John Chrysostom : For your part, however, dearly beloved, don't simply pass this by on hearing it; instead, consider the time when it happened and absolve Joseph of all blame. I mean, the gates of the underworld were still not broken or the bonds of death loosed. Nor was death yet called sleep. Hence, because they feared death, they acted this way; today, on the contrary, thanks to the grace of God, since death has been turned into slumber and life's end into repose and since there is great certitude of resurrection, we rejoice and exult at death like people moving from one life to another. Why do I say from one life to another? From a worse to a better, from a temporary to an eternal, from an earthly to a heavenly. — HOMILIES ON Genesis 67.17 Augustine of Hippo : MYSTERIOUS REASON FOR THE PATH FOLLOWED TO BURY JACOB. — What does the Scripture mean when they were to bury Jacob: And they came to the age of Ahaz, which is beyond the Jordan ? As those who know the place say, those men went more than fifty miles beyond the place where they had to bury the dead man. This is the distance that is more or less from the place where the patriarchs are buried, including Jacob, to this place where they arrived, as the Scripture says. After a great mourning and grief there, they returned to the place which they had left behind, going back across the Jordan. Someone, however, can say that, to avoid the presence of enemies, they returned with the body through the desert, to the same place where the people of Israel were also led by Moses when he brought them out of Egypt. In fact, there is a great detour along that road, and through the Jordan one arrives at the siege of Abraham, where the bodies of the patriarchs are (Cf. Gen. 50:13), that is, the land of Canaan. But in any way this has happened, the fact of going so far to the east, beyond those places, and the fact of returning to them through the Jordan, we must understand that it was made by some meaning, that is, that by the Jordan would come later to those lands Israel with their children. [ — QUESTIONS ON GENESIS, Q. 170 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)