Genesis Chapter 50 verse 3 Holy Bible
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of embalming: and the Egyptians wept for him three-score and ten days.
read chapter 50 in ASV
And the forty days needed for making the body ready went by: and there was weeping for him among the Egyptians for seventy days.
read chapter 50 in BBE
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
read chapter 50 in DARBY
And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days.
read chapter 50 in KJV
And forty days were fulfilled for him; (for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed:) and the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days.
read chapter 50 in WBT
Forty days were fulfilled for him, for that is how many the days it takes to embalm. The Egyptians wept for him for seventy days.
read chapter 50 in WEB
and they fulfil for him forty days, for so they fulfil the days of the embalmed, and the Egyptians weep for him seventy days.
read chapter 50 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 3. - And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those who are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned (literally, wept) for him threescore and ten days - i.e. the whole period of mourning, including the forty days for embalming, extended to seventy days, a statement which strikingly coincides with the assertion of Diodorus Siculus (1:72), that the embalming process occupied about thirty days, while the mourning continued seventy-two days; the first number, seventy, being seven decades, or ten weeks of seven days, and the second 12 x 6 = 72, the duodecimal calculation being also used in Egypt (vide Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. 2. p. 121; and in ' Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians: vol. 3. p. 471, et seqq., ed. 1878). The apparent discrepancy between the accounts of Genesis and Herodotus will disappear if the seventy days of the Greek historian, during which the body lay in antrum, be viewed as the entire period of mourning (Hengstenberg's 'Egypt and the Books of Moses,' p. 68; Sir G. Wilkinson in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. 2. p. 121), a sense which the words ταῦτα δὲ ποιήσαντες ταριχεύουσι λίτρῳ κρίηψαντες ἡμέρας ἐβδομήκοντα (Herod. 2:86)will bear, though Kalisch somewhat arbitrarily, but unconvincingly, pronounces it to be "excluded both by the context and Greek syntax."
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(3) Forty days.--Herodotus (ii. 86) describes the process of embalming as occupying seventy days, but he was speaking of what he saw at Thebes, whereas Memphis was the Egyptian capital in Joseph's time; and the mummies of Thebes are, we are told, far more perfectly preserved than those of Memphis. Diodorus agrees very nearly with the periods mentioned here, saying (i. 91) that the embalming took somewhat more than thirty days, and the mourning for a king seventy-two. The usual period of mourning among the Israelites was thirty days (Numbers 20:29 : Deuteronomy 34:8). Probably, therefore, the forty days spent in the embalming were included in the "threescore and ten days," during which the Egyptians mourned for Jacob.
