But when Joseph came to die, he called his brothers to his side and uttered this prophecy: "I die; and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land which He swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob." And Joseph took an oath of his brothers, saying: "God will surely visit you, and ye shall carry up my bones from hence."
So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten years, and they embalmed and put him in a coffin in Egypt.
But when the time came for the children of Israel to be delivered from Egypt, as they escaped from their cruel task-masters, in all their hurry and confusion, Moses remembered to take the bones of Joseph with him; and as the Children of Israel wandered in the Wilderness, they bore that coffin with them, till at last they reached the land of Canaan which God had promised to give them. Here Joshua, who led the people after Moses' death, buried the bones of Joseph in Shechem, in a piece of ground which Jacob had bought before he was carried down into Egypt at the time of the famine.
Thus the prophecy uttered hundreds of years before was fulfilled to the very letter.
PROPHECY OF THE CAPTIVITY.
Jer. xxv. 12.—Dan. i. 1-3.—Ezra i. 1-6.
Many years had passed away, during which the Children of Israel had been governed by judges, and by the kings of Judah and Israel; but gradually the people got slack; they forgot the Lord that brought them out of the land of Egypt, and forsook His commandments and fell into idolatry and dreadful sin.
At length God told the Prophet Jeremiah that the sins of the people were so great that He must send Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, to carry them away captives, and that they would serve him for seventy years, while the land of Canaan should be a desolation, and enjoy her Sabbaths.
We read in the first chapters of Daniel about this captivity.
Meanwhile God was very pitiful to His people whom He had had to punish, and He sent them this message through Jeremiah:—
"For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon, I will visit you, and perform My good work toward you, in causing you to return to this place."