“³⁰And Israel said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face, because you are still alive.”

– Genesis 46:30 (NKJV)

“And Israel said to Joseph, “Now let me die, since I have seen your face, because you are still alive.” (Recognise the subtle allusion to the picture of Moses in Exodus 33 longing to see The Father but forbidden apart from Christ [v.20] – yet initially awarded the opportunity to see Christ Himself face-to-face and to speak to Him ‘as one speaks to a friend’ [v.11]  – as our young Joseph here once again becomes a prophetic picture of Our Lord Jesus; this is furthermore alluded to in the idea that once one has seen – known, acknowledged, beheld, accepted – Christ, one can die happily, knowing that one’s sins have been ‘taken away’ as John The Baptist would say. Israel’s petition to God to ‘let’ him die also speaks to the life of a mortal man who, having endured great and perpetual suffering throughout his life, longs for the relief of eternal, immortal life with God. We also recognise a profound revelation here, as we reflect upon the past approximately three decades of Israel’s life, where he had been separated from intimate relationship with ‘The Christ’, represented here in Joseph, by sin [directly that of the brothers but also indirectly that of the theoretical sin of our own that we need to be redeemed from through Christ], and that much of the longing, suffering and mourning he endured can be considered a type of suffering for  Christ, the longing, the waiting for the day He is revealed and he can behold His face in all Its glory; the very day of culmination we now see here unfolding before us. Let us also reflect upon and glory in Israel’s utterance here: ‘you are still alive’ as it invites us to Shout For Joy: “Christ Lives!” How radically this breaks open my decades long childhood question as to how God’s people were saved apart from Christ prior to His First Coming? Answer: By Trusting in The One God Sends as a Christ-type, or at the very least by a childlike Faith and Trust in God that He is able to make a plan unto salvation even if it is not fully understood by the child of God in question. Finally, it is worth taking note of the much larger, big-picture theme spanning the ages that is hinted at within this verse: in Jacob’s now being exclusively referred to as ‘Israel’ within the text, we recognise here a Prophecy concerning Our Lord’s Second Coming: that once the Nation of Israel sees – knows, acknowledges, beholds, accepts – Jesus The Christ, then the end will come.)