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Genesis 48 - Jacob Blesses Ephraim and Manasseh

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Jacob’s eyes are dim, but he knows where his hands are going. Joseph has brought his sons to the sickbed and arranged them so that the older will receive the right hand. Jacob reaches across that arrangement. The man who once obtained a blessing by deceiving his blind father now becomes the blind father who cannot be deceived: ‘I know it, son, I know it.’ Genesis 48 gathers his life into a blessing that gives belonging, names the God who has sustained him, and opens the household toward a future larger than customary precedence.

The family has found bread and a home in Egypt in Genesis 46-47. Jacob now recalls the promise given at Luza, adopts Joseph’s sons, and speaks of a return he will not live to see. Before Jacob gathers all his sons in Genesis 49, he gathers two grandsons, and the blessing begins with them.

Remembered promise and sons received (Genesis 48:1-7)

1 And it came to pass after these things, that it was reported to Joseph, Behold, thy father is ill; and, having taken his two sons, Manasse and Ephraim, he came to Jacob. 2 And it was reported to Jacob, saying, Behold, thy son Joseph cometh to thee; and Israel having strengthened himself, sat upon the bed. 3 And Jacob said to Joseph, My God appeared to me in Luza, in the land of Chanaan, and blessed me, 4 and said to me, Behold, I will increase thee, and multiply thee, and will make of thee multitudes of nations; and I will give this land to thee, and to thy seed after thee, for an everlasting possession. 5 Now then thy two sons, who were born to thee in the land of Egypt, before I came to thee into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasse, as Ruben and Symeon they shall be mine. 6 And the children which thou shalt beget hereafter, shall be in the name of their brethren; they shall be named after their inheritances. 7 And as for me, when I came out of Mesopotamia of Syria, Rachel, thy mother, died in the land of Chanaan, as I drew nigh to the horse-course of Chabratha of the land of Chanaan, so as to come to Ephratha; and I buried her in the road of the course; this is Bethlehem.

Joseph comes because his father is ill, bringing the boys into the family’s last days with Jacob. Israel gathers strength and sits up. He begins with what God said at Luza rather than with the office Joseph holds in Egypt. The promise of fruitfulness and land gives his last decisions their direction. He can still hand on a received word when he can no longer secure the future himself.

‘They shall be mine’ confers more than affection. Ephraim and Manasseh are to stand as Ruben and Symeon do: within Jacob’s sons and their inheritances. Joseph thus receives a double tribal portion through the two sons who bear his place in Israel. First Chronicles 5:1-2 distinguishes Joseph’s gift from the royal calling: Reuben ‘was not reckoned as first-born,’ and ‘the blessing was Joseph’s,’ while ‘one was to be a ruler’ out of Judah. Joseph’s greater portion and Judah’s royal promise are different gifts within one people.

The New Testament makes adoption a gift of life in Christ. Galatians 4:5 joins the Son’s redeeming work to our receiving adoption; Romans 8:15 identifies its living voice: ‘you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”’ Jacob’s declaration helps us grasp the reality of granted belonging. In Christian baptism we are brought into Christ, and the Spirit enables us to address His Father as our Father. The gift asks for a life within that household, not constant proof that we deserve admission.

Rachel’s death remains part of Jacob’s account. Her grave lies on the road to Bethlehem, away from the ancestral burial place he has requested for himself. At the bedside, the old sorrow stands beside the new inheritance of her grandsons. Holiness does not require a life emptied of grief. Jacob can remember the wife he lost and still give a blessing that serves the living. For a bereaved household, prayerful memory can become care for the people who remain, without forcing sorrow to end on a timetable.

Dim eyes and hands guided crosswise (Genesis 48:8-14)

8 And when Israel saw the sons of Joseph, he said, Who are these to thee? 9 And Joseph said to his father, They are my sons, whom God gave me here; and Jacob said, Bring me them, that I may bless them. 10 Now the eyes of Israel were dim through age, and he could not see; and he brought them near to him, and he kissed them, and embraced them. 11 And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I have not been deprived of seeing thy face, and lo! God has showed me thy seed also. 12 And Joseph brought them out from between his knees, and they did reverence to him, with their face to the ground. 13 And Joseph took his two sons, both Ephraim in his right hand, but on the left of Israel, and Manasse on his left hand, but on the right of Israel, and brought them near to him. 14 But Israel having stretched out his right hand, laid it on the head of Ephraim, and he was the younger; and his left hand on the head of Manasse, guiding his hands crosswise.

‘They are my sons, whom God gave me here.’ Joseph calls the boys a gift before Jacob grants them an inheritance. Egypt has been the place of his affliction and his rise, but it is also where he has received children. Jacob answers with kisses and an embrace. His words to Joseph acknowledge a mercy beyond what he had hoped to see: not only the son’s face, but the son’s descendants. Blessing begins within that gratitude.

The scene deliberately recalls Genesis 27:1, where Isaac’s dim eyes formed the setting for Jacob’s deception. Here Joseph arranges the sons according to birth order, but Jacob guides his hands across that arrangement. His age has diminished his sight, not his deliberate intention. Verse 14 names the crosswise action before Joseph objects. The hand that blesses is not being tricked into reaching the wrong head.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: The sign of blessing in Christ

Tertullian, an early Latin Christian writer, treats this action in On Baptism 8. While explaining the laying on of hands and the gift of the Holy Spirit after baptism, he looks back to Jacob’s hands crossing over his grandsons. He says they were ‘so transversely slanted one over the other, that, by delineating Christ, they even portended the future benediction into Christ’.1 Crossed one over the other, the hands ‘delineate Christ’; their shape invites us to see the sign of His Cross, through which the blessing comes.

The Cross gives life through the incarnate Son’s self-offering. At Jacob’s bedside a bodily act carries a received promise toward the children. In the Church, bodily worship and sacramental signs likewise belong to God’s care for whole persons. Their power comes from Christ and the Holy Spirit, never from a gesture used as a technique. A parent or servant who blesses another person is asking for God’s gift, not possessing the person’s future.

The God who feeds and the Angel who delivers (Genesis 48:15-16)

15 And he blessed them and said, The God in whose sight my fathers were well pleasing, even Abraam and Isaac, the God who continues to feed me from my youth until this day; 16 the angel who delivers me from all evils, bless these boys, and my name shall be called upon them, and the name of my fathers, Abraam and Isaac; and let them be increased to a great multitude on the earth.

Jacob’s blessing looks backward before it asks for the boys’ future. God received Abraham and Isaac’s lives; the same God has continued to feed Jacob until this day. Behind the grain Joseph distributes stands a care longer than the famine and deeper than any ruler’s favor. Jacob knows himself as someone sustained. He asks for a multitude of descendants, but first confesses the mercy by which he is still alive.

Language insight: ‘feeds me’

Brenton’s ‘the God who continues to feed me’ keeps the care concrete. The Hebrew wording at this verse is rendered ‘has been my shepherd’ in several translations; the NKJV, like Brenton, uses feeding language.2 The shepherd comparison gives a helpful view of lifelong tending, but ‘feeds me’ is the wording displayed here. In these chapters it also joins Jacob’s received bread with God’s lifelong provision.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: The uncreated Word gives the blessing

St. Athanasius of Alexandria reads these exact verses in Against the Arians III.12-13. He asks why Jacob joins ‘the Angel’ with God in the blessing. A created angel ministers at God’s command; he does not share the Creator’s power to bestow the divine gift. Athanasius therefore understands the Deliverer as the Word of God, the Son who reveals the Father. Jacob, he says, ‘showed that it was no created Angel, but the Word of God, whom he joined to the Father in his prayer’.3

Section 13 explains the title: ‘God’s Word, whom therefore he called Angel, because it is He alone who reveals the Father.’3 Here ‘Angel’ names the Son’s revealing mission, not a created nature. The Son is truly God, of one essence with the Father, and their saving gift is one. Athanasius compares Jacob’s blessing with the apostolic greeting of grace and peace from the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We receive the Father’s mercy through His Son, rather than dividing divine care among rival benefactors.

Athanasius traces the Deliverer through Jacob’s own history: the Lord who promised to guard him, restrained Laban, rescued him from Esau, and blessed him at the wrestling. Jacob asks that same Lord to bless Joseph’s sons.3 This confession deepens Jacob’s prayer. The Savior whom the Church knows as the incarnate Word is the Lord who has sustained and delivered His servants through their history. Jacob asks that his name and his fathers’ names be called upon the boys. He gives them a family identity held within divine care. Christian adoption likewise rests in a relationship with the living God: through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, we belong to the Father. That belonging gives courage to ask for mercy when our own ability to protect others reaches its limit.

The younger blessed, the elder not abandoned (Genesis 48:17-20)

17 And Joseph having seen that his father put his right hand on the head of Ephraim—it seemed grievous to him; and Joseph took hold of the hand of his father, to remove it from the head of Ephraim to the head of Manasse. 18 And Joseph said to his father, Not so, father; for this is the first-born; lay thy right-hand upon his head. 19 And he would not, but said, I know it, son, I know it; he also shall be a people, and he shall be exalted, but his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. 20 And he blessed them in that day, saying, In you shall Israel be blessed, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and Manasse; and he set Ephraim before Manasse.

Joseph sees his father’s right hand on Ephraim and finds it grievous. He tries to move it, explaining that Manasseh is the firstborn. Jacob’s answer is calm and definite: ‘I know it, son, I know it.’ The change of order is intentional. Yet he affirms the elder’s future before describing the younger’s greater one: Manasseh too will become a people and be exalted. Blessing is not a limited supply that must be denied to one child in order to give it to another.

Genesis has repeatedly shown promise passing through an unexpected son: Isaac rather than Ishmael, Jacob rather than Esau, Phares rather than Zara, and now Ephraim rather than Manasseh. Joseph, a younger brother, has also been raised to a position of provision for his elders. Romans 9:10-13 explicitly uses Jacob and Esau to make God’s calling, rather than prior achievement, the ground of election. These accounts teach freedom in God’s giving; they do not establish a universal rule that younger children are holier or release parents from impartial love.

Gems from the Fathers 💎: The blessing opens toward the nations

The anonymous early Christian Epistle of Barnabas 13 interprets Jacob’s changed hands as ‘the type of the people to arise afterwards,’ receiving the inheritance of the covenant.4 St. Augustine makes the people-reading explicit in The City of God XVI.42. Having distinguished the type of Esau and Jacob from literal physical descent, he says ‘the same thing happened in Joseph’s two sons’: the elder signifies the Jewish people and the younger the Christians. The two promises, he writes, ‘comprehend the people of Israel, and the whole world of Abraham’s seed, the one according to the flesh, the other according to faith’.5

Ephesians 2:11-19 gives this hope its Christian center. Those who were far off are brought near by Christ’s blood, and both are reconciled to God ‘in one body through the cross.’ The new household is founded in His peace. Romans 11:17-24 directs Gentile believers away from boasting: the root supports them, and God is able to graft the natural branches in again. The ancient younger-people interpretation should therefore bear the fruit of gratitude for incorporation into Christ, never contempt for Jewish people. Both boys receive Jacob’s blessing; the Church receives salvation through Israel’s Messiah.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

The Coptic Holy Pascha assigns Genesis 48:1-19 as the first prophecy at the Third Hour of Good Friday.6 The reading includes the adoption, the crossed hands, the confession of the Deliverer, and Jacob’s deliberate preference for the younger. At the hour when the Church attends to the crucified Lord, an old man’s hands disclose a blessing given through the sign of the Cross. Athanasius’s interpretation lets us hear the Deliverer named in the blessing as the Word whose Passion we contemplate. The same hour then reads Isaiah 50:4-9, where the Servant says, ‘I gave my back to scourges, and my cheeks to blows’ (Brenton, 50:6). Jacob’s blessing is heard beside the suffering through which Christ gives life to His people. His apparent weakness becomes the place where His saving love reaches the nations.

The hope does not stop with Ephraim’s precedence. Psalm 78:67-68 (LXX Psalm 77:67-68) says that God passed over Ephraim’s tribe and chose Judah and Mount Sion. Genesis 49 will gather the royal promise around Judah, the line from which Christ comes. God’s different gifts within the family lead toward one Savior, not toward a contest in which tribal prestige is the final good.

A father dies, and God remains with the children (Genesis 48:21-22)

21 And Israel said to Joseph, Behold, I die; and God shall be with you, and restore you to the land of your fathers. 22 And I give to thee Sicima, a select portion above thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the Amorites with my sword and bow.

‘Behold, I die; and God shall be with you.’ Jacob sets his death beside a presence that will remain. He has passed on the promise, but he does not place himself at its center. His children will need the Lord after they can no longer ask their father what to do. Faithful spiritual fatherhood teaches people to depend on God, including when the human guide must relinquish control.

Hebrews 11:21 reads the blessing as faith in action: ‘By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph.’ The Apostle joins this blessing to Jacob’s worship on his staff, the act narrated in Genesis 47:31. The old father blesses toward a land he will not hold again. As Hebrews 11:13 says of the patriarchs, they ‘died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off.’ Jacob’s assurance that God will remain with the children is that faith spoken aloud.

Sicima, or Shechem, keeps the blessing tied to land beyond Egypt. John 4:5 remembers the plot Jacob gave Joseph when Christ comes to Sychar. There the Lord offers living water to a Samaritan woman and reveals a worship directed to the Father in spirit and truth. An inherited place becomes the setting in which the Son gives a life greater than possession of a field. Joshua 24:32 records Joseph’s bones brought from Egypt and buried at Sicima in the portion Jacob purchased. The return promised here eventually becomes part of Israel’s received history.

The sword-and-bow claim in verse 22 should retain its difficulty. Genesis 33:19 records a purchase, and Jacob condemns Simeon and Levi’s violence at Shechem rather than celebrating it (Genesis 34:30; 49:5-7). This verse does not supply a full account of an otherwise unrecorded campaign by Jacob. Its precise relation to the purchased field and the household’s later possession remains uncertain. The clear gift is Joseph’s special portion and a future directed toward God’s promise, not permission to seize another person’s property by force.

Jacob can bless beyond his own years because the Lord who fed him is not leaving with him. Christ’s Resurrection gives the Church the fullness of that hope. We may entrust children, students, or parish responsibilities to others without treating our absence as the end of God’s care. What love has received can be handed on; the living Lord remains.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Receive belonging before measuring rank. Jacob says the boys are his before distinguishing their futures. In baptism, Christ has brought us into His household. When comparison with a sibling or fellow servant takes hold, return to that gift in prayer. Give thanks for the other person’s calling and attend to the obedience entrusted to you.

Bless without trying to own the outcome. Joseph loves his sons and still tries to reposition the blessing. Bring a child’s future before God with specific prayer and practical care, then examine where concern has become a demand that the child fulfill your preferred arrangement. Seek what serves their life in Christ. God’s freedom does not lessen our responsibility; it removes the illusion that another person’s future is our possession.

Remember the care that has fed you. Jacob names lifelong provision while his own strength is failing. Before asking for the next mercy, recall a meal, a person, or a rescue through which Christ’s care reached you. Give thanks, then offer something concrete to a person whose need is hidden. The memory of being fed can teach a generous hand.

Carry grief into care for the living. Rachel’s death remains in Jacob’s memory while he blesses her grandsons. Remember a departed loved one before God without apologizing for sorrow. Let that memory become one attainable act of care for someone still entrusted to you. Prayer and grief can coexist with a future received from Christ.

Hand on faith that can outlive your presence. Jacob’s last assurance is that God will remain with his children. Give the people you serve something they can carry when you are absent: a prayer learned, a Scripture understood, a truthful apology, or a responsibility patiently taught. Place them in Christ’s hands rather than making yourself indispensable.

Lord Jesus Christ, uncreated Word and Deliverer, You have fed Your servants through all their days. Receive the children we bring before You and grant them life in Your household. Through Your Cross, free our love from comparison and control. When our own hands grow weak, let Your blessing remain. Amen.

Footnotes

  1. Tertullian, On Baptism 8 🔗. S. Thelwall translation, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3 (1885), edited by Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; New Advent revision edited by Kevin Knight. An early Christian author, cited for this passage-specific sacramental interpretation, not as a Coptic saint. ↩

  2. Genesis 48:15, Brenton and Hebrew-based English comparison 🔗. ↩

  3. St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Against the Arians III.12-13 🔗. John Henry Newman translation, revised and edited by Archibald Robertson, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (1892); New Advent revision edited by Kevin Knight. Section 12 directly quotes the blessing; section 13 explains the Word’s revealing mission and the unity of the gift. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. Anonymous, Epistle of Barnabas 13 🔗. Traditionally attributed to Barnabas; authorship is uncertain. Roberts and Donaldson translation, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (1885), revised for New Advent by Kevin Knight. The passage interprets the changed hands and covenant inheritance; it is not cited as an explicit crossed-hands/Cross interpretation. ↩

  5. St. Augustine, The City of God XVI.42 🔗. Marcus Dods translation, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. 2 (1887), edited by Philip Schaff; New Advent revision edited by Kevin Knight. ↩

  6. St. Mary Ottawa, The Katameros of the Holy Pascha, English eBook edition (2018), pp. 560-562 🔗. ‘The Third Hour of Good Friday’ names the service; Genesis is the first prophecy, printed as 48:1-19. The assignment does not encompass the full twenty-two verses. ↩

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