Illustration Credit: Elad Lifshitz, Dov Abramson Studio
What's going on here? מַה זֶה?
What happened to Yosef’s bones?
At the very end of Sefer Bereishit, Yosef makes his brothers promise that they will take his bones back to אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל (Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel; Bereishit 50:25). And, in fact, the Torah records that Moshe took Yosef’s bones with him (Shemot 13:19) when he led Benei Yisrael out of מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, Egypt) centuries later.
However, the Talmud (Sotah 13a) says it was not so simple for Moshe to get the bones. The Egyptians had buried Yosef in a metal coffin and sank it in the Nile, as a blessing for the river. Moshe called out to Yosef that it was time to fulfill the promise—and the coffin immediately floated to the surface!
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