you did me this injury, it was his will that only good should come of it. For by this I was made the means of saving you and your wives and your little ones and many another from death itself. Put away all your cares then, and think no more of them, either now or at any time in the future. Believe only that it is my one hope and desire to protect you and your little ones, and to watch over you, lest being among strangers in a strange land you should come to any harm.’

He comforted them and spoke kindly to them, saying all that was in his heart, and they doubted him no more.

So Joseph continued to dwell in Egypt, and they with him. He lived long enough to see around him his son Ephraim’s grandchildren, and the children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh. Even when he was a very old man, these little ones would be brought in to see him, for he loved children. And they would sit talking to him upon his knee.

But the day came when he knew that death was approaching. And he sent for his brothers to bid them farewell.

‘I am dying,’ he said, ‘and these must be my last words to you; bear them, I pray you, in mind. God will surely be ever with you, and in his own season will bring those who come after you up out of Egypt and into the land which he promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to our father Jacob, even into Canaan. In that day may I myself be remembered, as may God remember you. Vow unto me then that my bones shall be carried up hence and laid to rest beside my father.’ And they swore it to him.

And Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old. And his physicians and embalmers embalmed his body and laid it in his coffin, and his coffin was enshrined in a sarcophagus of rich and strange and curious workmanship, and this was given into the charge of his brethren in Goshen. And Pharaoh the king and all his court and the whole land of Egypt sorrowed and mourned for Joseph many days, for of all the king’s counsellors none in foresight, divination, power and wisdom, had been greater than he.