A CHEST, box, or coffer — and the last noun in the book of Genesis. 'They embalmed him, and he was put BA-ARON BE-MITZRAYIM' (50:26): in a coffin, in Egypt. ⚠️ It is the same ordinary word that will later name the ARK OF THE COVENANT, the chest carried through the wilderness and into the land — so the container that ends Genesis and the container at the centre of Israel's worship are called the same thing. A book that opens 'in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' closes on an embalmed man in a box, and the final Hebrew word is the name of the wrong country. Nothing promised has arrived: the land is a grave-plot, the nation is seventy people in a border province. The ending is not a resolution, and is not meant to be one. → first discussed at Gen 50:26