And he charged them, and said unto them
The same charge he had given to Joseph he here renews, and lays it upon his sons, who were everyone of them to go along with Joseph to bury him in Canaan:
I [am] to be gathered unto my people;
the people of God, the spirits of just men made perfect, the souls of all the saints who before this time had departed this life, and were in a state of happiness and bliss; called his people, because he and they were of the same mystical body the church, belonged to the same general assembly, and church of the firstborn; the company of God's elect, who were in the same covenant of grace, and partakers of the same blessings and promises of grace: this shows that the souls of men are immortal; that there is a future state after death, which is a state of happiness, and into which saints immediately enter as soon as they die, and where Jacob expected to be in a short time:
bury me with my fathers;
the other part of himself, his body, which should not be gathered to his people, as his soul would be, he orders to be interred with his fathers Abraham and Isaac:
in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite;
which is more particularly described in the following verse, being the place of his father's sepulchre.