Chapter Forty-Eight

Jacob adopts as his own the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh

Genesis 48:1–2. After this, Joseph was told: Behold, your father is ill. And he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim [and went to Jacob]. And Jacob was told and said: Behold, your son Joseph is coming to you. And Israel summoned his strength and sat upon the bed. The history of Jacob is now, properly speaking, at an end, and he appears in chapters 48 and 49 only as a testator, transmitting to his offspring all the theocratic blessings, and as a prophet concerning its destiny. The account of Jacob’s blessing of his sons greatly reminds us of a similar account Gen 27:1-41 concerning Isaac’s blessing of Jacob and Esau, also including indications of the interaction of two factors—the natural inclination and love of the father for his children and divine inspiration—and the overcoming of the latter factor over the first. When Joseph, called to Jacob’s side, came to him with his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (each of whom was by this time somewhat over 20 years of age, cf. Gen 41:50), the dying Jacob, “wishing to honor in Joseph the royal dignity” (Rashi), or perhaps, encouraged by the joy of meeting his beloved son, rises and sits, as if to express the importance of the moment.

Genesis 48:3–4. And Jacob said to Joseph: God Almighty appeared to me in 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 you into a multitude of peoples, and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession. Intending to place the two sons of Joseph on equal footing with his own sons, to make them full-fledged patriarchs, Jacob first points to the source or foundation of those rights and blessings which he intends to transmit to his descendants—in those great covenants which he received at Bethel—Luz from “God Almighty” (in Hebrew—El-Shaddai, Gen 35:11-12; cf. Gen 28:13-15); he especially emphasizes the promise about the multiplication of his offspring, since he intends to perform the adoption of his grandsons.

Genesis 48:5–6. 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, like Reuben and Simeon, shall be mine; but the children born to you after them shall be yours; they shall be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance. Jacob purposely restricts this adoption to the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, adding that if other children were born to Joseph, they would not form a separate tribe, but would be reckoned among the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (Joseph apparently had no other sons, Gen 50:23; cf. Num 26:28-37). In taking the two sons of Joseph into the number of his own sons and giving them a share “in the standards, in the dedication of the altar, in the division of the promised land” (Abarbanel), Jacob by this recognizes in Joseph the right of primacy with its double inheritance (Deut 21:15-17)—taken from Reuben for his transgression (Gen 49:4) and transmitted to Joseph not only because of his exceptional position in Egypt, as the sustainer and “prince” of his brothers (cf. Gen 49:26), not only as the beloved son and firstborn of his beloved wife, but also, without doubt, by special providence of God. The kingdom among Joseph’s offspring was given to Judah, and the priesthood to Levi (Gen 49:8-10), but by special blessing of him over Ephraim (vv. 14, 20) it was foretold to him that kings would also come forth from his line.

Genesis 48:7. When I came from Mesopotamia, Rachel died to me in the land of Canaan, on the way, not far from Ephrath, and I buried her there on the way to Ephrath, which is now Bethlehem. In the last hours of his life, Jacob remembers his beloved wife Rachel, the mother of Joseph: she was the constant object of Jacob’s love and at the same time a source of many sorrows, from the time of his courtship of her to her premature death and the fate of her firstborn—Joseph. For the sake of the memory of Rachel, to glorify her name, Jacob, through the adoption of his grandsons, as it were multiplies the number of sons of his beloved wife.

Jacob blesses them

Genesis 48:8–10. And Israel saw the sons of Joseph and said: Who are these? And Joseph said to his father: These are my sons, whom God has given me here. [Jacob] said: Bring them to me, and I will bless them. Now the eyes of Israel were dim with age; he could not see clearly. And Joseph brought them near to him, and he kissed them and embraced them. Jacob, who saw poorly already (v. 10), until now did not notice the presence with him, besides Joseph, of Ephraim and Manasseh, and only now saw them and made inquiry about them; then he expressed a desire to bless them, having first kissed them in a fatherly manner.

Genesis 48:11. And Israel said to Joseph: I did not expect to see your face; but behold, God has shown me also your children. Jacob expresses delight and emotion: he did not expect to see even his son, but God has granted him to see his grandsons as well.

Genesis 48:12. And Joseph removed them from his knees and bowed down to him with his face to the ground. Joseph places both his sons in the position befitting a solemn and significant act of blessing; they bow to Jacob, probably all three of them (Hebrew and Vulgate: “he bowed,” i.e., Joseph; Seventy, Slavonic: “they bowed”), since it is improbable that Ephraim and Manasseh remained entirely passive toward the blessing about to be bestowed upon them.

Genesis 48:13–14. And Joseph took both of his [sons], Ephraim in his right hand toward Jacob’s left, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Jacob’s right, and brought them near to him. But Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, though he was the younger, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh. He set his hands knowingly, though Manasseh was the firstborn. What Jacob had said and done until now did not go beyond the customary order of things in the relations of parents to children. Joseph, following this order, places the elder son on the patriarch’s right side, and the younger on the left. But the patriarch, who once received preferential blessing before his older brother—not without a deliberate divine indication to his father, now, by divine inspiration as well, gives preference also to the younger Ephraim before the elder Manasseh: intentionally, with full consciousness (Hebrew sikkel) he transferred his right hand to the younger (the right hand was also preferred to the left among the Hebrews, 1 Sam 2:19 and others) and his left to the elder grandchild.

Genesis 48:15–16. And he blessed Joseph and said: The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has fed me all my life until this day, the Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, may he bless these boys; and let my name and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac be named upon them, and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the land. The laying on of hands here appears for the first time in the Bible as a sign of blessing and the conferring of grace-giving gifts; it retained this meaning in the Old Testament church (Num 8:10) and from there passed into the New Testament church (Matt 19:13; Acts 6:6). The blessing of Jacob extends both to Joseph himself (the Hebrew text and Russian translation) and to his children, who in both Jacob’s blessing (Gen 49:22-26) and Moses’ blessing (Deut 33:13-17) are combined under the name of Joseph. The very form of the blessing is extremely significant, inasmuch as it expresses the pure beliefs and elevated worldview of the biblical patriarch, who brought the patriarchal period to a close. Here, first of all, is a firm faith in God as the God of the covenant, who required of the patriarchs a holy and godly life and whom they pleased by such a life (cf. Gen 17:1), and Jacob humbly points to the examples of godliness only in his fathers, not in himself; then an equally firm and radiant faith in divine providence, which unites all the moments of human life (Gen 37:35), even the most unfavorable, and resolves them into a favorable whole. More specifically, finally, faith in the Angel-Redeemer from all evils, in the Angel-God (inasmuch as he is compared to God), who once wrestled with Jacob (Gen 32:24). This threefold invocation of God in prayer with a single “may he bless” expresses the thought of the patriarch about the unity of divine action in the world, and then can also foreshadow the mystery of the Trinity. In the immediate sense, each invocation contained a corresponding prayerful wish for spiritual and bodily blessings, which then are all united in the words: “let my name and the name of my fathers be named upon them.”

Jacob gives preference to Ephraim

Genesis 48:17–18. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; and he took his father’s hand, to remove it from the head of Ephraim to the head of Manasseh, and said to his father: Not so, my father; for this is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head. Joseph, supposing an error on his father’s part in favoring the younger grandchild, attempts to correct it in accordance with the natural order of primacy.

Genesis 48:19. But his father refused, and said: I know it, my son, I know it; and he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. But Jacob answers him that his action was fully conscious, and in accordance with divine determination (according to the Midrash, Jacob said: “I know what evils have come from my preferring Joseph, can come now as well, but let God’s will be done!”). Manasseh’s tribe for a long time did not yield to Ephraim’s tribe either in the number of its members or in power, and it alone of all the tribes could divide into two halves, the western and eastern Jordan regions, each of which was very powerful. It was only later that Ephraim’s tribe acquired hegemony in the middle (by geographical position) group of Israelite tribes. From it came the glorious leader of Israel, Joshua, and from Manasseh’s came Gideon.

Genesis 48:20. And he blessed them that day, saying: “By you Israel will pronounce blessings, saying, ‘May God make you like Ephraim and like Manasseh.’” And he set Ephraim before Manasseh. The solemn adoption of Joseph’s sons into the family of the patriarch Jacob, probably was necessary in view of the possible disputes after his death among his sons about the non-belonging to the family of the covenant of Joseph’s sons, as born to him by the daughter of an Egyptian priest. Anticipating this possibility, Jacob imparts to Ephraim and Manasseh a deliberately solemn blessing and even promises them that owing to the actual blessings which his blessing will bring down upon them, it will become a model in Israel for blessings by fathers to children. Without doubt, subsequent generations in similar cases always turned their thoughts to Jacob’s blessing.

Jacob’s prophecy about the return of his descendants to the land of the fathers

Genesis 48:21–22. And Israel said to Joseph: Behold, I am dying; and God will be with you, and will bring you back to the land of your fathers; and I give to you one portion more than to your brothers, which I took from the hands of the Amorites with my sword and with my bow. The power of the blessing of Joseph and his sons, in Jacob’s understanding, will be expressed also in the fact that they will not be absorbed by the life or culture of Egypt, but together with the other descendants of Jacob will be brought back by God to the promised land. In this latter land Jacob provides for his possession a certain portion (Hebrew: schekem achad, Vulgate: partem unam), probably near Shechem (Seventy: Σύχεμ), where Jacob had bought a field from Hamor (Gen 33:19) and where upon the entering of the Hebrews into Canaan Joseph was buried (Josh 24:32; cf. Gen 50:5). The acquisition of this portion “from the hands of the Amorites with sword and bow” by Jacob—a fact unknown from the Bible, but noted by tradition (one cannot, on the contrary, see here with Rosenmüller and others an indication of the Shechem massacre, strictly condemned by Jacob in his time, and condemned by him on his deathbed, Gen 34:30).