Previous Lesson -- Next Lesson
GENESIS 48
Ephraim and Manasseh were elected by Israel as true sons. -- (DATE: Around 1644 before Christ)
DISCOVER Genesis 48: After Israel and his clan had settled in Egypt, the news reached Joseph that his father had fallen ill (probably from old age). Deciding to pay him a visit, Joseph took his two sons to the meeting with his father. There, Israel reminisced about his life so far: He remembered how he had encountered God Almighty in Luz (later called Bethel), where He repeated the promise He had given Jacob’s fathers and said He intended to continue upholding Jacob and his sons. At this, Jacob was overwhelmed and he told his beloved son, Joseph, that he is instating his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim as his own flesh and blood, so that they will inherit from him, Jacob, the heir of God’s blessings, and not from their father Joseph. Any other children Joseph had or would get here in Egypt would inherit from him, but these two Jacob wanted to take under his wing, so that they too would fall under the blessing of the LORD. Jacob also remembered how his dear wife Rachel, Joseph’s mother, had died near Bethlehem, on their way back from Paddan (in Mesopotamia). -- Since his eyesight had diminished in his old days, Jacob had to ask Joseph who the two people were that had accompanied him. To this Joseph responded that they were his sons. Hearing this, Jacob rejoiced. For years he had grieved his son’s supposed death and now he had not only been able to see him fare well but be glad over his offspring also. Thus Israel bade his beloved Joseph to bring his sons before him, that he may bless them. Therefore Joseph took his two sons and directed his firstborn Manasseh towards his father’s right hand and his younger son Ephraim to his father’s left hand. -- But when Israel reached out, he crossed his hands and put the left on Manasseh’s head and the right on Ephraim’s, and asked the God of his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, who had sheltered and shepherded him his whole life, to bless these boys, and let the promise he had made to him and his fathers also be fulfilled in them, and that they would grow into a multitude. -- Seeing how his father had crossed his arms, Joseph tried to correct his father on who of the boys was his firstborn, but Jacob refused his son’s intervention and told him that he knew. Assuaging his son, Israel told him that the blessing would fall on both his sons, but among Joseph’s sons the younger would be the greater. That being said, Jacob nonetheless put both of them above his own natural flesh and blood, for through them his offspring should pronounce blessings, so that all descendants of Jacob should bless by saying that God should make them as these two sons of Joseph. -- Of course Jacob also loved his son Joseph. So he revealed to him that their stay in Egypt would be only temporary, for God would lead them back to the land he had promised him and his forefathers. Jacob finally allocated exclusively to Joseph as a personal inheritance a mountain slope (near Shechem), which he had taken from the Amorites by sword and bow.
PRAYER: Holy God of Jacob, we are amazed at how you acted prophetically through Jacob, when he blessed the two sons of Joseph. First of all you led him to take the two sons of Joseph, born of an Egyptian woman, to be his own sons. Then you led him to put the younger above the firstborn, in a way like he himself, Jacob, by trickery was blessed by his father Isaac with the blessing of the firstborn instead of his twin brother Esau, who was really born first. You took this act of Jacob concerning Ephraim and Manasseh as the truth, when later on the prophet Jeremiah spoke in your name of Ephraim as your firstborn son (Jeremiah 31:9). Finally you spoke through Jacob the blessings, which in later history would become reality: The descendants of Joseph through his two sons became more numerous than those of the other sons of Jacob. We worship you and stand in awe before your power to fulfill your plans in accordance with such acts of prophetic blessing. Help us to trust you in the ways you lead us. Amen.
QUESTION 48: How did Joseph’s son, Ephraim, become the firstborn son of Joseph’s father, Jacob?