After the seventy-day Egyptian mourning period for Yaakov, Pharaoh permits Yosef to fulfill his oath to bury his father in the family burial-plot in Canaan:

And Yosef ascended to bury his father. And there went with him all of Pharaoh’s servants, the elders of his palace, and all the elders of the land of Egypt, and all the house of Yosef, and his brothers, and his father’s household. But they left their children and their flocks and herds in the land of Goshen. And there also went up with him both chariots and horsemen. And it was a very imposing (KAVED) camp. And they came to the Threshing-floor of the Bramble (GOREN HA’ATAD) that is on the bank of the Jordan, and they conducted there a great and imposing (KAVED) funeral. And he observed mourning for his father for seven days. And the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, saw the mourning in Threshing-floor of the Bramble, and they said, “A great mourning (EVEL KAVED) is this for Egypt.” Therefore, it is called the Meadow of Egypt (AVEL MITZRAYIM) that is on the bank of the Jordan. And his sons did for him as he had commanded them: His sons bore him to the land of Canaan, and they buried him in the cave of the field of the Machpelah bordering Mamre, the field which Avraham had bought as burial property from Efron the Hittite (Bereishit 50:7-13).
The book of Bereishit concludes with seven days of mourning, just as it began with seven days of creation (see Midrash Lekach Tov).

The interment of the Patriarch Yaakov marks the children of Israel’s last contact with, and last claim to, their land before the onset of the Egyptian exile. However, what is the significance of the renaming, by the Canaanites, of GOREN HA’ATAD as AVEL MITZRAYIM?

The seven-part funeral procession is both a reflection of Yosef’s position as viceroy of Egypt and the respect with which Yaakov is held. Six groups follow Yosef: three are dispatched by Pharaoh —
all of Pharaoh’s servants, the elders of his palace, and all the elders of the land of Egypt;
and three represent Yaakov’s family ―
and all the house of Yosef, and his brothers, and his father’s household.
They are followed by a military escort ―
both chariots and horsemen.

The Egyptians regarded Yaakov with honor (KAVOD, a word echoed in the thrice-repeated KAVED). When Yaakov arrived in Egypt,
blessing came with him, when the famine stopped and the waters of the Nile were blessed (Rashi, based on Bamidbar Rabbah 12:2).
Upon Yaakov’s death the famine returned (Tosefta Sotah 10:3). The Egyptians therefore mourned the national tragedy of his death (see 50:3).

The “great and imposing funeral” has the outward appearance of the last rites for an Egyptian notable. [It is not so surprising that an Egyptian burial could have taken place in Canaan, which was, at the time, under Egyptian control. Around the Jordan River, archaeologists have discovered large Egyptian cemeteries reserved for dignitaries, especially those who served in the military outpost there, from the period contemporaneous with the Patriarchs.]

The exact location of “the Threshing-floor of the Bramble (GOREN HA’ATAD) that is on the bank of the Jordan” is unclear. According to one view (Chizkuni, based on Midrash Shocher Tov), it is west of the Jordan. This would mean that the route Yosef takes from Egypt is along the coast of the Mediterranean, “the road of the land of the Philistines” (Shemot 13:17).

The dominant view(Sotah 13a), however, is that Yosef leads the procession through the Sinai, across the Aravah, around Seir and Moav, and camps at GOREN HA’ATAD, soon to be renamed AVEL (meadow; but also sounding like EVEL, mourning) MITZRAYIM. Later, it will be called Avel Hashittim (Bamidbar 33:49), the Israelites’ last station before crossing into the Land of Israel.

Yaakov’s funeral procession thus prefigures the passage of the Children of Israel from Egypt in the time of Moshe and Yehoshua. In addition to the route taken, there are other similarities:
• As Rashi points out (verse 13), the children of Yaakov carry his bier according to his instructions:
three to the east, and so on in the four directions; and they were set according to the arrangement of the [Israelite] camp by flags. Levi, who would one day carry the Ark, did not carry [the bier], nor did Yosef, since he is a king. [But Moshe, of the tribe of Levi, would bear the bones of Yosef out of Egypt!] Menashe and Ephraim took their place.
• The approach of the cortege angers the people of Esav, Yishmael and Keturah, who threaten war. Only the sight of Yosef’s crown on Yaakov’s coffin makes them relent, and they pay their respects by surrounding the coffin with their crowns, like the Bramble around a threshing-floor (Rashi 50:10; Sotah 13a). This foreshadows the encounters with the surrounding nations in the time of Moshe (Bamidbar 20:14-25:19).

On the other hand, the respect Yaakov and his family are accorded now stands in sharp contrast to the enslavement which the next generations will suffer at the hands of the Egyptians. This oppression will be punishment, in part, for the way the children of Israel are already beginning to integrate in Egypt:
• Yaakov did not want his grandchildren to bury him, because they were children of Canaanite women, a breach of Avraham’s command (24:2-3; Rashi on 50:13).
• Rather than taking up temporary residence in Egypt, they begin to settle in, becoming too comfortable in what should have been exile (Kli Yekar on Bereishit 47:27).
• To this we might add, that as a result of this early adaptation, the obsequies (funeral rites) of the Patriarch Yaakov are mistaken by the outside observers, the Canaanites, for “a great mourning . . . for Egypt” (v. 11).

The events at GOREN HA’ATAD-AVEL MITZRAYIM serve as a crossroads, where lamentation and loss encounter esteem and entitlement, where, beyond the seemingly impenetrable boundary of brambles, lies the threshing-floor of sublime historic transformation.