Genesis 48 Study Notes

48:13-16 Joseph presented Ephraim (at his right hand side) and Manasseh (at his left hand side) to Jacob in hopes that Jacob would reach out with his right hand and confer the greater blessing to the elder son, Manasseh, who was standing to Joseph’s left. But Jacob crossed his arms and put his right hand . . . on the head of Ephraim, the younger, thus symbolically conferring the greater blessing on him. Jacob then blessed Joseph, but because his two hands were on Joseph’s sons, it was they who received the blessing. Calling on the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, who had been his shepherd (cp. Ps 23:1; 80:1; Ezk 34:11-12; Jn 10:11) all his life, Jacob’s requests on behalf of Ephraim and Manasseh included that they would be called by the names of Jacob, Abraham and Isaac, that is, that they would identify with God’s covenant people, not with Egyptian culture and religion.

48:17-20 Frustrated because it seemed that his nearly blind father had made a mistake, Joseph took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head. Emboldened by prophetic insight, however, Jacob refused to move his hands because by God’s own hand Ephraim’s blessings were ordained to exceed Manasseh’s. Manasseh would become a tribe, but his younger brother Ephraim would become something more—a populous nation. Even so, both would be blessed so richly that in the future Israel would invoke blessings by asking God to make someone like Ephraim and Manasseh. The placement of Ephraim’s name before Manasseh’s foreshadowed his later superiority. Because of Ephraim’s leading position in later Israelite history, prophets often referred to the entire northern kingdom of Israel as Ephraim (Is 7:5; Jr 31:20; Ezk 37:16; Hs 5:13; Zch 10:7).

48:21-22 Jacob promised Joseph that God would be with him (39:2,21,23) and would bring him back to the land of his fathers, i.e., Canaan (50:25; Ex 13:19; Jos 24:32; Ac 7:14-16).