After these things, someone said to Joseph, “Behold, your father is sick.” He took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
Parallel Translations
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After these things, someone said to Joseph, “Behold, your father is sick.” He took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
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And it came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
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And it came to pass after these things, that one said to Joseph: 'Behold, thy father is sick.' And he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
Cross-references (5)
Passages linked to Genesis 48:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Genesis 41:50-52 To Joseph were born two sons before the year of famine came, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera priest of On, bore to him. Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, “For”, he said, “God has made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” The name of the second, he called Ephraim: “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
- Genesis 46:20 To Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, bore to him.
- Genesis 50:23 Joseph saw Ephraim’s children to the third generation. The children also of Machir, the son of Manasseh, were born on Joseph’s knees.
- Psalms 128:6 Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel.
- John 11:3 The sisters therefore sent to him, saying, “Lord, behold, he for whom you have great affection is sick.”
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 1. After these things. Moses now passes to the…
1. After these things. Moses now passes to the last act of Jacob’s life, which, as we shall see, was especially worthy of remembrance. For, since he knew that he was invested by God with no common character, in being made the father of the fathers of the Church, he fulfilled, in the immediate prospect of death, the prophetic office, respecting the future state of the Church, which had been enjoined upon him. Private persons arrange their domestic affairs by their last wills; but very different was the method pursued by this holy man, with whom God had established his covenant, with this annexed condition, that the succession of grace should flow down to his posterity. But before I enter fully on the consideration of this subject, these two things are to be observed, to which Moses briefly alludes: first, that Joseph, being informed of his father’s sickness, immediately went to see him; and, secondly, that Jacob, having heard of his arrival, attempted to raise his feeble and trembling body, for the sake of doing him honor. Certainly, the reason why Joseph was so desirous of seeing his father, and so prompt to discharge all the other duties of filial piety, was, that he regarded it as a greater privilege to be a son of Jacob, than to preside over a hundred kingdoms. For, in bringing his sons with him, he acted as if he would emancipate them from the country in which they had been born, and restore them to their own stock. For they could not be reckoned among the progeny of Abraham, without rendering themselves detested by the Egyptians. Nevertheless, Joseph prefers that reproach for them, to every kind of wealth and glory, if they may but become one with the sacred body of the Church. His father, however, rising before him, pays him becoming honor, for the kindness received at his hand. Meanwhile, by so doing, he fulfils his part in the prediction, which before had inflamed his sons with rage; lest his constituting Ephraim and Manasseh the heads of two tribes, should seem grievous and offensive to his sons.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Joseph more esteemeth that his children should be received…
Joseph more esteemeth that his children should be received into Jacob’s family, which was the Church of God, than to enjoy all the treasures of Egypt.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Gen 48:1 And it came to pass after these…
Gen 48:1 And it came to pass after these things, that [one] told Joseph, Behold, thy father [is] sick: and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
Ver. 1. Behold, thy father is sick.] And yet it was "Jacob have I loved." So, "Behold, he whom thou lovest is sick." {Joh 11:3} Si amatur, quomodo infirmatur? saith a father. Very well, may we say. The best, before they come to the very gates of death, pass oft through a very strait, long, heavy lane of sickness; and this in mercy, that they may learn more of God and depart with more ease out of the world. Such as must have a member cut off, willingly yield to have it bound, though it be painful; because, when it is mortified and deadened with strait binding, they shall the better endure the cutting of it off: so here, when the body is weakened and wasted with much sickness, that it cannot so bustle, we die more easily. Happy is he, saith a reverend writer, {a} that after due preparation is passed through the gates of death ere he be aware; happy is he that, by the holy use of long sickness, is taught to see the gates of death afar off, and addresseth for a resolute passage. The one dies like Enoch and Elijah; the other like Jacob and Elisha; both blessedly.
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{a} Dr Hall, Contemp.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain To obtain his venerable and religious father's blessing for…
To obtain his venerable and religious father's blessing for them.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here, I. Joseph, upon notice of his father's illness,…
Here, I. Joseph, upon notice of his father's illness, goes to see him; though a man of honour and business, yet he will not fail to show this due respect to his aged father, Gen 48:1. Visiting the sick, to whom we lie under obligations, or may have opportunity of doing good, either for body or soul, is our duty. The sick bed is a proper place both for giving comfort and counsel to others and receiving instruction ourselves. Joseph took his two sons with him, that they might receive their dying grandfather's blessing, and that what they might see in him, and hear from him, might make an abiding impression upon them. Note, 1. It is good to acquaint young people that are coming into the world with the aged servants of God that are going out of it, whose dying testimony to the goodness of God, and the pleasantness of wisdom's ways, may be a great encouragement to the rising generation. Manasseh and Ephraim (I dare say) would never forget what passed at this time. 2. Pious parents are desirous of a blessing, not only for themselves, but for their children. "O that they may live before God!" Joseph had been, above all his brethren, kind to his father, and therefore had reason to expect particular favour from him.
II. Jacob, upon notice of his son's visit, prepared himself as well as he could to entertain him, Gen 48:2. He did what he could to rouse his spirits, and to stir up the gift that was in him; what little was lift of bodily strength he put forth to the utmost, and sat upon the bed. Note, It is very good for sick and aged people to be as lively and cheerful as they can, that they may not faint in the day of adversity. Strengthen thyself, as Jacob here, and God will strengthen thee; hearten thyself and help thyself, and God will help and hearten thee. Let the spirit sustain the infirmity.
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III. In recompence to Joseph for all his attentions to him, he adopted his two sons. In this charter of adoption there is, 1. A particular recital of God's promise to him, to which this had reference: "God blessed me (Gen 48:3), and let that blessing be entailed upon them." God had promised him two things, a numerous issue, and Canaan for an inheritance (Gen 48:4); and Joseph's sons, pursuant hereunto, should each of them multiply into a tribe, and each of them have a distinct lot in Canaan, equal with Jacob's own sons. See how he blessed them by faith in that which God had said to him, Heb 11:21. Note, In all our prayers, both for ourselves and for our children, we ought to have a particular eye to, and remembrance of, God's promises to us. 2. An express reception of Joseph's sons into his family: "Thy sons are mine (Gen 48:5), not only my grandchildren, but as my own children." Though they were born in Egypt, and their father was then separated from his brethren, which might seem to have cut them off from the heritage of the Lord, yet Jacob takes them in, and owns them for visible church members. He explains this at Gen 48:16, Let my name be named upon them, and the name of my fathers; as if he had said, "Let them not succeed their father in his power and grandeur here in Egypt, but let them succeed me in the inheritance of the promise made to Abraham," which Jacob looked upon as much more valuable and honourable, and would have them to prize and covet accordingly. Thus the aged dying patriarch teaches these young persons, now that they were of age (being about twenty-one years old), not to look upon Egypt as their home, nor to incorporate themselves with the Egyptians, but to take their lot with the people of God, as Moses afterwards in the like temptation, Heb 11:24-26. And because it would be a piece of self-denial in them, who stood so fair for preferment in Egypt, to adhere to the despised Hebrews, to encourage them he constitutes each of them the head of a tribe. Note, Those are worthy of double honour who, through God's grace, break through the temptations of worldly wealth and preferment, to embrace religion in disgrace and poverty. Jacob will have Ephraim and Manasseh to believe that it is better to be low and in the church than high and out of it, to be called by the name of poor Jacob than to be called by the name of rich Joseph. 3. A proviso inserted concerning the children he might afterwards have; they should not be accounted heads of tribes, as Ephraim and Manasseh were, but should fall in with either the one or the other of their brethren, Gen 48:6. It does not appear that Joseph had any more children; however, it was Jacob's prudence to give this direction, for the preventing of contest and mismanagement. Note, In making settlements, it is good to take advice, and to provide for what may happen, while we cannot foresee what will happen. Our prudence must attend God's providence. 4. Mention is made of the death and burial of Rachel, Joseph's mother, and Jacob's best beloved wife (Gen 48:7), referring to that story, Gen 35:19. Note, (1.) When we come to die ourselves, it is good to call to mind the death of our dear relations and friends, that have gone before us, to make death and the grave the more familiar to us. See Num 27:13. Those that were to us as our own souls are dead and buried; and shall we think it much to follow them in the same path? (2.) The removal of dear relations from us is an affliction the remembrance of which cannot but abide with us a great while. Strong affections in the enjoyment cause long afflictions in the loss.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And it came to pass after these things,.... Some…
And it came to pass after these things,.... Some little time after Jacob had sent for Joseph, and conversed with him about his burial in the land of Canaan, and took an oath to bury him there, for then the time drew nigh that he must die:
that one told Joseph, behold, thy father is sick; he was very infirm when he was last with him, and his natural strength decaying apace, by which he knew his end was near; but now he was seized with a sickness which threatened him with death speedily, and therefore very probably dispatched a messenger to acquaint Joseph with it. Jarchi fancies that Ephraim, the son of Joseph, lived with Jacob in the land of Goshen, and when he was sick went and told his father of it, but this is not likely from what follows:
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and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim; to see their grandfather before he died, to hear his dying words, and receive his blessing.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain In this chapter Jacob's dying words are recorded, because…
In this chapter Jacob's dying words are recorded, because he speaks by a spirit of prophecy; Abraham's and Isaac's are not. God's gifts and graces shine forth much more in some than in others upon their death-beds. Here is,
I. Joseph hearing of his father's sickness goes to visit him, and takes his two sons with him, ver. 1-2.
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II. Jacob solemnly adopts his two sons, and takes them for his own, ver. 3-7.
III. He blesseth them, ver. 8-16.
IV. He explains and justifies the crossing of his hands in blessing them, ver. 17-20.
V. He leaves a particular legacy to Joseph, ver. 21-22.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Joseph, hearing that his father was near death, took…
CHAPTER XLVIII
Joseph, hearing that his father was near death, took his two sons,
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Ephraim and Manasseh, and went to Goshen, to visit him, 1.
Jacob strengthens himself to receive them, 2.
Gives Joseph an account of God's appearing to him at Luz, and
repeating the promise, 3, 4.
Adopts Ephraim and Manasseh as his own sons, 5, 6.
Mentions the death of Rachel at Ephrath, 7.
He blesses Ephraim and Manasseh, preferring the former, who was
the younger, to his elder brother, 8-17.
Joseph, supposing his father had mistaken in giving the right of
primogeniture to the youngest, endeavours to correct him, 18.
Jacob shows that he did it designedly, prophecies much good concerning
both; but sets Ephraim the youngest before Manasseh, 19, 20.
Jacob speaks of his death, and predicts the return of his posterity
from Egypt, 21.
And gives Joseph a portion above his brethren, which he had taken
from the Amorites, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. XLVIII
Verse 1. One told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick] He was ill before, and Joseph knew it; but it appears that a messenger had been now despatched to in form Joseph that his father was apparently at the point of death.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain - Joseph Visits His Sick Father
- Joseph Visits His Sick Father
The right of primogeniture has been forfeited by Reuben. The double portion in the inheritance is now transferred to Joseph. He is the first-born of her who was intended by Jacob to be his first and only wife. He has also been the means of saving all his father’s house, even after he had been sold into slavery by his brethren. He has therefore, undeniable claims to this part of the first-born’s rights.
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Gen 48:1-7
After these things. - After the arrangements concerning the funeral, recorded in the chapter. “Menasseh and Ephraim.” They seem to have accompanied their father from respectful affection to their aged relative. “Israel strengthened himself” - summoned his remaining powers for the interview, which was now to him an effort. “God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz.” From the terms of the blessing received it is evident that Jacob here refers to the last appearance of God to him at Bethel Gen 35:11. “And now thy sons.” After referring to the promise of a numerous offspring, and of a territory which they are to inherit, he assigns to each of the two sons of Joseph, who were born in Egypt, a place among his own sons, and a separate share in the promised land. In this way two shares fall to Joseph. “And thy issue.” We are not informed whether Joseph had any other sons. But all such are to be reckoned in the two tribes of which Ephraim and Menasseh are the heads. These young men are now at least twenty and nineteen years of age, as they were born before the famine commenced. Any subsequent issue that Joseph might have, would be counted among the generations of their children. “Rachel died upon me” - as a heavy affliction falling upon me. The presence of Joseph naturally leads the father’s thoughts to Rachel, the beloved mother of his beloved son, whose memory he honors in giving a double portion to her oldest son.
Gen 48:8-16
He now observes and proceeds to bless the two sons of Joseph. “Who are these?” The sight and the observant faculties of the patriarch were now failing. “Bring them now unto me, and I will bless them.” Jacob is seated on the couch, and the young men approach him. He kisses and folds his arms around them. The comforts of his old age come up before his mind. He had not expected to see Joseph again in the flesh, and now God had showed him his seed. After these expressions of parental fondness, Joseph drew them back from between his knees, that he might present them in the way that was distinctive of their age. He then bowed with his face to the earth, in reverential acknowledgment of the act of worship about to be performed. Joseph expected the blessing to be regulated by the age of his sons, and is therefore, careful to present them so that the right hand of his dim-sighted parent may, without any effort, rest on the head of his first-born. But the venerable patriarch, guided by the Spirit of him who doth according to his own will, designedly lays his right hand on the head of the younger, and thereby attributes to him the greater blessing.
The imposition of the hand is a primitive custom which here for the first time comes into notice. It is the natural mode of marking out the object of the benediction, signifying its conveyance to the individual, and implying that it is laid upon him as the destiny of his life. It may be done by either hand; but when each is laid on a different object, as in the present case, it may denote that the higher blessing is conveyed by the right hand. The laying on of both hands on one person may express the fulness of the blessing conveyed, or the fullness of the desire with which it is conveyed.
Gen 48:15-16
And he blessed Joseph. - In blessing his seed he blesses himself. In exalting his two sons into the rank and right of his brothers, he bestows upon them the double portion of the first-born. In the terms of the blessing Jacob first signalizes the threefold function which the Lord discharges in effecting the salvation of a sinner. “The God before whom walked my fathers,” is the Author of salvation, the Judge who dispenses justice and mercy, the Father, before whom the adopted and regenerate child walks. From him salvation comes, to him the saved returns, to walk before him and be perfect. “The God, who fed me from my being unto this day,” is the Creator and Upholder of life, the Quickener and Sanctifier, the potential Agent, who works both to will and to do in the soul. “The Angel that redeemed me from all evil,” is the all-sufficient Friend, who wards off evil by himself satisfying the demands of justice and resisting the devices of malice. There is a beautiful propriety of feeling in Jacob ascribing to his fathers the walking before God, while he thankfully acknowledges the grace of the Quickener and Justifier to himself. The Angel is explicitly applied to the Supreme Being in this ministerial function. The God is the emphatic description of the true, living God, as contradistinguished from all false gods. “Bless the lads.” The word bless is in the singular number. For Jacob’s threefold periphrasis is intended to describe the one God who wills, works, and wards. “And let my name be put upon them.” Let them be counted among my immediate sons, and let them be related to Abraham and Isaac, as my other sons are. This is the only thing that is special in the blessing. “Let them grow into a multitude.” The word grow in the original refers to the spawning or extraordinary increase of the finny tribe. The after history of Ephraim and Menasseh will be found to correspond with this special prediction.
Gen 48:17-22
Joseph presumes that his father has gone astray through dulness of perception, and endeavors to rectify his mistake. He finds, however, that on the other hand a supernatural vision is now conferred on his parent, who is fully conscious of what he is about, and therefore, abides by his own act. Ephraim is to be greater than Menasseh. Joshua, the successor of Moses, was of the tribe of Ephraim, as Kaleb his companion was of Judah. Ephraim came to designate the northern kingdom of the ten tribes, as Judah denoted the southern kingdom containing the remaining tribes; and each name was occasionally used to denote all Israel, with a special reference to the prominent part. “His seed shall be the fullness of the nations.” This denotes not only the number but the completeness of his race, and accords with the future pre-eminence of his tribe. In thee, in Joseph, who is still identified with his offspring.
At the point of death Jacob expresses his assurance of the return of his posterity to the land of promise, and bestows on Joseph one share or piece of ground above his brethren, which, says he, I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow. This share is, in the original, שׁכם shekem, Shekem, a shoulder or tract of land. This region included “the parcel of the field where he had spread his tent” Gen 33:19. It refers to the whole territory of Shekem, which was conquered by his sword and his bow, inasmuch as the city itself was sacked, and its inhabitants put to the sword by his sons at the head of his armed retainers, though without his approval Gen. 34. Though he withdrew immediately after to Bethel Gen. 35, yet he neither fled nor relinquished possession of this conquest, as we find his sons feeding his flocks there when he himself was residing at Hebron Gen 37:13. The incidental conquest of such a tract was no more at variance with the subsequent acquisition of the whole country than the purchase of a field by Abraham or a parcel of ground by Jacob himself. In accordance with this gift Joseph’s bones were deposited in Shekem, after the conquest of the whole land by returning Israel. The territory of Shekem was probably not equal in extent to that of Ephraim, but was included within its bounds.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Sick. Worse than when he was with him before.…
Sick. Worse than when he was with him before. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain Jacob’s sickness. His blessing of his grandchildren. Joseph’s sons.
NINTH SECTION
Jacob’s sickness. His blessing of his grandchildren. Joseph’s sons.
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Gen_48:1-22
1And it came to pass, after these things, that one1 told Joseph, Behold, thy father Isaiah 2 sick; and he took with him his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim. And one told Jacob, and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee; and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed. 3And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz [Bethel] in the land of Canaan, and blessed me. 4And said unto me, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and I will give this land to thy seed after thee, for an everlasting possession. 5And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, that were born unto thee in the land of Egypt, before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. 6And thy issue, which thou begettest after them, shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance. 7And as for me, when I came from Padan, Rachel died by2 me in the land of Canaan, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath; and I buried her there, in the way of Ephrath; the same is Beth-lehem [reason for enlarging the descendants of Rachel]. 8And Israel beheld Joseph’s sons, and said, Who are these? 9And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. 10Now the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see. And he brought them near unto him, and he kissed them, and embraced them. 11And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face; and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed. 12And Joseph brought them out from between his knees [Jacob’s], and he bowed3 himself with his face to the earth. 13And Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand towards Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand towards Israel’s right hand, and brought them near unto him. 14And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh’s head, guiding4his hands wittingly; for Manasseh was the first born. 15And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed5 me all my life long unto this day, 16The angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. 17And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him; and he held up his father’s hand to remove it from Ephraim’s head unto Manasseh’s head. 18And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father; for this is the first-born; put thy right hand upon his head. 19And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it; he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. 20And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim, and as Manasseh; and he set Ephraim before Manasseh. 21And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die; 22but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers. Moreover, I have given to thee one portion6 above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
1. To the distinction of Judah, in the history of Israel, corresponds the distinction of Joseph, namely, that he is represented by two tribes. This historical fact is here referred back to the patriarchal theocratic sanction. In this Jacob authenticates the distinction of Rachel no less than of Joseph. The arrangement is of importance as expressing the fact that the tribe of his favorite son should be neither that of the priesthood (Levi), nor the central tribe of the Messiah (Judah). Only through divine illumination, and a divine self-renouncement of his own wisdom, could he have come to such a decision. It was, however, in accordance with his deep love of Joseph, that he richly indemnified him in ways corresponding, at the same time, to the dispositions of the sons and to the divine determination; and that, in this preliminary blessing, he prepared him for the distinguishing blessing of Judah. If we regard the right of the firstborn in a three-fold way: as priesthood, princehood, and double inheritance (1Ch_5:2), then Jacob gives to Joseph, by way of devise, the third part, at least, namely, the double inheritance. Thus this chapter forms the natural introduction to the blessing of Jacob in Genesis 49 Neither of them can be rightly understood without the other.
2. Contents: 1) The distinguishing blessing of Joseph, especially the adoption of his sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, Gen_48:1-7; Genesis 2) the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, Gen_48:8-16; Genesis 3) the precedence of Ephraim, Gen_48:17-19; Genesis 4) The preference of Joseph, Gen_48:20-22.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The adoption of Joseph’s sons, Manasseh and Ephraim (Gen_48:1-7). Delitzsch. “We must call it an act of adoption, although, in the sense of the civil law, adoption, strictly, is unknown to Jewish antiquity; it is an adoption which may be compared to the adoptio plena of the Justinian code (adoption on the side of the ascendants, or kinsmen reckoned upwards).” The theocratic adoption, however, has, before all things, a religious ethical character, though including, at the same time, a legal importance.—After these things.—Jacob’s history is now spiritually closed; he lives only for his sons, as testator and prophet.—And he took with him.—The sons of Joseph must now have been about twenty years old. They were already born when Jacob came to Egypt, and he lived there seventeen years.—And Israel strengthened himself.—Delitzsch: “It is Jacob that lies down in sickness; it is Israel that gathers up his strength (compare a similar significant change of these names Gen_45:27 : Jacob recovers from his fainting; it is Israel that is for going straight to Egypt).”—God Almighty appeared unto me.—Jacob makes mention first of that glorious revelation which had shed its light upon the whole of his troubled life. He makes prominent, however, the promise of a numerous posterity, as an introduction to the adoption.—They shall be mine.—They shall not be two branches, merely, of one tribe, but two fully-recognized tribes of Jacob and Israel, equal in this respect to the firstborn Reuben and Simeon.—Shall he thine.—The sons afterwards born shall belong to Joseph, not forming a third tribe, but included in Ephraim and Manasseh; for Joseph is represented in a two-fold way through these. After this provision, the names of the other sons of Joseph are not mentioned; it was necessary, however, that they should be contained in the genealogical registers, Num_26:28-37; 1Ch_7:14-19 (Jos_16:17).—As for me, when I came from Padan.—The ואני here makes a contrast to Joseph. The calling to mind of Rachel here would seem, at first glance, to be an emotional interruption of the train of thought. In presence of Joseph, the remembrance of the never-to-be-forgotten one causes a sudden spasm of feeling (Delitzsch). But the very course of the thought would lead him to Rachel. She died by him on the way to Ephrath (עלי would mean, literally, for him; she died for him, since, while living, she shared with him, and for him, the toils of his pilgrimage life, and through this, perhaps, brought on her deadly travail. She died on the way to Ephratah, that is, Bethlehem, after she had only two sons. And so must he make this satisfaction to his heart’s longing for that one to whom he especially gives the name of wife (see Gen_44:27), his first love, that there should be three full tribes from these two branches of Rachel. And thus, through their enlargement, is there a sacred memorial, not only of Joseph, but also of the loves and hopes of Rachel and Jacob. Knobel rightly remarks that the descendants of Joseph became very numerous, inferior only to those of Judah (Num_1:33; Num_1:35), and even surpassing them, according to another reckoning Num_26:34; Num_26:37); so that, as two tribes, they were to have two inheritances (Num_1:10), a fact which Ezekiel also keeps in view for the Messianic times (Eze_47:13; Eze_48:4); although (Deu_33:13) they are put together as one house of Joseph. Knobel, however, will have it that it is the narrator here who must be supposed to make this explanation instead of allowing that the patriarch himself might have foreseen it.—Padan.—Put here for Padan-aram.—Bethlehem.—An addition of the narrator.
2. The blessing of the sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (Gen_48:8-16).—Who are these?—“The old, dim-eyed patriarch interrupts himself. He now perceives, for the first time, that he is not alone with Joseph, and asks, Who are these here? Here again Knobel puts us in mind, in his presumptive way, that the narrative follows the old view, that the uttered blessings of godly men have power and efficacy” (a view which has not wholly died out), and remarks that these young persons ought to have been well known to Jacob. In the Elohistic time-reckoning, therefore, the question was an improbable one (he would say). Then, too, ought the old, and almost blind Isaac to have been able to distinguish his two sons, Jacob and Esau !—And he brought them near.—The emotion of the grandfather grows stronger as he calls to mind, how God had given him joy beyond his prayers and anticipations. He had not even expected to see Joseph again, and now he beholds not only him, but his two children.—And Joseph brought them out.—Jacob, in his embrace, had drawn them between the knees, and to his bosom; for we must think of him as sitting. This would suggest the idea of boys, or of children in the arms, a thing which Knobel has not overlooked; and yet it is self-evident that even as grown-up children, they might stand between the knees of Jacob. The blessing was a religious act, and in receiving it, they must take another and more solemn attitude. Therefore does Joseph draw them back, and kneels down himself, to prepare the sons, and himself with them, for the patriarchal blessing. Hereupon he brings them in the right positions before Jacob. If Jacob would lay his right hand upon Manasseh, Joseph must present him with his left, and, with like cure, must Ephraim be placed before the left hand of Jacob. Among the Hebrews the right hand was the place of precedence (1Ki_2:19). But Jacob crosses his expectation.—Guiding his hands wittingly.—Delitzsch and Knobel are in favor of the LXX interpretation, with which agrees the Vulgate and the Syriac, he changed, crossed his hands; Keil disputes it. The expression denotes a conscious and well-understood act. This is the first mention, in the Scriptures, of the imposition of the hands in blessing (Num_27:18; Num_27:23).—And he blessed Joseph.—In his blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim, “who are also comprehended as Joseph in the blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49) and Moses” Knobel.—God before whom.—The לפניו here is not to be disregarded (see Gen_48:16). It is the God who reveals himself to the fathers through His Presence the angel of His Presence, מַלְאַךְ פָּנָיו Isa_63:9).—Who fed me.—Led me, guided me, as my shepherd, Psalms 23.—The angel.—Compare Isa_63:9. The word הַמַּלְאָךְ has no Wau conversive. Delitzsch explains this as showing “that the separate self-existence of the God-sent angel mentioned Num_20:16, is inconsistent with the idea of his being a medium and mediator of the divine self-witnessing” This is evidently a mingling of the divine and the creaturely which the Old Testament does not recognize. A creaturely angel cannot stand in connection with God as a fountain of blessing (but see Keil, p. 281). It is inconsistent when Delitzsch would here, too, regard the Logos as represented by this angel. It is worthy of notice, that along with this threefold naming of God (which would seem to sound like an anticipation of the trinity; see Keil, p. 281), there is, at the same time, clearly presented the conception of God’s presence, of his care as a shepherd, and of his faithfulness as Redeemer—all, too, in connection with the laying on of hands. We have, therefore, in this passage, a point in which the revelation makes a significant advance.—From all evil.—Jacob could tell of many seasons of sore pressure, in which the prospect of deliverance had almost vanished. They are connected with the names Esau, Laban, Shechem, Joseph, and the famine. The most grievous calamity was the ban of unrevealed guilt, that, for so many years, lay as a burthen upon his house, and which threatened to carry him away into a death-night of anguish; for here, along with evil there is also wickedness, and so the first ground laid for that last prayer “Our Father (deliver us from evil).”—Bless the lads.—“There is expressed here, in the singular, the threefold denotation of God in the unity of the divine being” Keil. And so also in the unity of the divine government,—And let my name be named on them.—The blessing divides itself into a spiritual and an earthly aspect. Here, the first rightly precedes; for the words are not at all nota adoptionis (Calvin), in which case not only would the name of the fathers be unsuitable, but the extinction of Joseph’s name would be altogether out of place; much rather are they to be acknowledged as genuine children of the patriarchs, and so prove themselves to be, notwithstanding their mother was the daughter of an Egyptian priest. The remembrances and the promises of salvation are to be sustained by them and through them. The name of the fathers is the expression of the life of the fathers, and the thus becoming named denotes the realization of that which is verified in these names, that is, the faith of the fathers, as well as the recognition, which, by virtue of them, becomes their portion. To the predominant spiritual blessing there is added the predominant earthly, or, rather, the human, with like force.—And let them grow into a multitude.—The verb דגה is from דָּג with relation to the extraordinary increase of the fishes. And truly shall they so multiply themselves in the midst, that is, in the very core of the land.
3. The precedence of Ephraim(Gen_48:17-19).—When Joseph saw.—Joseph looks to the natural right of the first-born. He supposes that his father has made a mistake, and this, all the more, from the pains he had taken in the proper presentation of the sons.—I know it, my son, I know it.—Joseph, with his merely natural judgment, stands here in contrast with the clear-seeing and divinely imparted wisdom of the prophet, who knows right well that, by his crossed hands, he is giving the precedence of the birthright to the younger son. From his interposition he takes occasion to announce to the father the future relations of the two. True it is that a rich blessing is bestowed upon Manasseh, but Ephraim shall be the greater.—“This blessing begins to fulfil itself from the days of the Judges onwards; as the tribe of Ephraim in power and compass so increased that it became the head of the northern ten tribes, and its name became of like significance with that of Israel; although, in the time of Moses, Manasseh still outnumbered Ephraim by twenty thousand (Num_26:34; Num_26:37).” Keil.
4. The preference of Joseph(Gen_48:20-22).—In thee shall Israel bless.—This rich expression of benediction shall, in its fulfilment, become proverbial, in Israel.—And he set Ephraim before Manasseh.—These words close the preceding narrative, but they belong here, as denoting that Ephraim is preferred only in the sense that Manasseh, too, was to be a great people. It was, moreover, a single tribe that again branched into two great districts, having separate inheritances on each side of Jordan.—And God shall bring you again.—This was, for Joseph and his children, a great promise and dispensation: Notwithstanding their Egyptian relations they are not to complete their history in Egypt.—Moreover, I have given unto thee one portion.—Jos_17:44. We may well suppose that שְׁכֶם is a play of words upon Shechem, which lay in the district of Joseph (Jos_21:11), and where, at a later day, the bones of Joseph himself were interred in the field purchased by Jacob (Gen_33:19). This is to be inferred from the great importance that Shechem attained in the later history of Israel; but not at all, as Von Bohlen and others suppose, that there is reference here to an actual occupation of Shechem, on the ground that Jacob had afterwards appropriated to himself the act of his sons. The perfect, לָקַחְתּי, is used in a prophetic sense. Keil: “The words cannot be referred to the purchase at Shechem (Gen_33:19), for a forcible taking by sword and bow cannot be called a purchase;7 much less can they relate to the wicked robbery perpetrated by Jacob’s sons (Gen_34:25); for Jacob could not possibly take to himself, as his own act, this evil deed for which he lays a curse upon Simeon and Levi (Gen_49:6)—to say nothing of the fact that the robbery had, for its consequence, not the occupation of this city, but the withdrawal of Jacob from the country. Moreover, the conquest of that district would have been in entire contrariety to the character of the patriarchal history, which consists in renunciation of self-willed human works, and in resigned believing hope in the God of the promise (Delitzsch)” Nevertheless, this connection of Jacob’s prediction with the time then present, is not without significance. There appears here, in an isolated form, the first indication that the Israelites, in their return out of Egypt (when the iniquity of the Amorites shall have become full, Gen_15:16), should acquire lands by conquest with sword and bow. This foresight of Jacob, however, may have had its suggestive origin in the thought, how two of his sons, in a religious yet unholy zeal, had once conquered the entire city of Shechem. In the germinal fanaticism of such “sons of thunder,” the prophetic eye discerns the seed of a future purer heroism. Thus regarded, the private acquisitions of the patriarchs in Hebron, and especially in Shechem, are a kind of symbolical occupation of the land, in which the promise of God is typically realized. Beyond all, in this respect, is the designation of Canaan as the home of Israel, and the strengthening of its home-feeling, as that by which, at a later day, the march of Israel, after the migration from Egypt, is directed. And so, too, the prediction of Jacob becomes the first established point for the future partition of Canaan, causing that Joseph’s children, especially the Ephraimites, would, at all events, be pointed by a well-understood indication, to the land of Shechem. On this account, too, might it have been said, in later times (Joh_4:5), that Jacob had given his field at Shechem to his son Joseph. That pointing, however, must have exerted an influence in the whole partition of the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes.—The Amorite.—A poetical name for Canaanites generally.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. In the decline of life, the believer looks cheerfully back upon his entire experiences of the grace of God, that he may thereby quicken his hopes and prospects for the future, and for eternity.
2. The adoption had for its aim not only to incorporate into the people of Israel the sons of Joseph who had been born in Egyptian relations—not only to honor and glorify Rachel in her children—not only to assign to Joseph the double inheritance as the third part of the birthright—but also to keep full the tribes to the number twelve. By the adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh, there is also, already, introduced the spiritual distribution of the tribe of Levi among all the tribes; although this turn of things can only indicate such a dispersion (Genesis 49). The historical compensation between the line of Leah and that of Rachel, is indicated in this blessing, as in later times there appears the contrast between Ephraim and Judah. The Messiah, indeed, is to come from the tribe of Judah; but the first elements of his Church, to say the least, came out of Galilee, the district of the ten tribes, and Paul was from the tribe of Benjamin.
3. The crosswise position of Jacob’s hands has been interpreted allegorically of the cross of Christ. On this account has the occasional appearing of the cross figure been regarded as momentous; and yet, without reason, unless there is kept in view the general idea, namely, that one direction, or determination, has been thwarted by an opposing one; as here the natural expectation of Joseph in respect to Manasseh. In the symbolical sense, the form of the blessing here carries with it no theocratic destiny of sorrow.
4. Here first appears the imposition of hands in its great significance for the kingdom of God. The evident effect, outwardly, is that Jacob makes a difference in the value of the blessing for both sons. It is, in the first feature, a symbolic of the blessing, through the symbol of the hand, especially the right. Then there is a theocratic inauguration and investiture. The grandchildren of Jacob are raised to the condition of sons. Thus, afterwards, does the imposition of hands denote a legal consecration, Num_27:18-23; Deu_34:9. The impartation thereby of an actual power of blessing, appears already in the Old Testament, in its typical beginnings; but in the New Testament it comes forth in its full significance, Mat_19:13; Act_6:6. The idea in common of the different applications of the imposition of hands, is the transfer, or traduction, of the community of life through the hand. Through this, the animal offerings became symbolical resignations of human life, and so, inversely, the sick were restored to health. See the article “Imposition of Hands,” Herzog’s Real-Encyclopedia; also Keil, p. 281. On the significance of the hand see also the citations from Passavant by Schröder.
5. On the great place of Ephraim in the life and history of Israel, compare the History of the Old Testament.
6. The blessing of Joseph’s sons is throughout denoted as a blessing of Joseph himself in his sons. We cannot say that this was because Joseph had become an Egyptian. Such service had no more taken away his theocratic investiture, than the foreign position of Nehemiah and Daniel had done in their cases. Even Joseph’s bones still belonged to Israel.
7. It is incorrect to regard the effect of Jacob’s benediction as a representation merely of Hebrew antiquity; and so is it also when we regard the prophetic significance and power of the benediction alone, as a positive addition to the authority of the divine promise. The divine promise reveals itself even in the human life germs. Ephraim’s future lay in the core of Ephraim’s life, as laid there by God.
8. The elevated glow of Jacob’s spirit, as it lights up on the hearth of his dead natural life, his eagle-like clairvoyance with his darkened eye-sight, reminds us of the similar example in the blessing of Isaac. The fact of a state of being raised high above the conditions of old age, meets us here in even a still stronger degree. The possibility and inner truth of such a contrast, wherein the future life already seems to present itself, is confirmed by manifold facts in the life of old men when pious and spiritually quickened.
9. In the threefold designation of God in the blessing of Jacob, Keil, without reason, finds an anticipation of the trinity (p. 281). But, in fact, this is the first place in which the previous duality of Jehovah and his angel begins to assume something of a trinitarian form. That, however, which is to be regarded, in its general aspect, is the unfolding of the revelation consciousness in the blessings before us, especially the appearance of that conception of deliverance from all evil.
10. The prophetic bestowment of territory on Joseph, at the close of the blessing, is the first indication that Israel shall conquer Canaan by the sword and the bow. The allusion to Shechem can only be regarded as the crystallization-point for the whole Israelitish acquisition. If Shechem is to be a portion for Ephraim, Judah must be transferred to the south, and find its point, of holding (its habendum et tenendum) in the grave of Abraham. These determinations have others for their necessary consequences.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The benedictions of Jacob.—Jacob almost blind, yet with an eagle glance in the light of God—Joseph left out in the numbering of the brethren, yet obtains his blessing before them.—Joseph’s double inheritance.—The settlement of the birthright in Israel: 1. In correspondence with the facts, or the diverse gifts of God; 2. as a prevention of envy on the one side, or of pride on the other; 3. an indication of the divine source of the true, or spiritual, birthright; 4. a preparation for the universal priesthood of the people of God.—The blessing of Jacob as given to Ephraim and Manasseh: 1. The names; 2. the fulness; 3. the certainty.
1. The adoption of Joseph’s sons (Gen_48:1-7). Starke: Here, for the first time, is Ephraim preferred to Manasseh.—Herewith, therefore, is the first privilege of the birthright, namely, the double inheritance, taken from Reuben and given to the two sons of Joseph, in the same manner as the princehood, and the magisterial power, is given to the tribe of Judah, and the priesthood to Levi.—The duty of visiting the sick, of ordering one’s own household, of remembering kindred and friends when dead.—Calwer Handbuch: Observe how the names of Israel and Jacob are changed.—When the spirit is elevated and strong, the sick body gets a new power of life, especially for the transaction of high and holy duties.
Gen_48:3. Canaan; ever Canaan. Egypt was only his transition-point, and so it must be for Joseph.—Schröder: They who are blessed of God can bless in turn.
2. The blessing of the sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (48:8-16). Starke: The laying on of hands in the various applications. Among others, in the condemnation of a malefactor (Lev_24:14; Hist. Susanna, Genesis 48:34.) [As far as concerns this kind of hand-imposition, it expresses merely that the witnesses feel themselves stained with the guilt of the accused, and this guilt, with its stain, they would lay upon his head (see Lev_5:1). A still deeper comprehension of this act of laying on the hands, makes it an acknowledgment of human community in the guilt, and a symbolical carrying over of a penitent guilt-consciousness to the guilty, as that which can alone impart to punishment a reconciling character. On the meaning of Goel (גּוֹאֵל), see the Dictionaries.]—Christians are called that they may inherit the blessing.—Calwer Handbuch: Though born in a foreign land, they are engrafted into the patriarchal stem.—Schröder: Ha-Elohim, who fed me, or was my shepherd; a form of speech dear to all the patriarchs, and, in the deepest sense, to Jacob on account of his shepherd life with Laban (Psa_119:176).—Heim: He is my redeemer (or, who redeemed me), my goel. It is the word that Job uses (Job_19:25), when he says, “I know that my redeemer liveth”
3. The precedence of Ephraim (Gen_48:17-19). Starke: How God sometimes prefers the younger to the elder, we may see in the case of Shem who was preferred to Japheth, in the case of Isaac who was preferred to Ishmael, of Jacob who was preferred to Esau, of Judah and Joseph who were preferred to Reuben, of Moses who was preferred to Aaron, and finally, of David, who was preferred to all his brethren. God set thee: a form of speech to this day in use among the Jews. As they greet with it men and their young companions, so it is also said to wives and young women: God make thee as Sarah and Rebecca.—Cramer: Human wisdom cannot, in divine things, accommodate itself to the foreknowledge, the election, and the calling of God; but must ever mingle with them its own works, character, and merit.
Gen_48:10. Cramer: When God speaks, the deed must follow.—Schröder: He fancies that the dimness of his father’s eyes may deceive him, even as he once deceived his father Isaac.
4. The preference of Joseph (Gen_48:20-22). God distributes his gifts as he wills; in so doing he wrongs no man.
Gen_48:22. Citation of various interpretations (some hold that sword and bow mean merely the impressions on the coin with which he bought the field at Shechem. Rashi explains the bow as meaning prayer. There is also an interpretation of it as prophetic).—My God, let me set my house in order in due season, Psa_90:12.—Schröder: Which I took out of the hand of the Amorite. With prophetic boldness, he uses the past for the future. The prophetic impulse, as it appears in this language, prepares us for that which immediately follows.
[Interpretation of the words Goel, Malak Haggoel, Redeemer, Angel Redeemer. Gen_48:16.—In the Homiletical and Practical, just above, the reader is referred to the Dictionaries for the meaning of these words. Their great importance, both in the patriarchal and the Christian theology, makes proper a more extended examination of them. The primary sense of the root גאל is that of staining, or being stained, with blood. Then it is applied, metaphorically, to the one who suffers a brother’s or kinsman’s blood to go unavenged, on the ground that he himself is stained with it,—polluted by it, as the idea is afterwards applied to the land, or civil community, that takes the place of the individual Bluträcher in the ancient law. Then it is given to him officially, and he is called from it הַגֹּאֵל, or the one who removes the stain by taking vengeance. Hence it becomes a name for the next of in himself, and, later still, it is applied to him as one who redeems the lost inheritance,—being a transfer, as we may say, from the criminal to the civil side of jurisprudence. See Lev_25:25; Rth_4:4; Rth_3:12; Num_5:8. This civil sense could not have been the primary, as it could only come in after the establishment of property and civil institutions. Gesenius, in making it first, is illogical as well as unphilological. His referring it to the later Hebrew, Hebraismo sequiori, has no force. The word is found, in this sense of polluted, in Isaiah, and in the Lamentations of Jeremiah. There having been a few occasions for such use in Malachi and Nehemiah, decides nothing as to the earlier senses of the word. The land-redeeming idea, at all events, must be secondary. It is not difficult to explain, too, how the primary sense might come out in the vivid language of the prophets, whilst the secondary meets us oftener in the less impassioned historical portions of Scripture. Both transitions are clear. The next of kin who avenges, and the next of kin who redeems (buys back) the lost inheritance, is the same person. It is redemption in both legal aspects, the criminal and the civil, as said before. And so the shadow of the word, and of the idea, is preserved in the legal nomenclature of later times. Thus in the Greek judicial proceedings, whether in a criminal or a civil action, the plaintiff was called διώκων, the pursuer, the defendant φεύγων, the fleeer. We find it still in our most modern law language. The words prosecutor and pursuer (the latter used in the Scotch law) are remnants of the old idea, though redeemer has no counterpart.
The term Goel is applied to God, or to an angel representing God, and this makes the derivation from blood-staining, as above given, seem harsh and unsuitable. It has led Olshausen, and others, to reject it when given in the interpretation of Job_19:25, where Job says גֹאֵלֻי חָי, “I know that my Goel, my redeemer, liveth.” It is an appeal there to some one as an avenger of his cause, of his blood, we may say, as against a cruel adversary. Comp. Job_16:18, “O earth, cover not thou my blood,” and the appeal, in the next verse, to “the witness on high” (שָׂהֳדִי בַּמְּרוֹמִים, the same etymologically with the Arabic װַَِױבٌ the attesting, or prosecuting angel on the day of judgment, Koran xi. 21). Whom could Job have had in mind but that great one who was believed on from the earliest times, and who was to deliver man from the power of evil. He was the antagonist of the ἀνθρωποκτόνος or “man-slayer from the beginning” (Joh_8:44), who plays such an important part in the introduction to this ancient poem, or Jobeid, as we may call it. It is this Deliverer that meets us, in some form, in all the old mythologies. He is the great combatant by whom is waged the μάχη ἀθάνατος, the “immortal strife” between the powers of good and evil,—“war in Heaven, Michael and his angels fighting with Satan and his angels.” He was to be of kin to us. The theanthropic idea can be traced in most of the old religions, and especially was it an Oriental dogma. All this points to that ancient hope that was born of the protevangel, Gen_3:15, whatever form it may have taken according to the varied culture or cultus of mankind,—whether that of warrior, legislator, benefactor, or of the more spiritual Messiah as depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. This Deliverer of humanity was to be בֶּן אָדָם, Son of man, and, at the same time, one of the bené Elohim, Sons of God, or chief, or firstborn, among them. The patriarchs knew him as הַמַּלְאַך הַגֹּאֵל, the avenging or “redeeming angel.” The first, or rescuing aspect, however, is earliest and most predominant. The other, or the redeeming idea, in the more forensic sense, came in later. In modern times it has become almost exclusive. In the patristic theology, however, the avenging, or rather, rescuing aspect of the Redeemer’s work, had a conspicuous place. He appears more as a militant hero who fights a great battle for us, who delivers us from a powerful foe, when we “had become the prey of the mighty.” Redemption consisted in something done for us, not forensically merely, but in actual contest, in some mysterious way, with the great Power of evil, who seemed to have a claim, or who asserted a claim, to our allegiance, and whom the Redeemer overcomes before the forensic work can have its accomplishment.
From the two ideas have come two sets of figures, the forensic and the warlike, as we may call them, both clearly presented in the Bible, but the former now chiefly regarded. Hence the ideas of debt, of satisfaction, of inheritance lost and recovered. These are most true and Scriptural, but they I should not have been allowed to cast the others into the shade. Much less should they have led any, as has been lately done, to speak of the patristic view, in which these figures of rescue are most prominent, as “the devil theory of the atonement.” The redemption is explained by both: it is the ransoming of the captive taken in war; it is the paying of the bankrupt’s heavy debt. We owed ten thousand talents without a farthing to pay; but we were, none the less, prisoners to a “strong one” who had to be bound and despoiled of his prey,—or who had shed our blood, and who was, therefore, to be pursued and slain. The forensic language undoubtedly abounds in the New Testament, but there is there, as well as in the Old, much of the other imagery. Thus Col_1:13, “Who hath rescued us from the power of darkness”—the strong Homeric word ἐῤῥύσατο, so often used of deliverance on the field of battle. Compare also Col_2:15, “Having spoiled (stripped of their armor) principalities and powers,”—evil spirits (see Eph_6:12; Joh_12:31). The Redeemer did a work in Hades. It is clearly intimated as a fact, 1Pe_3:19, though the nature of it is veiled from us. He made proclamation (ἐκήρυξε) in Sheol, not a didactic sermon, but an announcement of deliverance. “Thou wilt call,” says Job, “and I will answer” (Job_14:15). The patriarchs waited there for the coming and the victory of the מַלְאָך הַגֹּאֵל, the angel Redeemer. In 1Jn_3:8 it is said that the Son of God came, ἵνα λύση, that he might unbind the works of the devil, that is, free his captives. In Rom_11:26, he is called ‘Ο ΡΥΟΜΕΝΟΣ; “there shall come forth from Zion the Deliverer.” It is the LXX rendering of גוֹאֵל, Isa_59:20, as in Isa_48:20, and other places. The petition in the Lord’s prayer is ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ, “rescue us from the evil one” The rendering deliver would be well enough if the old sense of the word were kept, but probably to most minds it suggests rather the idea of prevention, of keeping safe from, than that of rescue from a mighty power by which we are carried captive; and thus the weaker sense given to ῥῦσαι obscures the personality that there is in τοῦ πονηροῦ, the evil one.
These ideas are as much grounded on the Scripture as the others, and it will not do to treat them lightly, as “specimens of patristic exegesis,” to use a phrase that has been sneeringly employed. John Bunyan may have known little of patristic interpretations, but he was deeply read in the Scripture, and impressed with the significance of its figures. This militant view of the Redeemer’s work is, therefore, the ground conception of his greatest book, the “Holy War, or the Battle for the Town of Mansoul, between Immanuel and Satan.” Such a view, too, is necessary to give meaning to some of the Messianic titles in the Old Testament, besides that of the Goel or Redeemer. Especially is it suggested by the El Gibbor (אֵל גִּבּוֹר) the hero God, or divine hero, of Isa_9:5, who “poured out his soul unto death, and divided the spoil with the strong,” Isa_53:12. It may be said, too, that this militant idea is predominant in Christian feeling and experience, although the forensic is more adapted to formal articles of faith. Hence, while we find the one prominent in creeds, as it ought to be, the other especially appears in the hymns and liturgies of the church, both ancient and modern.
For striking examples of גֹּאֵל (Redeemer, in the sense of rescuer or avenger), see such passages as Isa_49:26, “Thy Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob;” Isa_43:1, “Fear not, for I have redeemed thee;” Exo_15:13, “thy people whom thou hast redeemed;” Exo_6:6, “Redeemed you with a stretched-out arm;” Psa_19:14, “My rock and my Redeemer;” Psa_78:35, “the Most High their Redeemer;” Psa_77:16; Psa_103:4, “who re-deemeth thy life from corruption; “Psa_119:154, “contend for me in my conflict and redeem me;” Jer_50:34, גֹּאֲלָם חָזָק, “their Redeemer is strong, Jehovah of Hosts is his name;” so Pro_23:11, “come not nigh to the field of the orphans, for their Goel is strong.” Compare also Hos_13:14, “I will ransom them from Sheol, מִמָּוֶת אֶגְאָלֵם, from Death will I redeem them; I will be thy destruction, Sheol;” Isa_35:9, “the redeemed shall walk there;” Job_19:25; Isa_44:22; and many other similar passages.—T. L.]
Footnotes:
[1][Gen_48:1.—וַיֹּאמֶר. An ellipsis of הָאוֹמֵר or הַמִּגִּיד one who told. The construction is rare in the singular. It is probably used here, not impersonally, or passively, as some grammarians say, but emphatically, by way of calling attention to it—denoting, perhaps, a special messenger. Rashi gives it as the opinion of the Rabbins that it was Ephraim who was the messenger, and that the same is the subject of וַיִּגֵּד Gen_48:2.—T. L.]
[2][Gen_48:7.—מֵתָה עָלַי. Died by me. It cannot here denote simply nearness of position; for Joseph need not have been informed of that. There is an emotional tenderness in the preposition. On account of me, for my sake;—as Lange intimates, she had borne for him the hardships of the journey in her delicate state, and that had brought on the deadly travail. Or it may be used like μοι redundant, as it is wrongly called, in Greek—Rachel to me, or my Rachel, more emphatic than the genitive would have been. Very near to it, would he Luther’s rendering, starb mir Rachel. The LXX and the Vulgate both omit it, but the LXX adds, Rachel thy mother, which has much, internally, in its favor; since it would seem strange that Jacob, in speaking to Joseph, her son, should call her Rachel merely, just as he would speak of Leah. כִּבְרַת, rendered a little way. Rashi makes it a thousand cubits, or the same as the תחום שבת, the limit of a sabbath day’s journey.—T. L.]
[3][Gen_48:12.—וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ. And he bowed. The LXX render it in the plural, καὶ προσεκύνησαν αὐτῷ and they bowed, or kneeled down before him, that is, Manasseh and Ephraim; as if they had read וישתחוו which is given in the Samaritan Codex. The reading is also followed by the Syriac, and has much internal probability on its side.—T. L.]
[4][Gen_48:14.—שִׂכֵּל אֶת יָדָיו Literally, he made his hands intelligent, that is, did not go by feeling only, in aid of his dim eyes. The LXX rendering, ἐναλλὰξ τὰς χεῖρας his hands crosswise, and the Vulgate, commutans manus, is merely inferential, and requires no change in the Hebrew test. See Glassii Phil. Sacra, 1629.—T. L.]
[5][Gen_48:15.—הָאֱלֹהִים הָרֹעֶה אֹתִי—the God who fed me. It is the pastoral image. The God who was my shepherd,—or, in a more general sense, my tutor, guide, or guardian ruler. Compare the frequent Homeric ποιμήν, ποιμαίνει, to express the kingly relation.—T. L.]
[6][Gen_48:22.—שְׁכֶם אַחַד, See what is said on this in the Exegetical and Critical. See also the very same phrase Zep_3:9 (.with one shoulder, that is, with one consent, or shoulder to shoulder), though its usage there does not shed much light on this passage. Glassius (Phil. Sacra, p. 1985) gives it as an example of the Biblical enigma. The conjecture of Gesenius seems very probable. He regards it as the common word for shoulder, taken metaphorically for a tract of land, from some supposed resemblance, like the Arabic ׃َהַَלָٌ So the English word shoulder is used in architecture. See Webster.—T. L.]
[7][It is, however, so called in the language of the English common law. According to Littleton and Blackstone, purchase (to which the Hebrew קנה and מקנה well correspond) is any mode of getting, or acquiring, lands, or other property, except by descent. Such also is the wide sense of the Greek κτῆσις, κτῆμα.—T. L.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 1. After these things — Probably soon after the…
1. After these things — Probably soon after the events narrated at the close of the previous chapter.
Thy father is sick — Extreme old age, accompanied by any unusual symptoms of physical disorder, would excite attention, and admonish Jacob’s children that the day of his death was near at hand. Accordingly, as soon as Joseph heard the report of his father’s illness he took with him his two sons, and hastened to his bedside. It is possible Joseph feared that the two sons here named, having been born in Egypt and of an Egyptian woman, might not be allowed full inheritance among the sons of Israel. So he would have them obtain the holy patriarch’s blessing ere he died. Manasseh and Ephraim “are here mentioned, as was natural, in the order of age, but the tribes were always designated as Ephraim and Manasseh, since there were ‘ten thousands of Ephraim, and thousands of Manasseh.’ Deu_33:17. Joseph came not simply to pay his dying father a visit of sympathy and affection, but to receive his blessing, and to have his children formally recognised as heirs of the covenant promises from which their Egyptian birth had alienated them for a time. Joseph here remarkably reveals his characteristic faith, and his keen moral and spiritual sense. An Egyptian prince, and the highest subject of Pharaoh, honours and wealth without stint were within his reach for his children; buthe turned away from wealth and power in his manhood, as he had from sinful pleasure in his youth. The family pride that has ruined so many virtuous men had no blandishments for him. His sons were never presented for preferment among the princes of Pharaoh, for he saw grander dignities and riches for them among the despised shepherds of Goshen than could be conferred in the courts of the Pharaohs. He presented his children to be blessed and adopted into the patriarchal family.” — Newhall.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. after these things] A vague description of time,…
1. after these things] A vague description of time, as in Gen_15:1, Gen_22:1, Gen_39:7, Gen_40:1.
Manasseh and Ephraim] Observe the order of the names. Manasseh is put first as the elder.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) His two sons.—We have already seen that the…
XLVIII.
THE BLESSING OF MANASSEH AND EPHRAIM, AND THE RECOGNITION OF THEM BY JACOB AS HEADS OF TRIBES.
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(1) His two sons.—We have already seen that the purpose of the genealogy given in Genesis 46 was not the enumeration of Jacob’s children and grandchildren, but the recognition of those of his descendants who were to hold the high position of heads of “families.” In this chapter a still more important matter is settled; for Jacob, exercising to the full his rights as the father and head of the Israelite race, and moved thereto both by his love for Rachel, the high rank of Joseph, and also by the spirit of prophecy, bestows upon Joseph two tribes. No authority less than that of Jacob would have sufficed for this, and therefore the grant is carefully recorded, and holds its right place immediately before the solemn blessing given by the dying patriarch to his sons. The occasion of Joseph’s visit was the sickness of his father, who not merely felt generally that his death was near, as in Gen_47:29, but was now suffering from some malady; and Joseph naturally took with him his two sons, that they might see and be blessed by their grandfather before his death.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain Genesis 37 - 50
Genesis 37 - 50
On which we shall dwell more particularly. There is not in scripture a more perfect and beautiful type of Christ than Joseph. Whether we view Christ as the object of the Father’s love, the object of the envy of His own, - in His humiliation, sufferings, death exaltation, and glory, in all we have Him strikingly typified by Joseph.
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In Gen. 37 we have Joseph’s dreams, the statement of which draws out the enmity of his brethren. He was the object of his father’s love, and the subject of very high destinies, and inasmuch as the hearts of his brothers were not in communion with these things, they hated him. They had no fellowship in the father’s love. They would not yield to the thought of Joseph’s exaltation. In all this they represent the Jews in Christ’s day. He came to His own and his own received him not." He had "no form nor comeliness in their eyes." They would neither own Him as the Son of God, nor king of Israel. Their eyes were not open to behold "his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of "grace and truth." They would not have Him; yea, they hated Him.
Now, in Joseph’s case, we see that he, in no wise, relaxed his testimony in consequence of his brethren’s refusal of his first dream. "And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it to his brethren;" and they hated him yet the more....And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brethren." This was simple testimony founded upon divine revelation; but it was testimony which brought Joseph down to the pit. Had he kept back his testimony, or taken off ought of its edge and power, he might have spared himself; but no; he told them the truth, and therefore they hated him.
Thus was it with Joseph’s great Antitype. He bore witness to the truth - He witnessed a good confession He kept back nothing - He could only speak the truth because He was the truth, and His testimony to the truth was answered, on man’s part, by the cross, the vinegar, the soldier’s spear. The testimony of Christ, too, was connected with the deepest, fullest, richest grace. He not only came as "the truth," but also as the perfect expression of all the love of the Father’s heart:" grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." He was the full disclosure to man of what God was. Hence man was left entirely without excuse. He came and showed God to man, and man hated God with a perfect hatred. The fullest exhibition of divine love was answered by the fullest exhibition of human hatred. This is seen in the cross; and we have it touchingly foreshadowed at the pit into which Joseph was cast by his brethren.
"And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh; come now, therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit; and we will say, some evil beast hath devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams." These words forcibly remind us of the parable in Matthew 22. "But, last of all, he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir, come let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him." God sent His Son into the world with this thought, "They will reverence my son;" but, alas! man’s heart had no reverence for the "well beloved" of the Father. They cast him out. Earth and heaven were at issue in reference to Christ; and they are at issue still. Man crucified Him; but God raised Him from the dead. Man placed Him on a cross between two thieves; God set Him at His own right hand in the heavens. Man gave Him the very lowest place on earth; God gave Him the very highest place in heaven, in brightest majesty.
ALL this is shown out in Joseph’s history. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him; but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob, (from thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel;) even by the God of thy father, who shall help thee; and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breast and of the womb; the blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors, unto the utmost bounds of the everlasting hills; they shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren." (Gen. 49: 22-26)
These verses beautifully exhibit to our view "the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." "The archers" have done their work; but God was stronger than they. The true Joseph has been shot at and grievously wounded in the house of his friends; but "the arms of his hands have been made strong" in the power of resurrection, and faith now knows Him as the basis of all God’s purposes of blessing and glory in reference to the Church, Israel, and the whole creation. When we look at Joseph in the pit, and in the prison, and look; at him afterwards as ruler over all the land of Egypt, we see the difference between the thoughts of God and the. thoughts of men; and so when we look at the cross, and at "the throne of the majesty in the heavens," we see the same thing.
Nothing ever brought out the real state of man’s heart toward God but the coming of Christ. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin." (John 15: 22) It is not that they would not have been sinners. No; but "they had not had sin." So He says, in another place, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin." (John 9: 41) God came near to man in the Person of His Son, and man was able to say, "this is the heir;" but yet he said, "come, let us kill him." Hence, "they have no cloak for their sin." Those who say they see, have no excuse. confessed blindness is not at all the difficulty, but professed sight. This is a truly solemn principle for a professing age like the present. The permanence of sin is connected with the mere profession to see. A man who is blind, and knows it, can have his eyes opened; but what can be done for one who thinks he sees, when he really does not?
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And it came to pass after these things (i.e.…
And it came to pass after these things (i.e. the events recorded in the preceding chapter, and in particular after the arrangements which had been made for Jacob s funeral), that one told Joseph, the verb rm,aYOw is here used impersonally, or passively, for one told," or "it was told," to Joseph (LXX, ajpeggelh; Vulgate, munciatum est; Rosenm Keil, Kalisch, Murphy, et alii); or probably emphatically, by way of calling attention to the circumstance denoting perhaps a special messenger (Tayler Lewis). Behold, thy father is sick. The word in the original conveys the idea of being worn down or becoming infirm through age or disease, and may suggest the notion that Jacob was now regarded as rapidly approaching dissolution. And he took with him his two sons, Manasseh end Ephraim who at this time must have been about eighteen or twenty years of age (Keil), and who appear to have accompanied their father from respectful affection to their aged relative (Murphy), or to have been taken in the hope that "the words of their blessed grand father would make an indelible impression on their hearts (Lawson), rather than in order to obtain from Jacob "a pledge of their unqualified admission as members of his house," of their exclusion from which Joseph was not altogether groundlessly apprehensive, in consequence of their being the children of an Egyptian mother (Kalisch).
Vers. 1-22.
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Jacob"s dying utterances.
I AN OLD MAN"S SICK-BED. "It came to pass after these things, that one told Joseph, Behold, thy father is sick." In this the venerable patriarch
1. Suffered an experience that is common to all. For nearly three half-centuries had this weather-beaten pilgrim been able to maintain himself erect amid the numberless vicissitudes of life. Strong, healthy, vigorous, and active too, he appears to have been until now, notwithstanding the peculiarly trying and checkered career through which he had passed. But all the while, the rolling years, as they glided softly by, had been touching him with their invisible fingers, and leaving on him their ineffaceable impressions, imperceptibly but surely relaxing his corded muscles, whitening and diminishing his manly locks, loosening his joints, making his step less lithe and firm, and generally draining away his strength. And now, at length, he had arrived where all men must, sooner or later, come, if they have a death-bed at all, no matter how bright may be their eye, or how ruddy their countenance, or how stalwart their frame, or how Herculean their strength, to that period of infirmity and sickness that precedes dissolution.
2. Enjoyed a privilege accorded to few. Immediately that he had fallen sick, a messenger, dispatched from Goshen, carried tidings to the viceregal palace in the great metropolis, and Joseph, his beloved son, accompanied by his two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh, at once descended to express his sympathy and lend his aid. Not to many is it granted, in this world of separations and bereavements, to have all their family around them when they breathe their last, or to have their Josephs even, to put their hands upon the sinking eyelids, and gently close them in the sleep of death. Venerable pilgrim! Much afflicted in thy riper years, thou wast greatly comforted in thy latter days.
II AN OLD PILGRIM"S REMINISCENCES. Learning of Joseph"s arrival, the aged father musters his rapidly failing strength, and, recognizing within his withered bosom the stirrings of the old prophetic spirit, prepares himself, by sitting upright in his bed, for delivering whatever communication should be put into his trembling lips. Casting his thoughts back upon the past with that fond delight with which the aged recall the story of their younger years, he relates to Joseph
1. How El Shaddai had appeared to him at Luz, or Bethel, in the land of Canaan, as he returned from Mesopotamia.
2. What God had promised him on that memorable occasion, that he should grow into a multitude of people, who should eventually possess the land, adding by way of parenthesis, at this stage, that in view of that inheritance to come he intended to adopt the sons of Joseph as his own; and
3. The great affliction that had happened to him almost immediately after in the loss of Rachel, Joseph"s mother, to whose premature death and affecting burial "in the way of Ephrath" the old man, even at that long distance of time, cannot refer without emotion. "As for me, Rachel died upon me in the land of Canaan in the way.
III AN OLD SAINT"S BLESSING. It is probable that, though Jacob had already referred to Joseph"s sons, he had not yet been conscious of their presence, for "the eyes of Israel were dim for age, so that he could not see." At length, however, discerning unfamiliar forms in the chamber, and ascertaining they were Ephraim and Manasseh, he proceeds to give them his patriarchal benediction.
1. The actions of the patriarch.
(1) Requesting his grandchildren to be brought to his bedside, he tenderly embraces them, and kisses them with all an old man"s affection, at the same time giving special thanks to Elohim for his superabundant mercy in permitting him to see Joseph"s sons, and his beloved Rachel"s offspring.
(2) Guiding his hands wittingly, he sets them crosswise upon his grandsons" heads, the right hand upon that of Ephraim, the younger, and the left hand upon that of Manasseh, the elder. Supposing that the patriarch had erred, Joseph endeavors, by changing his father"s hands, to rectify the mistake, saying, "Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head." But the old man replies, thinking perhaps at the moment of himself and Esau, when they came before Isaac for his blessing, "I know it, my son, I know it," but refuses to comply with his son"s suggestion.
2. The contents of the blessing.
(1) The blessing upon Ephraim. This was the heirship of the theocratic blessing, the right of primogemture, the place and power of the firstborn. "Truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.
(2) The blessing upon Manasseh. "He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great.
(3) The blessing upon both. "The angel who redeemed me from all evil bless the lads a promise of spiritual blessing for themselves; and "In thee shall Israel bless, saying a promise of spiritual influence with others.
(4) The blessing upon Joseph. Joseph was blessed in the blessing of his sons, by their adoption into Jacob s family, name shall be named upon them, and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac;" and by their reception of a double portion of the inheritance, I have given to thee one portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow.
IV AN OLD PROPHET"S PREDICTION. Behold, I die; but God shall be with you, and bring you again into the land of your fathers.
1. The time when it was uttered. When Jacob was on the eve of death. It is not at all improbable that the soul"s vision of unseen (celestial and future) things becomes clearer as the obscuring veil of this mortal flesh wears thin; but the power of apprehending things to come, which Jacob in this instance displayed, was not due to such intensified spiritual penetration. Neither is it necessary to suppose that he received at this moment any special supernatural communication. Simply, he directed his dying gaze to the sure word of promise.
2. The substance of what it said. It announced nothing more than God already promised, viz., that he would continue with Jacob"s descendants in Egypt, and eventually bring them up again to Canaan.
3. T he guarantee to which it pointed. This was implicitly contained in the expression, "the land of your fathers." Canaan had been given in covenant to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob; and hence of necessity it would ultimately be restored to their seed according to the terms of the covenant.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Gen_45:27, Gen_45:28) strengthened himself (for the work which, as head of the theocratic family, he now felt himself inwardly moved to perform), and sat upon the bedi.e. he raised himself up to a sitting posture.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh,. . . are…
Gen_48:1-7
Thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh,. . . are mine:--
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Jacobs adoption of Josephs two sons
I.
THE AUTHORITY WHICH HE CLAIMED FOR THIS ACT. He refers to a leading point in the covenant history. God the Almighty, who is able to perform His Word, had appeared to him, had promised to make him a great nation, and to give his seed the land of Canaan (Gen_48:3). God had spoken to him, and this is his authority. On this he bases all the family hopes. The mention of Gods appearance and promise would inspire confidence in Joseph.
II. THE PURPOSE HE HAD IN VIEW.
1. To deliver them from the corrupting influences of the world. Though they had an Egyptian mother, and belonged to that nation by birth and circumstances, yet they were not to be suffered to remain Egyptians. Ordinary men would regard them as having brilliant prospects in the world. But it was a far nobler thing that they should espouse the cause of God, and cast in their lot with His people.
2. To give them a recognized place in the covenant family. This would impart a dignity and meaning to their life, and an impulse and an elevation to all their thoughts Godward.
3. To do special honour to Joseph.
III. THE SAD MEMORIES WHICH AWOKE.
1. They were selected in the room of Jacobs two sons, who had forfeited the blessing. Instead of Reuben and Simeon. They had grievously sinned, and thus lost their inheritance. The portion of Reuben was given to Ephraim; and of Simeon to Manasseh. The grounds of this are given in 1Ch_5:1; see also Gen_34:1-31; Gen_49:5-7; Num_26:28-37; 1Ch_7:14-29.
2. They reminded him of one whom he had loved and lost (Gen_37:7). (T. H.Leale.)
Jacob adopts Josephs sons
I. THE OLD MANS SICKNESS. The pain and sorrow of dying mitigated by the presence and kind offices of dear friends. The joy of Jacob when it is told him that Joseph is coming. He strengthened himself, and sat up. Good news infuse new life. How strong in death are those who feel that Christ, the Great Deliverer, is near.
II. THE OLD MANS MEMORY. In youth hope is strong, in old age, memory. The memory of the aged recalls distant things. The recent are apt to be forgotten. Before the old mans mind memory rolls out the picture of his journey from Padan. Happy shall we be if, among our memories of the past, we can recall an early attachment of truth, &c., especially to Jesus. The past never dies. Memory carries the present forward into the future.
III. THE OLD MANS BLESSING.
1. Valuable. The blessing of a good old man not to be slighted. The blessing of such a man as Jacob most precious. It involved the transmission of covenant mercies. Jacobs relation to the people of God, federal and representative.
2. Discriminating. He distinguished between the elder and younger son. By supernatural illumination he specially indicated the supremacy of the younger.
3. Prophetic. He not only foretold the pre-eminence of Ephraim, but predicted their admitted greatness by all Israel.
4. Practical. He gave, as the covenant owner of the promised land, great material wealth to these adopted children of Joseph. His blessing had the force of law--a last will and testament. The bequest was allowed.
5. Pious. He referred what he did to the will of God. Acknowledged the good hand of the Lord his God, and the angel who redeemed him from all evil. Learn:
(1) The sickness which is unto death will soon be upon us.
(2) The duty of being kind to the sick and afflicted.
(3) To guard the treasures of memory. And take care that there shall be among them the memory of forgiven sin.
(4) To seek to deserve the blessing of the aged.
(5) Above all to seek early the blessing and favour of God. (J. C. Gray.)
Manasseh and Ephraim
We have in this chapter a further illustration of the truth, which runs throughout Scripture, of the first-born being set aside and the younger being chosen. So bent are we upon expecting God to move in our own circle, and according to our ideas of things, that it is hard to dislodge it from the mind. It is well that this law should be reversed, to show us that Gods thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways, and lest we should imagine that grace must always wait upon nature. It is a truth with which we are presented in every phase of our history, that God is constantly reversing our order of things. These crossed hands of blessing meet us everywhere. Like Joseph here, we have some favourite plan or scheme, and we are always expecting God will bless it. He suddenly crosses all our plans and puts before us not only what we had never thought of, but perhaps something we had despised. Or we had prayed for some favourite son on whom we had set very high expectations, when we find God crossing our plans, and blessing another whose talents or abilities we had looked down upon. Like Joseph we are constantly thrusting forward some Manasseh to bless, and God is continually crossing us by taking up some Ephraim and blessing him. Like Joseph, too, we are displeased when things do not turn out as we expected them, but in some very opposite way, and we rush to set God right by taking up some other course of our own. Sometimes we never can understand the meaning of these crossings in life. They baffle us, and we begin to think God is neither hearing our prayers nor caring for us. We are constantly saying as Joseph, Not so, my father; for this is the first-born: put thy right hand on his head. Not this course, not this plan, not this way, not this place--such are some of the thoughts which possess us, and which we are constantly thrusting before God. It needs a lifetimes discipline sometimes to make men see that Gods ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. The soul has to be constantly emptied from vessel to vessel, to be bruised and broken, before it can learn it. Mark, in the next place, the character of the blessing: And he blessed Joseph and said, God, &c. Here we have distinctly the Triune blessing brought before us--the grand source from which all blessings flow. The first clause is that of the Father; the second that of the Holy Spirit; the third that of the Son. God in His threefold Person and office as the Almighty Father, the Supplier of all grace to the soul, and the Redeemer from all evil. From such a source we are warranted in expecting large blessings, even that Ephraims seed should become a multitude of nations, or, as the word means, the fulness of nations. And where and when is this blessing to be fulfilled? It will be fulfilled in Israels own land, when the Lord shall return from heaven the second time as the King of the Jews, to reign over them. And so God declares, through Jacob: Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people, and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. Mark the words, this land; and for an everlasting possession. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. The Turk may hold it temporarily, or any other power, but they are usurpers. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. God gave it them. It is, and is shall be, theirs for ever. (F. Whitfield, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Genesis 48 and 49
THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES
Genesis 48 and 49
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JACOBS blessing of his sons marks the close of the patriarchal dispensation. Henceforth the channel of Gods blessing to man does not consist of one person only, but of a people or nation. It is still one seed, as Paul reminds us, a unit that God will bless, but this unit is now no longer a single person-as Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob-but one people, composed of several parts, and yet one whole: equally representative of Christ, as the patriarchs were, and of equal effect every way in receiving Gods blessing and handing it down until Christ came. The Old Testament Church, quite as truly as the New, formed one whole with Christ. Apart from Him it had no meaning, and would have had no existence. It was the promised seed, always growing more and more to its perfect development in Christ. As the promise was kept to Abraham when Isaac was born, and as Isaac was truly the promised seed-in so far as he was a part of the series that led on to Christ, and was given in fulfilment of the promise that promised Christ to the world-so all through the history of Israel we must bear in mind that in them God is fulfilling this same promise, and that they are the promised seed in so far as they are one with Christ. And this interprets to us all those passages of the prophets regarding which men have disputed whether they are to be applied to Israel or to Christ: passages in which God addresses Israel in such words as, "Behold My servant," "Mine elect," and so forth, and in the interpretation of which it has been thought sufficient proof that they do not apply to Christ, to prove that they do apply to Israel; whereas, on the principle just laid down, it might much more safely be argued that because they apply to Israel, therefore they apply to Christ. And it is at this point-where Israel distributes among his sons the blessing which heretofore had all lodged in himself-that we see the first multiplication of Christs representatives; the mediation going on no longer through individuals, but through a nation; and where individuals are still chosen by God, as commonly they are, for the conveyance of Gods communications to earth, these individuals, whether priests or prophets, are themselves but the official representatives of the nation.
As the patriarchal dispensation ceases, it secures to the tribes all the blessing it has itself contained. Every father desires to leave to his sons whatever he has himself found helpful, but as they gather round his dying bed, or as he sits setting his house in order, and considering what portion is appropriate for each, he recognises that to some of them it is quite useless to bequeath the most valuable parts of his property, while in others he discerns a capacity which promises the improvement of all that is entrusted to it. And from the earliest times the various characters of the tribes were destined to modify the blessing conveyed to them by their father. The blessing of Israel is now distributed, and each receives what each can take; and while in some of the individual tribes there may seem to be very little of blessing at all, yet, taken together, they form a picture of the common outstanding features of human nature, and of that nature as acted upon by Gods blessing, and forming together one body or Church. A peculiar interest attaches to the history of some nations, and is not altogether absent from our own, from the precision with which we can trace the character of families, descending often with the same One knows at once to what families to look for restless and turbulent spirits, ready for conspiracy and revolution; and one knows also where to seek steady and faithful loyalty, public-spiritedness, or native ability. And in Israels national character there was room for the great distinguishing features of the tribes, and to show the richness and variety with which the promise of God could fulfil itself wherever it was received. The distinguishing features which Jacob depicts in the blessings of his sons are necessarily veiled under the poetic figures of prophecy, and spoken of as they would reveal themselves in worldly matters; but these features were found in all the generations of the tribes, and displayed themselves in things spiritual also. For a man has not two characters, but one; and what he is in the world, that he is in his religion. In our own country, it is seen how the forms of worship, and even the doctrines believed, and certainly the modes of religious thought and feeling, depend on the natural character, and the natural character on the local situation of the respective sections of the community. No doubt in a country like ours, where men so constantly migrate from place to place, and where one common literature tends to mould us all to the same way of thinking, you do get men of all kinds in every place; yet even among ourselves the character of a place is generally still visible, and predominates over all that mingles with it. Much more must this character have been retained in a country where each man could trace his ancestry up to the father of the tribe, and cultivated with pride the family characteristics, and had but little intercourse, either literary or personal, with other minds and other manners. As we know by dialect and by the manners of the people when we pass into a new country, so must the Israelite have known by the eye and ear when he had crossed the county frontier, when he was conversing with a Benjamite, and when with a descendant of Judah. We are not therefore to suppose that any of these utterances of Jacob are mere geographical predictions, or that they depict characteristics which might appear in civil life, but not in religion and the Church, or that they would die out with the first generation.
In these blessings, therefore, we have the history of the Church in its most interesting form. In these sons gathered round him, the patriarch sees his own nature reflected piece by piece, and he sees also the general outline of all that must be produced by such natures as these men have. The whole destiny of Israel is here in germ, and the spirit of prophecy in Jacob sees and declares it. It has often been remarked that as a man draws near to death, he seems to see many things in a much clearer light, and especially gets glimpses into the future, which are hidden from others.
"The souls dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made."
Being nearer to eternity, he instinctively measures things by its standard, and thus comes nearer a just valuation of all things before his mind, and can better distinguish reality from appearance. Jacob has studied these sons of his for fifty years, and has had his acute perception of character painfully enough called to exercise itself on them. He has all his life long had a liking for analysing men s rune life, knowing that, when he understands that, he can better use them for his own ends; and these sons of his own have cost him thought over and above that sometimes penetrating interest which a father win take in the growth of a sons character; and now he knows them thoroughly, understands their temptations, their weaknesses, their capabilities, and, as a wise head of a house, can, with delicate and unnoticed skill, balance the one against the other, ward off awkward collisions, and prevent the evil from destroying the good. This knowledge of Jacob prepares him for being the intelligent agent by whom God predicts in outline the future of His Church.
One cannot but admire, too, the faith which enables Jacob to apportion to his sons the blessings of a land which had not been much of a resting-place to himself, and regarding the occupation of which his sons might have put to him some very difficult questions. And we admire this dignified faith the more on reflecting that it has often been very grievously lacking in our own case-that we have felt almost ashamed of having so little of a present tangible kind to offer, and of being obliged to speak only of invisible and future blessings; to set a spiritual consolation over against a worldly grief; to point a man whose fortunes are ruined to an eternal inheritance; or to speak to one who knows himself quite in the power of sin of a remedy which has often seemed illusory to ourselves. Some of us have got so little comfort or strength from religion ourselves, that we have no heart to offer it to others; and most of us have a feeling that we should seem to trifle were we to offer invisible aid against very visible calamity. At least we feel that we are doing a daring thing in making such an offer, and can scarce get over the desire that we had something to speak of which sight could appreciate, and which did not require the exercise of faith. Again and again the wish rises within us that to the sick man we could bring health as well as the promise of forgiveness, and that to the poor we could grant an earthly, while we make known a heavenly, inheritance. One who has experienced these scruples, and known how hard it is to get rid of them, will know also how to honour the faith of Jacob, by which he assumes the right to bless Pharaoh-though he is himself a mere sojourner by sufferance in Pharaohs land, and living on his bounty-and by which he gathers his children round him and portions out to them a land which seemed to have been most barren to himself, and which now seemed quite beyond his reach. The enjoyments of it, which he himself had not very deeply tasted, he yet knew were real; and if there were a look of scepticism, or of scorn, on the face of any one of his sons; if the unbelief of any received the prophetic utterances as the ravings of delirium, or the fancies of an imbecile and worn-out mind going back to the scenes of its youth, in Jacob himself there was so simple and unsuspecting a faith in Gods promise, that he dealt with the land as if it were the only portion worth bequeathing to his sons, as if every Canaanite were already cast out of it, and as if he knew his sons could never be tempted by the wealth of Egypt to turn with contempt from the land of promise. And if we would attain to this boldness of his, and be able to speak of spiritual and future blessings as very substantial and valuable, we must ourselves learn to make much of Gods promise, and leave no taint of unbelief in our reception of it.
And often we are rebuked by finding that when we do offer things spiritual, even those who are wrapped in earthly comforts appreciate and accept the better gifts. So it was in Josephs case. No doubt the highest posts in Egypt were open to his sons; they might have been naturalised, as he himself had been, and, throwing in their lot with the land of their adoption, might have turned to their advantage the rank their father held, and the reputation he had earned. But Joseph turns from this attractive prospect, brings them to his father, and hands them over to the despised shepherd-life of Israel. One need scarcely point out how great a sacrifice this was on Josephs part. So universally acknowledged and legitimate a desire is it to pass to ones children the honour achieved by a life of exertion, that states have no higher rewards to confer on their most useful servants than a title which their descendants may wear. But Joseph would not suffer his children to risk the loss of their share in Gods peculiar blessing, not for the most promising openings in life, or the highest civil honours. If the thoroughly open identification of them with the shepherds, and their profession of a belief in a distant inheritance, which must have made them appear madmen in the eyes of the Egyptians, if this was to cut them off from worldly advancement, Joseph was not careful of this, for resolved he was that, at any cost, they should be among Gods people. And his faith received its reward; the two tribes that sprang from him received about as large a portion of the promised land as fell to the lot of all the other tribes put together.
You will observe that Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted as sons of Jacob. Jacob tells Joseph, "They shall be mine," not my grandsons, but as Reuben and Simeon. No other sons whom Joseph might have were to be received into this honour, but these two were to take their place on a level with their uncle, as heads of tribes, so that Joseph is represented through the whole history by the two populous and powerful tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. No greater honour could have been put on Joseph, nor any more distinct and lasting recognition made of the indebtedness of his family to him, and of how he had been as a father bringing new life to his brethren, than this, that his sons should be raised to the rank of heads of tribes, on a level with the immediate sons of Jacob. And no higher honour could have been put on the two lads themselves than that they should thus be treated as if they were their father Joseph-as if they had his worth and his rank. He is merged in them, and all that he has earned is, throughout the history, to be found, not in his own name, but in theirs. It all proceeds from him; but his enjoyment is found in their enjoyment, his worth acknowledged in their fruitfulness. Thus did God familiarise the Jewish mind through its whole history with the idea, if they chose to think and have ideas, of adoption, and of an adoption of a peculiar kind, of an adoption where already there was an heir who, by this adoption, has his name and worth merged in the persons now received into his place. Ephraim and Manasseh were not received alongside. of Joseph, but each received what Joseph himself might have had, and Josephs name as a tribe was henceforth only to be found in these two. This idea was fixed in such a way, that for centuries it was steeping into the minds of men, so that they might not be astonished if God should in some other case, say the case of His own Son, adopt men into the rank He held, and let His estimate of the worth of His Son, and the honour He puts upon Him, be seen in the adopted. This being so, we need not be alarmed if men tell us that imputation is a mere legal fiction, or human invention; a legal fiction it may be, but in the case before us it was the never-disputed foundation of very substantial blessings to Ephraim and Manasseh; and we plead for nothing more than that God would act with us as here He did act with these two, that He would make us His direct heirs, make us His own sons, and give us what He who presents us to Him to receive His blessing did earn, and merits at the Fathers hand.
We meet with these crossed hands of blessing frequently in Scripture; the younger son blessed above the elder-as was needful, lest grace should become confounded with nature, and the belief gradually grow up in mens minds that natural effects could never be overcome by grace, and that in every respect grace waited upon nature. And these crossed hands we meet still; for how often does God quite reverse our order, and bless most that about which we had less concern, and seem to put a slight on that which has engrossed our best affection. It is so, often in precisely the way in which Joseph found it so; the son whose youth is most anxiously cared for, to whom the interests of the younger members of the family are sacrificed, and who is commended to God continually to receive His right-hand blessing, this son seems neither to receive nor to dispense much blessing; but the younger, less thought of, left to work his own way, is favoured by God, and becomes the comfort and support of his parents when the elder has failed of his duty. And in the case of much that we hold dear, the same rule is seen; a pursuit we wish to be successful in we can make little of, and are thrown back from continually, while something else into which we have thrown ourselves almost accidentally prospers in our hand and blesses us. Again and again, for years together, we put forward some cherished desire to Gods right hand, and are displeased, like Joseph, that still the hand of greater blessing should pass to some other thing. Does God not know what is oldest with us, what has been longest at our hearts, and is dearest to us? Certainly He does: "I know it, My son, I know it," He answers to all our expostulations. It is not because He does not understand or regard your predilections, your natural and excusable preferences, that He sometimes refuses to gratify your whole desire, and pours upon you blessings of a kind somewhat different from those you most. earnestly covet. He will give you the whole that Christ hath merited; but for the application and distribution of that grace and blessing you must be content to trust Him.
You may be at a loss to know why He does no more to deliver you from some sin, or why He does not make you more successful in your efforts to aid others, or why, while He so liberally prospers you in one part of your condition, you get so much less in another that is far nearer your heart; but God does what He will with His own, and if you do not find in one point the whole blessing and prosperity you think should flow from such a Mediator as you have, you may only conclude that what is lacking there will elsewhere be found more wisely bestowed. And is it not a perpetual encouragement to us that God does not merely crown what nature has successfully begun, that it is not the likely and the naturally good that are most blessed, but that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are? In Reuben, the firstborn, conscience must have been sadly at war with hope as he looked at the blind, but expressive, face of his father. He may have hoped that his sin had not been severely thought of by his father, or that the fathers pride in his first-born would prompt him to hide, though it could not make him forget it. Probably the gross offence had not been made known to the family. At least, the words "he went up" may be understood as addressed in explanation to the brethren. It may indeed have been that the blind old man, forcibly recalling the long-past transgression, is here uttering a mournful, regretful soliloquy, rather than addressing any one. It may be that these words were uttered to himself as he went back upon the one deed that had disclosed to him his sons real character, and rudely hurled to the ground all the hopes he had built up for his first-born. Yet there is no reason to suppose, on the other hand, that the sin had been previously known or alluded to in the family. Reubens hasty, passionate nature could not understand that if Jacob had felt that sin of his deeply, he should not have shown his resentment; he had stunned his father with the heavy blow, and because he did not cry out and strike him in return, he thought him little hurt. So do shallow natures tremble for a night after their sin, and when they find that the sun rises and men greet them as cordially as before, and that no hand lays hold on them from the past, they think little more of their sin-do not understand that fatal calm that precedes the storm. Had the memory of Reubens sin survived in Jacobs mind all the sad events that had since happened, and all the stirring incidents of the emigration and the new life in Egypt? Could his father at the last hour, and after so many thronged years, and before his brethren, recall the old sin? He is relieved and confirmed in his confidence by the first words of Jacob, words ascribing to him his natural position, a certain conspicuous dignity too, and power such as one may often see produced in men by occupying positions of authority, though in their own character there be weakness. But all the excellence that Jacob ascribes to Reuben serves only to embitter the doom pronounced upon him. Men seem often to expect that a future can be given to them irrespective of what they themselves are, that a series of blessings and events might be prepared for them and made over to them; whereas every mans future must be made by himself, and Is already in great part formed by the past. It was a vain expectation of Reuben to expect that he, the impetuous, unstable, superficial son, could have the future of a deep, and earnest, and dutiful nature, or that his children should derive no taint from their parent, but be as the children of Joseph. No mans future need be altogether a doom to him, for God may bless to him the evil fruit his life has borne; but certainly no man need look for a future which has no relation to, his own character. His future will always be made up of his deeds, his feelings, and the circumstances which his desires have brought him into.
The future of Reuben was of a negative, blank kind-"Thou shalt not excel"; his unstable character must empty it of all great success. And to many a heart since have these words struck a chill, for to many they are as a mirror suddenly held up before them. They see themselves when they look on the tossing sea, rising and pointing to the heavens with much noise, but only to sink back again to the same everlasting level. Men of brilliant parts and great capacity are continually seen to be lost to society by instability of purpose. Would they only pursue one direction, and concentrate their energies on one subject, they might become true heirs of promise, blessed and blessing; but they seem to lose relish for every pursuit on the first taste of success-all their energy seems to have boiled over and evaporated in the first glow, and sinks as the water that has just been noisily boiling when the fire is withdrawn from under it. No impression made upon them is permanent: like water, they are plastic, easily impressible, but utterly incapable of retaining an impression; and therefore, like water, they have a downward tendency, or at the best are but retained in their place by pressure from without, and have no eternal power of growth. And the misery of this character is often increased by the desire to excel which commonly accompanies instability. It is generally this very desire which prompts a man to hurry from one aim to another, to give up one path to excellence when he sees that other men are making way upon another: having no internal convictions of his own, he is guided mostly by the successes of other men, the most dangerous of all guides. So that such a man has all the bitterness of an eager desire doomed never to be satisfied. Conscious to himself of capacity for something, feeling in him the excellency of power, and having that "excellency of dignity," or graceful and princely refinement, which the knowledge of many things, and intercourse with many kinds of people, have imparted to him, he feels all the more that pervading weakness, that greedy, lustful craving for all kinds of priority, and for enjoying all the various advantages which other men severally enjoy, which will not let him finally choose and adhere to his own line of things, but distracts him by a thousand purposes which ever defeat one another.
The sin of the next oldest sons was also remembered against them, and remembered apparently for the same reason-because the character was expressed in it. The massacre of the Shechemites was not an accidental outrage that any other of the sons of Jacob might equally have perpetrated, but the most glaring of a number of expressions of a fierce and cruel disposition in these two men. In Jacobs prediction of their future, he seems to shrink with horror from his own progeny-like her who dreamt she would give birth to a firebrand. He sees the possibility of the direst results flowing from such a temper, and, under God, provides against these by scattering the tribes, and thus weakening their power for evil. They had been banded together so as the more easily and securely to accomplish their murderous purposes. "Simeon and Levi are brethren"-showing a close affinity, and seeking one anothers society and aid, but it is for bad purposes; and therefore they must be divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel. This was accomplished by the tribe of Levi being distributed over all the other tribes as the ministers of religion. The fiery zeal, the bold independence, and the pride of being a distinct people, which had been displayed in the slaughter of the Shechemites, might be toned down and turned to good account when the sword was taken out of their hand. Qualities such as these, which produce the most disastrous results when fit instruments can be found, and when men of like disposition are suffered to band themselves together, may, when found in the individual and kept in check by circumstances and dissimilar dispositions, be highly beneficial.
In the sin, Levi seems to have been the moving spirit, Simeon the abetting tool, and in the punishment, it is the more dangerous tribe that s scattered, so that the other is left companionless. In the blessings of Moses, the tribe of Simeon is passed over in silence; and that the tribe of Levi should have been so used for Gods immediate service stands as evidence that punishments, however severe and desolating, even threatening something bordering on extinction, may yet become blessings to Gods people. The sword of murder was displaced in Levis hand by the knife of sacrifice; their fierce revenge against sinners was converted into hostility against sin; their apparent zeal for the forms of their religion was consecrated to the service of the tabernacle and temple; their fanatical pride, which prompted them to treat all other people as the offscouring of the earth, was informed by a better spirit, and used for the upbuilding and instruction of the people of Israel. In order to understand why this tribe, of all others, should have been chosen for the service of the sanctuary and for the instruction of the people, we must not only recognise how their being scattered in punishment of their sin over all the land fitted them to be the educators of the nation and the representatives of all the tribes, but also we must consider that the sin itself which Levi had committed broke the one command which men had up till this time received from the mouth of God; no law had as yet been published but that which had been given to Noah and his sons regarding bloodshed, and which was given in circumstances so appalling, and with sanctions so emphatic, that it might ever have rung in mens ears, and stayed the hand of the murderer. In saying, "At the hand of every mans brother will I require the life of man," God had shown that human life was to be counted sacred. He Himself had swept the race from the face of the earth, but adding this command immediately after, He, showed all the more forcibly that punishment was His own prerogative, and that none but those appointed by Him might shed-blood-"Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord." To take private revenge, as Levi did, was to take the sword out of Gods hand, and to say that Gods was not careful enough of justice, and but a poor guardian of right and wrong in the world; and to destroy human life in the wanton and cruel manner in which Levi had destroyed the Shechemites, and to do it under colour and by the aid of religious zeal, was to God the most hateful of sins. But none can know the hatefulness of a sin so distinctly as he who has fallen into it, and is enduring the punishment of it penitently and graciously, and therefore Levi was of all others the best fitted to be entrusted with those sacrificial symbols which set forth the value of all human life, and especially of the life of Gods own Son. Very humbling must it have been for the Levite who remembered the history of his tribe to be used by God as the hand of His justice on the victims that were brought in substitution for that which was so precious in the sight of God.
The blessing of Judah is at once the most important and the most difficult to interpret in the series. There is enough in the history of Judah himself, and there is enough in the subsequent history of the tribe, to justify the ascription to him of all lion-like qualities-a kingly, fearlessness, confidence, power, and success; in action a rapidity of movement and might that make him irresistible, and in repose a majestic dignity of bearing. As the serpent is the cognisance of Dan, the wolf of Benjamin, the hind of Naphtali, so is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He scorns to gain his end by a serpentine craft, and is himself easily taken in; he does not ravin like a wolf, merely plundering for the sake of booty, but gives freely and generously, even to the sacrifice of his own person: nor has he the mere graceful and ineffective swiftness of the hind, but the rushing onset of the lion-a character which, more than any other, men reverence and admire-"Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise"-and a character which, more than any other, fits a man to take the lead and rule. If there were to be kings in Israel, there could be little doubt from which tribe they could best be chosen; a wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, like Saul, not only hung on the rear of retreating Philistines and spoiled them, but made a prey of his own people, and it is in David we find the true king, the man who more than. any other satisfies mens ideal of the prince to whom they will pay homage; -falling indeed into grievous error- and sin, like his forefather, but, like him also, right at heart, so generous and self-sacrificing that men served him with the most devoted loyalty, and were willing rather to dwell in caves with him than in palaces with any other.
The kingly supremacy of Judah was here spoken of in Words which have been the subject of as prolonged and violent contention as any others in the Word of God. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." These words are very generally understood to mean that Judahs supremacy would continue until it culminated or flowered into the personal reign of Shiloh; in other words, that Judahs sovereignty was to be perpetuated in the person of Jesus Christ. So that this prediction is but the first whisper of that which was afterwards so distinctly declared, that Davids seed should sit on the throne for ever and ever. It was not accomplished in the letter, any more than the promise to David was; the tribe of Judah cannot in any intelligible sense be said to have had rulers of her own up to the coming of Christ, or for some centuries previous to that date. For those who would quickly judge God and His promise by what they could see in their own day, there was enough to provoke them to challenge God for forgetting His promise. But in due time the King of men, He to whom all nations have gathered, did spring from this tribe; and need it be said that the very fact of His appearance proved that the supremacy had not departed from Judah? This prediction, then, partook of the character of very many of the Old Testament prophecies; there was sufficient fulfilment in the letter to seal, as it were, the promise, and give men a token that it was being accomplished, and yet so mysterious a falling short, as to cause men to look beyond the literal fulfilment, on which alone their hopes had at first rested, to some far higher and more perfect spiritual fulfilment.
But not only has it been objected that the sceptre departed from Judah long before Christ came, and that therefore the word Shiloh cannot refer to Him, but also it has been truly said that wherever else the word occurs it is the name of a town-that town, viz., where the ark for a long time was stationed, and from which the allotment of territory was made to the various tribes; and the prediction has been supposed to mean that Judah should be the leading tribe till the land was entered. Many objections to this naturally occur, and need not be stated. But it comes to be an inquiry of some interest, How much information regarding a personal Messiah did the brethren receive from this prophecy? A question very difficult indeed to answer. The word Shiloh means "peace-making," and if they understood this as a proper name, they must have thought of a person such as Isaiah designates as the Prince of Peace-a name it was similar to that wherewith David called his son Solomon, in the expectation that the results of his own lifetime of disorder and battle would be reaped by his successor in a peaceful and prosperous reign. It can scarcely be thought likely, indeed, that this single term "Shiloh," which might be applied to many things besides a person, should give to the sons of Jacob any distinct idea of a personal Deliverer; but it might be sufficient to keep before their eyes, and specially before the tribe of Judah, that the aim and consummation of all lawgiving and ruling was peace. And there was certainly contained in this blessing an assurance that the purpose of Judah would not be accomplished, and therefore that the existence of Judah as a tribe would not terminate, until peace had been through its means brought into the world: thus was the assurance given, that the productive power of Judah should not fail until out of that tribe there had sprung that which should give peace.
But to us who have seen the prediction accomplished it plainly enough points to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who in His own person combined all kingly qualities. In Him we are taught by this prediction to discover once more the single Person who stands out on the page of this worlds history as satisfying mens ideal of what their King should be, and of how the race should be represented; -the One who without any rival stands in the minds eye as that for which the best hopes of men were waiting, still feeling that the race could do more than it had done, and never satisfied but in Him.
Zebulun, the sixth and last of Leahs sons, was so called because said Leah, "Now will my husband dwell with me" (such being the meaning of the name), "for I have borne him six sons." All that is predicted regarding this tribe is that his dwelling should be by the sea, and near the Phoenician city Zidon. This is not to be taken as a strict geographical definition of the tract of country occupied by Zebulun, as we see when we compare it with the lot assigned to it and marked out in the Book of Joshua; but though the border of the tribe did not reach to Zidon, and though it can only have been a mere tongue of land belonging to it that ran down to the Mediterranean shore, yet the situation ascribed to it is true to its character as a tribe that had commercial relations with the Phoenicians, and was of a decidedly mercantile turn. We find this same feature indicated in the blessing of Moses: "Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and Issachar in thy tents"-Zebulun having the enterprise of a seafaring community, and Issachar the quiet bucolic contentment of an agricultural or pastoral population: Zebulun always restlessly eager for emigration or commerce, for going out of one kind or other; Issachar satisfied to live and die in his own tents. It is still, therefore, character rather than geographical position that is here spoken of-though it is a trait of character that is peculiarly dependent on geographical position: we, for example, because islanders, having become the maritime power and the merchants of the world; not being shut off from other nations by the encompassing sea. but finding paths by it equally in all directions ready provided for every kind of traffic.
Zebulun, then, was to represent the commerce of Israel, its outgoing tendency; was to supply a means of communication and bond of connection with the world outside, so that through it might be conveyed to the nations what was saving in Israel, and that what Israel needed from other lands might also find entrance. In the Church also, this is a needful quality: for our well-being there must ever exist among us those who are not afraid to launch on the wide and pathless sea of opinion, those in whose ears its waves have from their childhood sounded with a fascinating invitation, and who at last, as if possessed by some spirit of unrest, loose from the firm earth, and go in quest of lands not yet discovered, or are impelled to see for themselves what till now they have believed on the testimony of others. It is not for all men to quit the shore, and risk themselves in the miseries and disasters of so comfortless and hazardous a life; but happy the people which possesses, from one generation to another, men who must see with their own eyes, and to whose restless nature the discomforts and dangers of an unsettled life have a charm: It is not the instability of Reuben that we have in these men, but the irrepressible longing of the born seaman, who must lift the misty veil of the horizon and penetrate its mystery. And we are not to condemn, even when we know we should not imitate, men who cannot rest satisfied with the ground on which we stand, but venture into regions of speculation, of religious thought which we have never trodden, and may deem hazardous. The nourishment we receive is not all native-grown; there are views of truth which may very profitably be imported from strange and distant lands: and there is no land, no province of thought, from which we may not derive what may advantageously be mixed with our own ideas; no direction in which a speculative mind can go in which it may not find something which may give a fresh zest to what we already use, or be a real addition to our knowledge. No doubt men who refuse to confine themselves to one way of viewing truth-men who venture to go close to persons of very different opinions from their own, who determine for themselves to prove all things, who have no very special love for what they were native to and originally taught, who show rather a taste for strange and new opinions-these persons live a life of great hazard, and in the end are generally, like men who have been much at sea, unsettled; they have not fixed opinions, and are in themselves, as individual men, unsatisfactory and unsatisfied; but still they have done good to the community, by bringing to us ideas and knowledge which otherwise we could not have obtained. Such men God gives us to widen our views; to prevent us from thinking that we have the best of everything; to bring us to acknowledge that others, who perhaps in the main are not so favoured as ourselves, are yet possessed of some things we ourselves would be the better of. And though these men must themselves necessarily hang loosely, scarcely attached very firmly to any part of the Church, like a seafaring, population, and often even with a border running very close to heathenism, yet let us own that the Church has need of such-that without them the different sections of the Church would know too little of one another, and too little of the facts of this worlds life. And as the seafaring population of a country might be expected to show less interest in the soil of their native land than others, and yet we know that in point of fact we are dependent on no class of our population so much for leal patriotism, and for the defence of our country, so one has observed that the Church also must make similar use of her Zebuluns-of men who, by their very habit of restlessly considering all views of truth which are alien to our own ways of thinking, have become familiar with, and better able to defend us against the error that mingles with these views.
Issachar receives from his father a character which few would be proud of or would envy, but which many are very content to bear. As the strong ass that has its stall and its provender provided can afford to let the free beasts of the forest vaunt their liberty, so there is a very numerous class of men who have no care to assert their dignity as human beings, or to agitate regarding their rights as citizens, so long as their obscurity and servitude provide them with physical comforts, and leave them free of heavy responsibilities. They prefer a life of ease and plenty to a life of hardship and glory. They are not lazy nor idle, but are quite willing to use their strength so long as they are not overdriven out of their sleekness. They have neither ambition nor enterprise, and willingly bow their shoulders to bear, and become the servants of those who will free them from the anxiety of planning and managing, and give them a fair and regular remuneration for their labour. This is not a noble nature, but in a world in which ambition so frequently runs through a thorny and difficult path to a disappointing and shameful end, this disposition has much to say in its own defence. It will often accredit itself with un-challengeable common sense, and will maintain that it alone enjoys life and gets the good of it. They will tell you they are the only true utilitarians, that to be ones own master only brings cares, and that the degradation of servitude is only an idea; that really servants are quite as well off as masters. Look at them: the one is as a strong, powerful, well-cared-for animal, his work but a pleasant exercise to him, and when it is over never, following him into his rest; he eats the good of the land, and has what all seem to be in vain striving for, rest and contentment: the other, the master, has indeed his position, but that only multiplies his duties; he has wealth, but that proverbially only increases his cares and the mouths that are to consume it; it is he who has the air of a bondsman, and never, meet him when you may, seems wholly at ease and free from care.
Yet, after all that can be said in favour of the bargain an Issachar makes, and however he may be satisfied to rest, and in a quiet, peaceful way enjoy life, men feel that at the best there is something despicable about such a character. He gives his labour and is fed, he pays his tribute and is protected; but men feel that they ought to meet the dangers, responsibilities, and difficulties of life in their own persons, and at first hand, and not buy themselves off so from the burden of individual self-control and responsibility. The animal enjoyment of this life and its physical comforts may be a very good ingredient in a national character: it might be well for Israel to have this patient, docile mass of strength in its midst: it may be well for our country that there are among us not only men eager for the highest honours and posts, but a great multitude of men perhaps equally serviceable and capable, but whose desires never rise beyond the ordinary social comforts; the contentedness of such, even though reprehensible, tempers or balances the ambition of the others, and when it comes into personal contact rebukes its feverishness. They, as well as the other parts of society, have amidst their error a truth-the truth that the ideal world in which ambition, and hope, and imagination live is not everything; that the material has also a reality, and that though hope does bless mankind, yet attainment is also something, even though it be a little. Yet this truth is not the whole truth, and is only useful as an ingredient, as a part, not as the whole; and when we fall from any high ideal of human life which we have formed, and begin to find comfort and rest in the mere physical good things of this world, we may well despise ourselves. There is a pleasantness still in the land that appeals to us all; a luxury in observing the risks and struggles of others while ourselves secure and at rest; a desire to make life easy, and to shirk the responsibility and toil that public-spiritedness entails. Yet of what tribe has the Church more cause to complain than of those persons who seem to imagine that they have done enough when they have joined the Church and received their own inheritance to enjoy; who are alive to no emergency, nor awake to the need of others; who have no idea at all of their being a part of the community, for which, as well as for themselves, there are duties to discharge; who couch, like the ass of Issachar, in their comfort without one generous impulse to make common cause against the common evils and foes of the Church, and are unvisited by a single compunction that while they lie there, submitting to whatever fate sends, there are kindred tribes of their own being oppressed and spoiled?
There seems to have been an improvement in this tribe, an infusion of some new life into it. In the time of Deborah, indeed, it is with a note of surprise that, while celebrating the victory of Israel, she names even Issachar as having been roused to action, and as having helped in the common cause -" the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, even Issachar"; but we find them again in the days of David wiping out their reproach, and standing by him manfully.. And there an apparently new character is given to them-"the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." This quite accords, however, with the kind of practical philosophy which we have seen to be imbedded in Issachars character. Men they were not distracted by high thoughts and ambitions, but who judged things according to their substantial value to themselves; and who were, therefore, in a position to give much good advice on practical matters-advice which would always have a tendency to trend too much towards mere utilitarianism and worldliness, and to partake rather of crafty politic diplomacy than of far-seeing statesmanship, yet trustworthy for a certain class of subjects. And here, too, they represent the same class in the Church, already alluded to; for one often finds that men who will not interrupt their own comfort, and who have a kind of stolid indifference as to what comes of the good of the Church, have yet also much shrewd practical wisdom; and were these men, instead of spending their sagacity in cynical denunciation of what the Church does, to throw themselves into the cause of the Church, and heartily advise her what she ought to do, and help in the doing of it, their observation of human affairs, and political understanding of the times, would be turned to good account, instead of being a reproach.
Next came the eldest son of Rachels handmaid, and the eldest son of Leahs handmaid. Dan and Gad. Dans name, meaning "judge," is the starting point of the prediction-"Dan shall judge his people." This word "judge" we are perhaps somewhat apt to misapprehend; it means rather to defend than to sit in judgment on; it refers to a judgment passed between ones own people and their foes, and an execution of such judgment in the deliverance of the people and the destruction of the foe. We are familiar with this meaning of the word by the constant reference in the Old Testament to Gods judging His people; this being always a cause of joy as their sure deliverance from their enemies. So also it is used of those men who, when Israel had no king, arose from time to time as the champions of the people, to lead them against the foe, and who are therefore familiarly called "The Judges." From the tribe of Dan the most conspicuous of these arose, Samson, namely, and it is probably mainly with reference to this fact that Jacob so emphatically predicts of this tribe, "Dan shall judge his people." And notice the appended clause (as reflecting shame on the sluggish Issachar), "as one of the tribes of Israel," recognising always that his strength was not for himself alone, but for his country; that he was not an isolated people who had to concern himself only with his own affairs, but one of the tribes of Israel. The manner, too, in which Dan was to do this was singularly descriptive of the facts subsequently evolved. Dan was a very small and insignificant tribe, whose lot originally lay close to the Philistines on the southern border of the land. It might seem to be no obstacle whatever to the invading Philistines as they passed to the richer portion of Judah, but this little tribe, through Samson, smote these terrors of the Israelites with so sore and alarming a destruction as to cripple them for years and make them harmless. We see, therefore, how aptly Jacob compares them to the venomous snake that lurks in the road and bites the horses heels: the dust-coloured adder that a man treads on before he is aware, and whose poisonous stroke is more deadly than the foe he looking for in front. And especially significant did the imagery appear to the Jews, with whom this poisonous adder was indigenous, but to whom the horse was the symbol of foreign armament and invasion. The whole tribe of Dan, too, seems to have partaken of that "grim humour" with which Samson saw his foes walk time after time into the traps he set for them, and give themselves an easy prey to him-a humour which comes out with singular piquancy in the narrative given in the Book of Judges of one of the forays of this tribe, in which they carried off Micahs priest and even his gods.
But why, in the full flow of his eloquent description of the varied virtues of his sons, does the patriarch suddenly check himself, lie back on his pillows, and quietly say, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O God?" Does he feel his strength leave him so that he cannot go on to bless the rest of his sons, and has but time to yield his own spirit to God? Are we here to interpolate one of those scenes we are all fated to witness when some eagerly watched breath seems altogether to fail before the last words have been uttered, when those who have been standing apart, through sorrow and reverence, quickly gather round the bed to catch the last look, and when the dying man again collects himself and finishes his work? Probably Jacob, having, as it were, projected himself forward into those stirring and warlike times he has been speaking of, so realises the danger of his people, and the futility even of such help as Dans when God does not help, that, as if from the midst of doubtful war, he cries, as with a battle cry, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O God." His longing for victory and blessing to his sons far overshot the deliverance from Philistines accomplished by Samson. That deliverance he thankfully accepts and joyfully predicts, but in the spirit of an Israelite indeed, and a genuine child of the promise, he remains unsatisfied, and sees in all such deliverance only the pledge of Gods coming nearer and nearer to His people bringing with Him His eternal salvation. In Dan, therefore, we have not the catholic spirit of Zebulun, nor the practical, though sluggish, temper of Issachar; but we are guided rather to the disposition which ought to be maintained through all Christian life, and which, with special care, needs to be cherished in Church-life-a disposition to accept with gratitude all success and triumph, but still to aim through all at that highest victory which God alone can accomplish for His people. It is to be the battle-cry with which every Christian and every Church is to preserve itself, not merely against external foes, but against the far more disastrous influence of self-confidence, pride, and glorying in man-"For Thy salvation, O God, do we wait."
Gad also is a tribe whose history is to be warlike, his very name signifying a marauding, guerilla troop; and his history was to illustrate the victories which Gods people gain by tenacious, watchful, ever-renewed warfare. The Church has often prospered by her Dan-like insignificance; the world not troubling itself to make war upon her. But oftener Gad is a better representative of the mode in which her successes are gained. We find that the men of Gad were among the most valuable of Davids warriors, when his necessity evoked all the various skill and energy of Israel. "Of the Gadites," we read, "there separated themselves unto David into the hold of the wilderness men of might. and men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like. the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains: one of the least of them was better than a hundred, and the greatest mightier than a thousand." And there is something particularly inspiriting to the individual Christian in finding this pronounced as part of the blessing of Gods people-"a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last." It is this that enables us to persevere-that we have Gods assurance that present discomfiture does not doom us to final defeat. If you be among the children of promise, among those that gather round God to catch His blessing, you shall overcome at the last. You may now feel as if assaulted by treacherous, murderous foes, irregular troops, that betake themselves to every cruel deceit, and are ruthless in spoiling you; you may be assailed by so many and strange temptations that you are bewildered and cannot lift a hand to resist, scarce seeing where your danger comes from; you may be buffeted by messengers of Satan, distracted by a sudden and tumultuous incursion of a crowd of cares so that you are moved away from the old habits of your life amid which you seem to stand safely; your heart may seem to be the rendezvous of all ungodly and wicked thoughts, you may feel trodden under foot and overrun by sin, but, with the blessing of God, you shall overcome at the last. Only cultivate that dogged pertinacity of Gad, which has no thought of ultimate defeat, but rallies cheerfully and resolutely after every discomfiture.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Gen_48:3. God Almighty.] Heb. El Shaddai (Gen_17:1). He refers…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Gen_48:3. God Almighty.] Heb. El Shaddai (Gen_17:1). He refers to the appearance recorded in Gen_28:13-19.—
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Gen_48:5. As Reuben and Simeon they shall be mine.] “They shall not be two branches, merely, of one tribe, but two fully-recognised tribes of Jacob and Israel, equal in this respect to the firstborn Reuben and Simeon.” (Lange.)—
Gen_48:6. Shall be thine.] “The sons afterwards born shall belong to Joseph, not forming a third tribe, but included in Ephraim and Manasseh; for Joseph is represented in a two-fold way through these:” (Lange.)
Gen_48:7. Padan.]—Here alone used for Padan-Aram. Bethlehem. An addition of the narrator. Rachel died by me. Not near, as referring to space. The preposition has an emotional sense, and means on account of me, for my sake. She had borne for him the hardships of the journey, which brought on her fatal travail.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gen_48:1-7
JACOB’S ADOPTION OF ISRAEL’S TWO SONS
I. The authority which he claimed for this act. He refers to a leading point in the covenant history. God, the Almighty, who is able to perform His word, had appeared to him, had promised to make him a great nation, and to give his seed the land of Canaan. (Gen_48:3.) God had spoken to him, and this is his authority. On this he bases all the family hopes. The mention of God’s appearance and promise would inspire confidence in Joseph.
II. The purpose he had in view.
1. To deliver them from the corrupting influences of the world. Though they had an Egyptian mother, and belonged to that nation by birth and circumstances, yet they were not to be suffered to remain Egyptians. Ordinary men would regard them as having brilliant prospects in the world. But it was a far nobler thing that they should espouse the cause of God, and cast in their lot with his people.
2. To give them a recognised place in the covenant family. This would impart a dignity and meaning to their life, and an impulse and an elevation to all their thoughts Godward.
3. To do special honour to Joseph. Joseph was worthy of special honour. He was the noblest son of the family. He saved the house of Israel, as well as of Egypt. This act of Jacob would give two shares in the land of promise to his beloved and distinguished son.
III. The sad memories which it awoke.
1. They were selected in the room of Jacob’s two sons, who had forfeited the blessing. Instead of Reuben and Simeon. They had grievously sinned, and thus lost their inheritance. The portion of Reuben was given to Ephraim; and of Simeon, to Manasseh. The grounds of this are given in 1Ch_5:1; see also Genesis 34; Gen_49:5-7; Num_26:28-37; 1Ch_7:14 to 1Ch_29:2. They reminded him of one whom he had loved and lost. (Gen_48:7.) This reference to Rachel does not seem to have any direct connection with what is written before or after. But the old man cannot help remembering that there stood before him now the sons of Rachel’s son. He is forced now to think of her. After so many years, he still feels her loss. Time could not altogether heal the deep wound which, now touched by remembrance, opens afresh. It would seem as if he adopted these two boys for Rachel’s sake. He did not despise the fresh and deep feelings of his younger days. May we not hope that these tender human feelings which so persist through time and change may survive the grave? Surely they seem to be of such a nature that they are not destined to die. The effect of thus referring to the death of his mother would be to strengthen Joseph’s attachment to Canaan.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Gen_48:1-2. We all know that the mind has a powerful influence on the body, and that strong passions sometimes communicate to it an extraordinary degree of strength. Jacob felt his strength return to him when he heard Joseph’s name, and exerted all his vigour to receive him with proper marks of gratitude and affection.—(Bush.)
Gen_48:3-4. God Almighty.
1. The sure support of faith in the Divine promises.
2. The sufficient answer to every doubt.
3. The assurance that no obstacles can finally stand in the way of God’s purpose concerning His people.
The truly thankful keep calendars and catalogues of God’s gracious dealings with them, and delight to recount and reckon them up; not in the lump only and by wholesale, but by particular enumeration upon every good occasion; setting them forth one by one, as here, and ciphering them up, as David’s word is. (Psa_9:1.) We should be like civet-boxes, which still retain the scent when the civet is taken out of them. (Psa_114:1-2; Exo_18:8.)—(Trapp.)
The earthly Canaan was secured by promise to the seed of Abraham till the time came when God should create, as it were a new world, by introducing a new dispensation of grace among them.—(Bush).
Gen_48:5-6. Thus his sons, as well as himself, were taught to fix their faith and hope not in Egypt, whatever might be their expectations as the descendants of Joseph by an Egyptian princess, but in Canaan, or rather, in the promise of the God of Israel.—(Fuller).
Gen_48:7. Jacob was the better for the loss of his beloved Rachel; he thence became less selfish than before; accordingly, when he came to Egypt there was no unseemly rejoicing as there would otherwise have been, over the brilliant prospects of his race, and the latter part of his life was that of affection, rather than as formerly, of avarice. There is something in this long continuance of affection for a lost wife that seems to tell us something of the possibility of reunion. Upon this subject, Scripture tells us almost nothing. When we look at the analogy of this world, and mark the growth of our affections as they develop in our life, first to parents, then to brother, and then to wife, and then to child, each in some measure supplanting the other, we might be inclined to believe that there would be a perpetual growth of attachments to spirits higher and higher still; but when we see a feeling like this of Jacob’s, we cannot but hope that that which had lasted so near to the grave might survive the grave. We know not, God grant that it may!—(Robertson).
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain Gen 48:1-7
Gen 48:1-7
Jacob looked back on his life and saw but three things—God, love, grief. These were all he had to speak of. They were a trinity of the past; they dwarfed everything else.
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I. "God appeared unto me at Luz." This one first and great appearance of God was memorable in all his life, because it was the first. It stamped itself upon his life; even in old age the memory of it was not obscured, effaced, or weakened, but was with him in the valley of the shadow of death.
II. Less august, but even more affecting, was the second of his three experiences—love. Of all whom he had known, only two names remained to him in the twilight between this life and the other—God, and Rachel. The simple mention of Rachel’s name by the side of that of God is itself a monument to her.
III. The third of these experiences was that Rachel was buried. When Rachel died the whole world had but one man in it, and he was solitary, and his name was Jacob.
Application.—(1) See how perfectly we are in unity with the life of this, one of the earliest men. How perfectly we understand him! How the simplest experiences touch us to the quick! (2) The filling up of life, however important in its day, is in retrospect very insignificant. (3) The significance of events is not to be judged by their outward productive force, but by their productiveness in the inward life. (4) In looking back through the events of life, though they are innumerable, yet those that remain at last are very few,—not because all the others have perished, but because they group themselves and assume moral unity in the distance.
H. W. Beecher, Sermons (1870), p. 217.
Gen 48:15-16
When St. Paul wished to select from the history of Jacob an instance of faith, he took the scene described in the text, when Joseph brings his two sons to the deathbed of his father. The text is therefore to be considered as one in which faith was signally exhibited.
I. Jacob seems to make it his object, and to represent it as a privilege, that he should take the lads out of the family of Joseph, though that family was then one of the noblest in Egypt, and transplant them into his own, though it had no outward distinction but what it derived from its connection with the other. Faith gave him this consciousness of superiority; he knew that his posterity were to constitute a peculiar people, from which would at length arise the Redeemer. He felt it far more of an advantage for Ephraim and Manasseh to be counted with the tribes than numbered among the princes of Egypt.
II. Observe the peculiarity of Jacob’s language with regard to his preserver, and his decided preference of the younger brother to the elder, in spite of the remonstrances of Joseph. There was faith, and illustrious faith, in both. By the "Angel who redeemed him from all evil," he must have meant the Second Person of the Trinity; he shows that he had glimmerings of the finished work of Christ. The preference of the younger son to the elder was typical of the preference of the Gentile Church to the Jewish. Acting on what he felt convinced was the purpose of God, Jacob did violence to his own inclination and that of those whom he most longed to please.
III. Jacob’s worshipping (referred to in Hebrews xi.) may be taken as proving his faith. What has a dying man to do with worshipping, unless he is a believer in another state? He leans upon the top of his staff as if he would acknowledge the goodness of his heavenly Father, remind himself of the troubles through which he had been brought and of the Hand which alone had been his guardian and guide.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2261.
References: Gen 48:15, Gen 48:16.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. xi., p. 274. Gen 48:16.—J. Wells, Bible Children, p. 69; J. Burns, Sketches of Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 131; A. Mursell, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxii., p. 186; J. Thain Davidson, Talks with Young Men, p. 133. Gen 48:21.—J. P. Gledstone, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 152; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 379; S. A. Brooke, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 265; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1630. Gen 48:22.—W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 153. Gen 49—F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 175. Gen 49:1.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, pp. 1, 13. Gen 49:1, Gen 49:2.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 554. Gen 49:1-12.—R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 275. Gen 49:1-27.—W. M. Taylor, Joseph the Prime Minister, p. 171. Gen 49:3, Gen 49:4.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, p. 53; J. C. M. Bellew, Five Occasional Sermons, p. 19. Gen 49:8-12.—J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses, p. 219.
Genesis 48 and 49
(with Deut. 33 and Judges 5)
Jacob’s blessing of his sons marks the close of the patriarchal dispensation. Henceforth the channel of God’s blessing to man does not consist of one person only, but of a people or nation. As the patriarchal dispensation ceases it secures to the tribes all the blessing it has itself contained. The distinguishing features which Jacob depicts in the blessing of his sons were found in all the generations of the tribes, and displayed themselves in things spiritual also.
In these blessings we have the history of the Church in its most interesting form. The whole destiny of Israel is here in germ, and the spirit of prophecy in Jacob sees and declares it. (1) Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted as sons of Jacob. No greater honour could have been put on Joseph than this: that his sons should be raised to the rank of heads of tribes, on a level with the immediate sons of Jacob. He is merged in them, and all that he has earned is to be found not in his own name, but in theirs. (2) The future of Reuben was of a negative, blank kind: "Thou shalt not excel"; his unstable character must empty it of all great success. (3) "Simeon and Levi are brethren," showing a close affinity and seeking one another’s aid, but for bad purposes, and therefore they must be divided and scattered in Israel. This was accomplished by the tribe of Levi being distributed over all the other tribes as the ministers of religion. The sword of murder was displaced in Levi’s hand by the knife of sacrifice; (4) Judah is the kingly tribe; from it came David, the man who more than any other satisfies man’s ideal of a prince. (5) Zebulon was a maritime tribe; always restlessly eager for emigration or commerce. Issachar had the quiet, bucolic contentment of an agricultural or pastoral population. (6) "Dan shall judge his people." This probably refers to the most conspicuous of the judges, Samson, who belonged to this tribe. The whole tribe of Dan seems to have partaken of the grim humour with which Samson saw his foes walk time after time into the traps he set for them—a humour which comes out with singular piquancy in the narrative of one of the forays of this tribe, in which they carried off Micah’s priest, and even his gods. (7) Gad was also to be a warlike tribe; his very name signified a marauding, guerilla troop, and his history was to illustrate the victories which God’s people gain by tenacious, watchful, ever renewed warfare.
M. Dods, Israel’s Iron Age, p. 173.
References: Gen 48.—F. Whitfield, The Blessings of the Tribes, p. 236; J. R. Macduff, Sunsets on the Hebrew Mountains, p. 23; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 265. Gen 49:1, Gen 49:2.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 554.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Jacob Blesses Manasseh and Ephraim, the Sons of Joseph
Jacob Blesses Manasseh and Ephraim, the Sons of Joseph
He adopts them as his own sons with privileges equal to the others, thus making them heads of distinct tribes. By so doing he gives to Joseph, the eldest son of Rachel, whom he probably regarded as his true wife, the position of firstborn with a double portion of his inheritance. From the time of Moses we find Ephraim and Manasseh giving their names to tribes (Numbers 1), which received territory on the conquest of Canaan.
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3. Luz] or Bethel: see on Gen_28:19.
6. Any other children of Joseph would be reckoned as belonging to the tribes of Ephraim or Manasseh.
7. By me] RM 'to my sorrow.' The mention of Rachel here may be only a fond reminiscence called forth by the presence of her grandchildren. But the v. would be perhaps more appropriately placed after Gen_49:31, where Jacob is speaking of the burial of his ancestors and of Leah.
13, 14. Joseph had so arranged his sons that Manasseh, as the first-born, would receive his father's right hand in the act of blessing; but Jacob, 'guiding his hands wittingly 'as taught by God, transferred that honour to the younger Ephraim, thus prophetically declaring the future superiority of that tribe: see Gen_48:19. Owing to its preëminence the northern kingdom of Israel was often called Ephraim by the prophets, e.g. Isaiah 11 Ezekiel 37.
22. Portion] RM 'mountain slope '(Heb. shechem). The reference is to Shechem in the mountainous territory of Ephraim. Jacob gives Shechem to Joseph as his advantage over the others. The acquiring of Shechem by Jacob by force of arms represents a different tradition to that mentioned in Genesis 33, 34.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain CHAPTER 48 Jacob adopts Ephraim and Manasseh
CHAPTER 48 Jacob adopts Ephraim and Manasseh
1. The sons of Joseph brought to Jacob (Gen. 48-12)
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2. The words of Jacob (Gen 48:3-7)
3. Ephraim and Manasseh presented (Gen 48:8-14)
4. Jacob’s blessing (Gen 48:13-16)
5. Joseph’s interference (Gen 48:17-20)
6. Jacob’s last words to Joseph (Gen 48:21-22)
The adoption of Joseph’s sons is interesting and instructive. As the offspring of the Gentile wife Asenath they were in danger of becoming gentilized and thus forget their father’s house. Jacob frustrated this by adopting the sons. It was an action of faith. “By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped leaning on the top of his staff” (Heb 11:21). Again the younger is preferred. When Jacob speaks of “the Angel, the Redeemer” (literal translation) he speaks of Jehovah who appeared unto him, whom he met face to face at Peniel. Full of hope, dying Jacob predicted the return of his offspring to the land of Canaan.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Jacob Adopts the Sons of Joseph
Jacob Adopts the Sons of Joseph
v. 1. And it came to pass after these things that one told Joseph, the news was brought him by a special messenger, Behold, thy father is sick. This was not long after Jacob had made arrangements for the transfer of his body to Canaan for burial. And he (Joseph) took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, who were now about twenty years old; Manasseh may have been about twenty-four and Ephraim a few years younger.
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v. 2. And one told Jacob and said, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh unto thee, also an announcement by a special messenger. And Israel strengthened himself, with the help of God he summoned all his remaining strength, and sat upon the bed; for he, as patriarch and bearer of the Messianic promise, had a final duty to perform.
v. 3. And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, at Bethel, where he received two special revelations, Gen 28:13-19; Gen 35:6-9, and blessed me,
v. 4. and said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee; and I will make of thee a multitude of people, and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession. Thus both the patriarchal and the Messianic blessing had been given to Jacob, to be fulfilled in his descendants.
v. 5. And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon they shall be mine. It is significant that in this formal statement of adoption the name of Ephraim is set before that of Manasseh, the birthright thus being changed. The divine blessing of promise, of which Jacob was the bearer, empowered him to adopt these two grandsons and to give them equal rights with his oldest sons, designate their descendants as two fully recognized tribes among the children of Israel.
v. 6. And thy issue which thou begettest after them shall be thine, and shall be called after the name of their brethren in their inheritance; they should not form a third tribe, but should be included in those of Ephraim and Manasseh, though their names were entered in the genealogical tables, Num 26:28-37; 1Ch 7:14-19, Through this adoption of his oldest sons on the part of Jacob, Joseph was given the right of the firstborn in his inheritance, 1Ch 5:2. By this disposition of the inheritance Jacob incidentally honored Rachel.
v. 7. And as for me, when I came from Padan, that is, Mesopotamia, Rachel died by me, she died by his side, sharing with him the toil and the hardships of the pilgrim life, in the land of Canaan in the way, while they were on the journey, when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath; and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath; the same is Bethlehem, as the author adds by way of explanation. There was some compensation to Jacob in the fact that at least three tribes among the children of Israel would trace their ancestry to Rachel, his beloved wife. Thus her remembrance was kept sacred in Israel.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 It came about
It came about
This phrase is used here to mark the beginning of a new part of the story. (See: Introduction of a New Event)
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one said to Joseph
"someone said to Joseph"
Look, your father
"Listen, your father." Here the word "look" is used to get Joseph's attention.
So he took
"So Joseph took"
When Jacob was told
This can be stated in active form. AT: "When someone told Jacob" (See: Active or Passive)
your son Joseph has arrived to see you
"your son Joseph has come to you"
Israel gathered strength and sat up in bed
Here the author speaks of Israel struggling to to sit up in bed as if he were gathering "strength" as someone gathers actual things. AT: "Israel made a great effort to sit up in bed" or "Israel struggled as he sat up in bed" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
Joseph (OT)
Manasseh
Ephraim
Jacob
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 48:1-22 In blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob reached out…
48:1-22 In blessing Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob reached out by faith for the promise to be continued, having learned that God’s ways are not always the ways of men. Out of Jacob’s long life, the writer to the Hebrews selected the blessing of Joseph’s sons as his great act of faith (Heb 11:21). As Jacob acted in light of God’s will, the primary blessing was again given to the younger instead of the older son, but without scheming and its bitter results.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.