Genesis ends with a coffin and a whisper, unlike "Let there be light," which jolts the book into existence. There is no weeping or dramatic flare. There is simply an issue about where bones will settle, but it is left unsettled—giving hints of a sequel and forewarning a different end. Genesis ends in the middle of a familiar story. The story is familiar because the same story is told in the previous chapter. Some of the characters are different. Some are not.

It is a simple story. After blessing his children, a father (Jacob) tells his son (Joseph) that he does not want to be buried in Egypt. He wants to be buried with his own people. Although it is a simple story, it is not a simple request. The request entails a long journey and much commitment. Joseph promises to honor his father’s request and Jacob dies peacefully while Joseph weeps.

Joseph’s weeping is not the weeping of silent unnoticeable tears. It is the weeping of a son who throws himself upon his father’s body, a son who is no stranger to tears. We as readers have seen these tears before, throughout the Joseph story. As he stands before his brothers, he weeps at their fear of being punished for their guilt. He weeps at the sight of Benjamin, and he weeps as he cries out, "I am Joseph!"

The Genesis story takes us inside Joseph’s heart. Muslims (through the Koran) understand Joseph as a physically beautiful human being ("no mortal but an honorable angel"), but Jews and Christians (through the Genesis story) understand Joseph as a devoted and passionate man.

When Joseph throws himself upon his father’s dead body and weeps over him and kisses him, we as the readers understand why. God promised Jacob through a vision that "Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes," and here they are, father and son, at the close of life—a dead patriarch and a weeping son. Even the Egyptians mourn.

Joseph is relentless in keeping his promise. In time, Canaanites hear the bitter sound of mourning and conclude that there must be a solemn ceremony of some sort nearby. It is the sound of a son carrying out his father’s request to bury his father’s bones with his own people. The land itself (Abel Mizraim, meaning "mourning of the Egyptians") marks the son’s response to a father’s dying wish.

Between his father’s death and his own, little is recorded of Joseph. Two scenes are prominent. He weeps when he realizes his brothers’ renewed fear of him, and his great-grandchildren are, at birth, placed on his knees. As readers, we cannot help but shy away from the intimacy of these moments, the very viewing of which we fear may tarnish them.

At this point, the familiar story line begins again. Another dying father makes a request. It is a man whose heart we have come to know more intimately than most. It is a request that we have come to understand. "You must carry my bones up from this place." The very request engenders scenes of a previous father dying, a son weeping, and the land being marked by grief. It brings to mind scenes of a large company aiding a son to carry out his father’s dying wish, of people making a long journey just to place bones in a different place.

"So Joseph died."

But there is no record of mourning, or of grief-stricken sons carrying out their father’s wish. There is no record (in Genesis) of a long journey made to carry out a dying man’s request. There is no mark on the land that anything significant happened. The story simply ends in the middle. The request is made and the coffin…resides in Egypt.

Understandably, some writers revise this ending. In The Legend of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg suggests that after Joseph made his request the whole of Israel and Egypt mourned him. Thomas Mann also makes this suggestion in his work Joseph in Egypt. The modern musical, Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat, follows this same theme.

The reality is that the story ends with a request unfulfilled. The book of Genesis begins with the voice of God thundering over the face of the deep and then ends with a void—a dying father’s request that seems not to have been followed. But the last sentence holds little weight compared to the story told before it that threatens to unravel it. A dying father makes a request and a son not only promises to honor it, but also makes the long journey to make sure it happens and honors his father most through tears that have seen much too much.

The text itself hints that this one-sentenced ending ("coffin in Egypt") will not hold through time—that someone, some group, will undo it. It hints that there will be a response of love and action that will be so bold and heartfelt that it will mark the land and arouse the attention of surrounding peoples.

Perhaps that someone is Moses (Exod. 13:19). Perhaps, in contrast, it is all those who are listening to this story of Joseph’s request. Perhaps the story ends in the middle because it was meant to end in the middle—a storyteller’s way of saying "and then" without completing the sentence. The apparent void at the end of Genesis may not be a void at all, but rather a one-sentence ending that challenges its listeners (readers) to undo it.

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