"And Joseph died, the son of a hundred and ten years. And they embalmed him with perfumes, and laid him in an ark, and submerged him in the midst of the Nilos of Mizraim."
The Torah says Joseph was placed in a coffin in Egypt. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis (50:26) says something stranger. They sank him. Into the Nile.
Why? Other midrashic traditions preserved alongside our <a href='/categories/midrash-aggadah.html'>Midrash Aggadah collection</a> explain the Egyptians' reasoning: Joseph had been a blessing to their land. They believed burying him in the river would carry that blessing into every canal and field his waters touched. They wanted him to be theirs forever — a submerged saint irrigating the kingdom.
But the Targum's reader knows the rest of the story. Moses will later stand on the banks of this same Nile, whispering Joseph's name, asking the waters to give the coffin back. And the coffin, according to midrashic tradition, will rise to the surface on its own. The bones Joseph made his brothers swear about (Genesis 50:25) will be ferried across the Yam Suf — sea of reeds — beside the Ark of the Covenant.
The Nile thought it had swallowed Joseph. In truth, it was only holding him for the journey. What Mizraim calls possession, the covenant calls transit.
Beloved, the places that try hardest to hold you are often the places you are merely passing through.