Or, Jacob Gave Joseph Far More Than He Could See
Scripture: Genesis 48:1-22
Date: May 21, 2017
Speaker: Sean Higgins
From man’s first day on earth God has been a God of blessing. After creating male and female, before commissioning them to do anything, God blessed them (Genesis 1:28). God aimed His effectual, energy-supplying favor on Adam and Eve for sake of their fruitfulness in offspring and in their work.
It’s sometimes hard for us to remember that God is the God of all blessings because of sin. Sin keeps us from seeing blessings, sin keeps us from being thankful for what we see, and sin also means that God doesn’t owe anyone any blessings at all. Sinners deserve God’s judgment, they deserve His curse, and we have seen sinners and the un-blessed consequences of their sin since Genesis 3.
Yet we keep being reminded of God’s gracious choices to give good to some men. He made a lot of men fruitful, but He showed favor to Noah, and then especially to Abraham as God began to make a special people for Himself. Blessing has never about the deserving, it has always been about the LORD’s kindness.
Promises of blessing to pagan Abram were extended to Isaac. Promises to the only child Isaac were extended to Jacob, not Esau, which was part of God’s plan, and which also did not come under ideal conditions. Now it is time for Jacob to extend the blessings to the next generation, and we are surprised by the choice, the grace, and the faith.
Jacob is a key figure in Genesis. His birth was recorded in chapter 25 and his burial occurs in chapter 50; he’s in more than half the book. He is obviously a key figure for God’s people, Israel. The nation is called “Israel” after him because God named him “Israel.” The “names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel” are referenced as such on the gates in the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:12) along with the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (21:14).
Yet for Jacob’s place in history the author of Hebrews gives Jacob only one verse in the Hall of Faith. It’s nothing about his birthright or how he endured Laban or fathered a dozen boys. The one verse is about his death-bed blessing on Joseph’s two sons born of an Egyptian priest’s daughter.
By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. (Hebrews 11:21)
This blessing is recorded in Genesis 48. This is a chapter of promise, precedence, grace, surprise, and faith. The blessing Jacob gives will become a byword, that is, an extreme example, for future generations.
Chapter 47 ended with Jacob not doing well, now he’s really not doing well. Chapter 47 was about Jacob and family bringing blessing to their Egyptian neighbors, chapters 48 and 49 are about Jacob praying blessing on his family. Chapter 48 is the first stage.
The time had been drawing near for Israel to die for a while (Genesis 47:29). Part of his preparation meant getting Joseph to promise to bury him in Canaan. If he’d been healthy enough he might have asked Joseph to move him back, but he wasn’t that strong.
Some time After this , more months or maybe just weeks, Joseph was told, “Behold, your father is ill.” Joseph was working and living apart from his family. An unidentified messenger brought the medical update. For what it’s worth, this is the first time in the Bible that someone is described as ill or sick.
So he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. There’s no reason to think that Jacob hadn’t met these grandsons already since they were born before Jacob and household arrived some seventeen years earlier. They are going to say their final good-byes.
And it was told to Jacob, “Your son Joseph has come to you.” There is another unidentified herald coming into Jacob’s room to announce the arrival of Egypt’s second-in-command. Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed. He took pains and rallied himself together with whatever energy he could muster.
The rest of the paragraph is Jacob’s declaration. His body is failing, but his faith is perhaps stronger than it’s ever been.
“God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.’ And now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, as Reuben and Simeon are. And the children that you fathered after them shall be yours. They shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. As for me, when I came from Paddan, to my sorrow Rachel died in the land of Canaan on the way, when there was still some distance to go to Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem).” (Genesis 48:3–7)
He does three things: 1) remembers God’s promise, 2) adopts two grandsons as sons, 3) remembers Rachel’s death. The three things belong together.
At Luz, the old name for Bethel, El Shaddai personally reaffirmed His commitment to give offspring and land, specifically Canaan, to the line of Abraham through Jacob (Genesis 28). Joseph is one of those offspring, along with eleven other brothers. Jacob is about to bless Joseph by giving him the first portion and a double portion of inheritance through taking Manasseh and Ephraim as sons, as Reuben and Simeon are , Leah’s first two sons. Reuben “was the firstborn, but because he defiled his father’s couch, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph” (1 Chronicles 5:1). We also learn later that Joseph’s portion of land was two-twelfths because Levi doesn’t get any land (Joshua 14:4). Jacob says, ”your two sons…are mind; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine.”
Joseph must have been surprised. There were 51 other grandsons to Jacob that weren’t chosen. But this was a good surprise and he knew the implications for inheritance, otherwise he presumably would have been more possessive of his own heritage, or disinterested due to his position in Egypt. This gives Joseph the firstborn birthright (1 Chronicles 5:2). “By making Joseph’s sons Jacob’s sons, Jacob is in effect elevating Joseph to the level of himself. That is, both men are now ancestral fathers of the tribes of Israel that will come from them” (Hamilton). Joseph, for all his temporal power, knew the power of God’s promise. Any other children would be considered part of Ephraim and Manasseh’s group, though no other Joseph Jr.s are named in Genesis.
Jacob’s recollection of Rachel’s death is not just telling sad stories. He is adopting more boys for her. In generations to come, when the Twelve Tribes are described, three, not two, will be attributed to her.
Now that the legal status of Joseph’s sons is settled, Jacob is ready to make a binding blessing to the boys.
Israel is blind, but he must not be completely blind. He can see enough to know that the boys are in the room, but not well enough to distinguish them. Joseph expresses the more formal thanks, ”They are my sons, whom God has given me here.”
Then Jacob expressed his thanks. ”I never expected to see your face; and behold, God has let me see your offspring also.” It was above and beyond what he could ask or imagine, as the apostle Paul might have said. Neither Abraham or Isaac saw any of their grandchildren that we’re told about. Here were Jacob’s grandsons, now his sons for sake of inheritance, pulled close for him to love on. Joseph removed them from his knees, not that these 18-20 year-old young men were sitting on Jacob’s lap, but that they were both near him as he sat on the bed. This was part of the “adoption ritual…placing them upon his knees, symbolizing his giving them birth in place of Asenath” (Walkte). It is time for the blessing part of the ceremony.
So Joseph brought the each boy back, positioned so that Manasseh, the firstborn, would be under Israel’s right hand for the symbolic transfer of good. And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, who was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands . Moses doesn’t interrupt here, but he will show Joseph’s reaction to this in a few verses. First the blessing pronounced.
And he blessed Joseph and said,
“The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life
long to this day,
the angel who has redeemed me from all evil,
bless the boys;
and in them let my name be carried on, and the
name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac;
and let them grow into a multitude in the
midst of the earth.”
(Genesis 48:15–16)
Jacob looks to the God of his fathers as shepherd and as angel . This is the family line, the family promise. Jacob knew about shepherding, and it makes sense to understand God protecting him and providing for him like a shepherd. The angel is the angel of the LORD, the one Jacob wrestled, who redeemed him or “rescued” him from evil, and he told Pharaoh that his days had been filled with it (Genesis 47:9). May this God bless the boys . May God carry on the family name through them, not the other sons. May God let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth , in Hebrew a reference to “multiply like fish” with swarms. Jacob has adopted and elevated them above the rest in one meeting.
At some point Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the hand of Ephraim and it displeased him . He expected Manasseh to be first, and he must have figured that his dad messed up because he was old and blind. When he corrected his dad, Israel replied, ”I know, my son, I know. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great. Nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations.” Usually Joseph had great insight into the future, but here Jacob, by God’s Spirit, goes against the natural order of things and prefers the younger. Unlike the sort of anti-blessing Isaac gave to Esau, Manasseh is going to get a blessing, but by comparison it isn’t as great as his brother’s.
This is some blessing. In generations to come Israelites will say, “Would that you were blessed like those boys.”
“By you Israel will pronounce blessings, saying,
‘God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh.’”
(Genesis 48:20)
They became a byword, a significant and memorable example. By the time they leave Egypt, they will number in the tens of thousands. God grows them by His grace. They didn’t deserve this favor or fruitfulness.
In the final two verses Jacob gifts Joseph in another way, not just with fruitful offspring but with land. Israel is passing on a special piece of property in the land that will be known as Israel, land that won’t actually be apportioned to the Tribes for over four centuries. Jacob doesn’t mention particular plots for any of the other sons. Whether or not he thought Joseph would move back and occupy this “Shechem,” he wanted Joseph to remember where “home” really was.
”I have given to you rather than to your brothers one mountain slope that I took from the hand of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow.” How Jacob came to possess this mountain slope , which in Hebrew sounds like shechem, property is not clear. He says he got it by sword and bow, which isn’t a reference to the land he bought in chapter 33. It also doesn’t seem that Jacob means the ambush of Shechem by Levi and Simeon (Genesis 34); he disowned their murders and then moved away in fear. He must have taken it during some other unreported event. However he got it, he wants Joseph to have it.
In years to come, Ephraim and Manasseh become a byword of blessing. That means Jacob’s blessing was so effective that they became the measuring stick. Did you want the favor of God? You wanted to be like them.
Jacob blessed them by faith. He could not have imagined, let alone seen with his own eyes, what fruitfulness would come from them.
[W]hat is this! that a decrepid (sic) old man assigns to his grandchildren, as a royal patrimony, a sixth part of the land in which he had wandered as a stranger, and from which now again he is an exile! Who would not have said that he was dealing in fables? It is a common proverb, that no one can give what he has not. (Calvin)
Blessing the underserving is what God has been doing from the beginning. The language of blessing continues into the New Testament and now it doesn’t depend on a patriarch, it comes through Christ to all who believe. God the Father has “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). He “chose us” (1:4) “for adoption to himself as sons” (1:5) and “in him we have obtained an inheritance” (1:11) with His own Spirit as “the guarantee…until we acquire possession of it” (1:14)
When we think about the realities of what believers have in Christ, both now and promised, we ouught to act like it, talk like it, worship like it obviously enough so that unbelievers would say, “I want to be blessed like them Christians.” We’re getting blessed like crazy but too often grumbling like everyone. There is much God-given favor and fruit, and we should live it up. It’s not boasting, because blessing isn’t earned. It’s grace. And we’ve been given a lot.