Genesis 48

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:50utc

We are not told how many years later this last scene of Jacob's life takes place. Vs. 1 says: "Some time later Joseph was told, 'Your father is ill.'" When Joseph comes to visit his father he brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, with him. What follows could be a replay of an incident that occurred years earlier when Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau. Only here the scene enrolls itself before our eyes as it should have been without the deceit and anger and shallowness. Jacob must have clearly relived the moment when he kneeled before his father to receive a blessing which he tried to steal. The guilt feelings had probably never completely disappeared. Here he atones for his sin by blessing Joseph's children.

Jacob gets up when he hears that Joseph is coming. He is weak and almost blind but his mind is clear and sharp. He starts out by recounting his experience at Bethel, where God appeared to him when he fled from Esau and was on his way to his mother's family in Paddan Aram. He repeats the words God said to him in Ch. 28:13-16 - "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.' When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, 'Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.'"

Jacob's quote was not a literal one but he gave the essence of God's promise to him; the main point being that God would make him fruitful and give him the land. Having established his claim on God's promise he adopts Joseph's sons as his own. On the basis of Jacob's words Ephraim and Manasseh later became two separate tribes in Israel. There was no tribe of Joseph. The fact that the total of the tribes added up to twelve is due to the fact that Levi was set apart as the tribe of priests and temple servants.

In vs. Jacob says: "Any children born to you after them will be yours; in the territory they inherit they will be reckoned under the names of their brothers." There is no indication that Joseph ever had more than these two sons. Jacob's words may refer to Joseph's grandchildren. The intent of the words is probably to make a stipulation about the division of the land. Any other children of Joseph would not inherit separately, there would not be three tribes of Joseph or more.

Jacob still harbors the sadness of Rachel's death. His thoughts go back over the time when Benjamin was born at Bethlehem and his mother died in childbirth. The picture of an old man, full of memories of the past, is painted in a beautiful way in these verses. Jacob shows on the one hand deep spirituality and divine authority, on the other hand he still carries with a heavy load of sadness of a long life full of emotional scars.

There is still a place along the road in Bethlehem that is called "Rachel's grave." Whether it is an authentic landmark or not is hard to prove.

Because of his blindness Jacob does not recognize Manasheh and Ephraim. Undoubtedly this was not the first time he met them; he must have seen them at least once when he first arrived in Egypt. Now he takes them on his lap, at least that is the impression we get, and he kisses them. I will not elaborate on the value of grandchildren for fear of getting carried away. Prov. 17:6 says: "Children's children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children," and I say "amen" to this with all my heart. So Jacob has my full attention as he sits there on the edge of his bed with his two grandchildren close by him. I said he must have had them on his knees, but we have to bear in mind that the young men must have been in their twenties. They were born during the first seven years of Joseph's reign and in the second year of the second period, the famine, Jacob came to Egypt, which, at this time was seventeen years ago."

Again Jacob starts to reminisce, and in vs. 11 we read: "Israel said to Joseph, 'I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too.'" Jacob had spent years thinking his son was dead and now he sees how God's promise has come full circle. Joseph is alive and here are his two sons. We feel the deep joy and peace that must have been in Jacob's heart coming through in these words. God knew, and He did so much better than we though!

Then it is Joseph's turn to worship. We do not read that what he did had any spiritual connotation, but the act of his body was an act of worship. We read in vs. 12 "Then Joseph removed them from Israel's knees and bowed down with his face to the ground." He must have seen the same picture his father saw and it brought him again to the recognition how wonderful God's mysterious ways are. Shakespeare called one of his plays "All is well that ends well." What and end! And half has not yet been told!

The following scene is full of unexpected turns, and it is described in great detail. Joseph approaches Jacob and holds Manasseh with his left hand so that he will meet with Jacob's right hand and Ephraim is at Joseph's right hand, so he will stand opposite to Jacob's left. This was done so that the oldest son would receive Jacob's right hand blessing and the younger one the left hand. The way these different positions are painted is very interesting. But when Jacob stretches out his hands he crosses his arms so that his right hand touches Ephraim's head and his left Manasseh. Joseph's approach had been deliberate and well thought through. Therefore he is dismayed to perceive that his father messes up his plans. He has the impression his father does not know what he is doing, and so he tries to prevent the mistake by removing his father's right hand from Ephraim's head. But Jacob is not to be moved. Evidently he knows what he is doing and he persists. So Jacob gives the blessing of the oldest son to the youngest, just as Isaac had done to his sons. Only Isaac had been tricked in to it and had not done it willingly and purposely like Jacob did here.

Another interesting feature is that Jacob blesses Joseph in blessing his children. He says: "May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, The Angel who has delivered me from all harm- may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth." The content of this blessing is of an unearthly beauty. It covers the whole gamma of God's plan of salvation and of His work in human lives. It is a blessing in the highest sense of the word.

First of all, Jacob traces the line of the history of revelation: God revealed Himself to Abraham and Isaac. He is the God of history, the God of promise, and the God of life and of salvation. The promise given to Eve that one of her sons would crush the serpent's head, is the essence of this revelation. He was the one Abraham was waiting for when he expected God to give him a son. He is the one that would come through the channel of human births through the person of Jacob.

Secondly, Jacob wraps up the whole of his life in the words "the God who has been my shepherd." He saw the same connection between his daily occupation with his herd and God's occupation with him as David saw and expressed so beautifully in the 23rd Psalm. We have seen already, in studying the period of Jacob's sojourn in Paddan Aram, that Jacob must have been and excellent shepherd. Laban recognized that he was worth his weight in gold. God is the real shepherd, the only perfect one, the one who lays down his life for his sheep, as Jesus states in John 10:11 - "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." This part of God's guidance Jacob could not understand at that point of history, but we can.

Thirdly, Jacob speaks about "the Angel who has delivered me from all harm." The Pulpit Commentary points out that this Angel is identified with Elohim, and that he must have been the "Jehovah Angel" with whom Jacob wrestled at the Jabbok. It also says: "The first use of the term goel, ... to buy back or redeem, to separate or untie, or to stain as with blood, hence to be stained or polluted, as one who suffers a kinsman's blood to go unavenged, hence to remove the stain of blood by taking vengeance on the murderer. Applied under the law to the next of kin (Levit. xxv. 25; xxvii. 13, 15, 19

&c.), it is also used of God redeeming men, and especially Israel, from captivity (Exod. vi. 6; Isa. xliii. 1). In this sense it was employed by Jacob (cf. ch. xlvii. 16 with xlix. 18) and by Job (xix. 21) to describe the Divine Rescuer who had delivered them from ill both temporal and spiritual, and who was to complete his emancipating work by ultimately ransoming them from the power of the grave. The Goel to whom both Jacob and Job looked forward, and of whom both Moses and the prophets testified, was Christ. (Gal. iii. 11; Titus ii. 14; 1 Pet. i.18)"

In modern Christian terminology we would say: "May these boys find Christ as their Savior."

Jacob continues to say: "May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly upon the earth." Ephraim and Manasseh are emphatically classified as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, because their mother was Egyptian. Jacob's words take away all doubt about their future status among the tribes. As a matter of fact the name Israel would at one crucial point in history be attached to the Northern kingdom of which Ephraim would be the main part. Sadly enough, they were also the first part of God's people to abandon God's revelation. King Rehobeam decided to worship God at the place of his own choosing instead of at Jerusalem where God had promised to reveal Himself. This became the undoing of the nation by which they lost their identity and dissolved themselves among the nations of the world.

It was never God's intention that part of Israel would get lost. He wanted Ephraim and Manasseh to be a proverbial blessing. The fact that Jacob's blessing did not hold eternally does in no way diminish the power of prophecy. God's promises are generally not self-fulfilling; without faith there is no fulfillment.

The last verse of this chapter presents a problem. We read in vs. 22 - "And to you, as one who is over your brothers, I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow." There is no account in Scripture of any military exploit by which Jacob would have conquered part of the land. The theories vary as to what Jacob may have meant with the phrase "I give the ridge of land I took from the Amorites." The Hebrew word translated with "ridge of land" is "Shechem achad." We know of the purchase of a parcel of ground by Jacob, which is recorded in ch. 33:19. "For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent." There is also the record of the atrocity committed by Jacob's sons, who massacred the inhabitants of Shechem. It seems doubtful, however, that Jacob would have taken credit for this. As we have seen before, Jacob's sons were probably buried at Shechem. At least this is the tradition Stephen quotes in Acts 7:16 (Their bodies [the Patriarchs'] were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money.)

There is the story of Jesus' meeting with the woman at the well at Sychar. John says about the place: "So he [Jesus] came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph." And the woman affirms the tradition when she says to Jesus: "Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?" (John 4:12.) All this fits together as far as the location is concerned, but the conquest Jacob talks about is not recorded.

When Israel arrives in Canaan the area indicated by Jacob was, in fact, allotted to Ephraim. In Joshua, we read: "The allotment for Joseph began at the Jordan of Jericho, east of the waters of Jericho, and went up from there through the desert into the hill country of Bethel. It went on from Bethel (that is, Luz), crossed over to the territory of the Arkites in Ataroth, Descended westward to the territory of the Japhletites as far as the region of Lower Beth Horon and on to Gezer, ending at the sea. So Manasseh and Ephraim, the descendants of Joseph, received their inheritance."[ 1 ] The city of Shechem was eventually given to the Levites, according to Joshua, "The rest of the Kohathite clans of the Levites were allotted towns from the tribe of Ephraim: In the hill country of Ephraim they were given Shechem (a city of refuge for one accused of murder) and Gezer."[ 2 ]

[ 1 ] Josh. 16:1-4

[ 2 ] Josh. 21:20,21