The Book of Genesis

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Word comes to Joseph that his father is failing, so he brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to Jacob's bedside. Jacob gathers his strength and sits up. He begins not with sentiment but with the covenant, recalling how "God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz," which is Bethel, and promised to make him fruitful and to give the land to his seed "for an everlasting possession." On the strength of that promise, Jacob does something significant: he adopts Joseph's two sons as his own. "Ephraim and Manasseh ... are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine." These boys, born in Egypt to an Egyptian mother, are now counted as full sons of Israel, each becoming a tribe in his own right. Jacob also pauses to remember Rachel, Joseph's mother, buried on the way to Bethlehem. His mind is on the covenant and on the family God gave him.

Gospel Focus

Jacob's adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh is a lovely picture of grace. These boys were half-Egyptian, born far from the promised land, yet Jacob draws them fully into the family of Israel, giving them a name and an inheritance as if they were his own firstborn sons. That is exactly what God does for us. By nature we were outsiders, far off, with no claim to the covenant, yet God brings us in and makes us His own children, "predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself" (Ephesians 1:5). We do not earn our place in God's family; we are adopted into it by grace. And notice that Jacob grounded everything in God's promise at Bethel. Facing death, he did not lean on his feelings but on what God had said. The everlasting promises of God are the solid ground on which faith stands at the end of life and at every point along the way. The dying patriarch reached back to the God who had appeared and spoken, and on that word he blessed the next generation.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Jacob's eyes are dim, and when he sees the boys he asks who they are, then draws them near, kisses and embraces them, marveling, "I had not thought to see thy face: and, lo, God hath shewed me also thy seed." Then he pronounces the blessing, and its wording is remarkable. He names God three ways in one breath: "God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk," "the God which fed me all my life long," and "the Angel which redeemed me from all evil." Having named God and the Angel together, he then says, "bless the lads," a single request to the one who fed him and redeemed him. He asks that his own name and the names of Abraham and Isaac be carried on in the boys, and that they grow into a great multitude.

Gospel Focus

This blessing is one of the clearest windows in Genesis into who God is. Jacob speaks of "the God which fed me" and "the Angel which redeemed me" in the same sentence, and then asks Him, as one, to "bless the lads." The God and the Angel are not two; the Angel who redeemed Jacob is God Himself in visible, active form, the same one who wrestled him at Peniel and met him at Bethel. There is one God, and this redeeming Angel is that one God stepping in to save. The Scripture is emphatic that God alone is our Redeemer: "I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour" (Isaiah 43:11). So the Angel who redeemed Jacob can only be the one true God. And this is the very God who at last came to us in flesh, for we look for "the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13). The Redeemer Jacob blessed his grandsons in the name of is the same Lord we know as Jesus, the one God who feeds us as our Shepherd and redeems us from all evil. Jacob calls Him both his Shepherd and his Redeemer, and both titles meet in Christ, who said, "I am the good shepherd," and who gave His life to redeem us.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

When Jacob reaches out to bless the boys, he crosses his arms, laying his right hand, the hand of the greater blessing, on the head of Ephraim, the younger, and his left on Manasseh, the firstborn. Joseph assumes his aged father has made a mistake because he cannot see well, and he tries to move the right hand to Manasseh: "Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn." But Jacob refuses, saying gently but firmly, "I know it, my son, I know it." He has done it on purpose. Manasseh will indeed become a people, but "his younger brother shall be greater than he." Once again in Genesis, the expected order is reversed, and the younger receives the greater blessing, as with Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob himself over Esau, and Pharez over Zarah. Jacob, who had once wrongly grasped for the firstborn's blessing, now, guided by God, rightly bestows it on the younger.

Gospel Focus

The crossed hands preach the gospel of grace. Over and over in Genesis, God passes by the elder, the expected, the naturally advantaged, and chooses the younger, the weaker, the overlooked. This is no accident; it is God's settled way, "that no flesh should glory in his presence." As the apostle wrote, "God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty" (1 Corinthians 1:27). God does not bless us on the basis of our rank, our merit, or our birthright, but according to His own sovereign grace, so that all the glory goes to Him and none to us. If you have ever felt like the younger, the lesser, the one passed over, take heart: God delights to lay His right hand on exactly such. And notice Jacob's calm certainty: "I know it, my son, I know it." Guided by God, he was not confused but confident, even against the natural expectation and his own son's correction. Faith learns to trust God's choices even when they cross our hands and overturn our assumptions, for His ways are wiser than ours.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

Jacob closes with a word of faith for Joseph. He does not hide from his coming death, "Behold, I die," but he does not end there. He points past his own death to God's faithfulness: "but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers." Though Israel would remain in Egypt for many years, Jacob was certain they would not stay forever; God would bring them back to Canaan, the land of promise, just as He had told Jacob at Beersheba. Jacob also gives Joseph a special portion of land. The dying patriarch's last thoughts are full of confidence, not despair. He faces death with his eyes on the promise of God, sure that the God who had been with him would be with his children and would keep every word He had spoken about the land.

Gospel Focus

"Behold, I die: but God shall be with you." That little word "but" is the confidence of faith in the face of death. Jacob could say "I die" without terror, because he could also say "but God shall be with you." Death is real, but it does not have the last word for the people of God; His presence and His promise reach beyond it. The whole scene is summed up in Hebrews: "By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff" (Hebrews 11:21). Jacob's dying was an act of faith and worship, blessing the next generation and trusting God for a future he would not see. This is how the believer is called to face the end, not clinging in fear, but blessing those who come after, worshiping, and resting in the promise that God will be with His people and bring them home. The God who was with Jacob all his life, fed him, redeemed him, and never left him, would be with his children still. And He is with us, all the way through death and into the land He has promised.