Coffin

The word coffin appears once in the UPDV, at the close of Genesis. It marks the end of the patriarchal narratives and the transition into the bondage in Egypt that opens the book of Exodus.

Joseph's Burial in Egypt

The verse stands at the seam between the ancestral story and the descent into slavery: "So Joseph died, being a hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt" (Gen 50:26). Embalming and a coffin together place Joseph's body in Egyptian funerary form rather than the family-tomb burials of his fathers, leaving his remains in Egypt against the day his bones would be carried out.