Thread by @JoelBaden

#Genesis 48

Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons

This chapter is mostly a continuous narrative. Jacob is sick and about to die, Joseph brings his kids, and Jacob blesses them, but switches hands, evidently intentionally, and makes a final deathbed request of Joseph.

On grounds exclusively internal to this chapter, there are two parts that stand out. One is the speech in 48:3-7. The problem here is that Jacob refers directly to Ephraim and Manasseh in this speech, and then in the next breath of 48:8 sees them and is like “who are they?”

The second problem is that Jacob blesses the little rascals (they’re probably full-grown adults, at least canonically) twice: once in 48:15-16, and once in 48:20a. And they aren’t quite the same blessing.

In a remarkably easy and at this point probably expected plot twist, we can just take those two segments and read them together as their own thing. Jacob tells Joseph that he’s claiming Ephraim and Manasseh as his, and then blesses them.

It’s a pretty clear etiology for Ephraim and Manasseh being two of the twelve tribes. Notice that what’s at stake here is their inheritance status: it is Jacob’s mention of the inheritable land, אחוזה, that triggers the pseudo adoption.

And that’s precisely how and why Ephraim and Manasseh are part of the twelve tribes for P (for such this is): they round out the twelve after the Levites are selected to serve the cult. (Or so P’s story goes. We can talk about the Levites another time.)

It doesn’t take any great insight to recognize the speech in 48:3-7 as P. El Shaddai. Appeared at Luz. Land of Canaan. Blessed him. Be fruitful and multiply. Everlasting possession. Paddan Aram. Rachel’s death and burial near Ephrat. It’s all P in plot and in style.

What’s left behind is a lovely little story. Jacob has seemingly never met Joseph’s kids - “who are they?” - and it’s a sentimental moment for everyone. Then Joseph removes them from his knees. Turns out they’re...little kids!

Which is fine, I guess - but canonically some of his brothers are grandparents already. Anyway, Jacob crosses his hands and gives them a nice blessing, in which he doesn’t include them among his own descendants as in P, but explains why they are called Israel.

“In my name may they be recalled” - which appears to be an allusion to the pretty well established historical reality that the core, and probably original region, of early Israel was precisely the highlands of Ephraim and Manasseh. So an etiology - but a diffferent one.

Joseph catches the crossed hands, but Jacob reassures him that it was intentional: Ephraim is going to be greater than Manasseh. More etiology here, of the respective importance/population/power of the two Israelite territories.

Again these etiologies are historical, or at least have references outside the world of the story - P’s etiology, the adoption of the two sons, really works within the world of the story.

I think that 48:20b is the conclusion to the hand-switching: “thus he put Ephraim before Manasseh.” I don’t think P has any sense of the younger brother trope, here or elsewhere. But it’s the main plot element of the main storyline in this chapter.

By the by, I think this episode isn’t really part of the younger brother trope that we find elsewhere. They’re both equally Israel, and neither is receiving a separate promise or blessing, or even a higher status particularly.

So having separated out P and seen the differences between the two stories, which source is the non-P story from? I think it’s E. One could make the argument that E, often thought to be northern in origin, would care more about Ephraim and Manasseh than J. Maybe!

But for me it’s a plot issue. In J, Jacob’s deathbed scene already started, back in 47:29, and Joseph was already with him, promising to bring Jacob’s body back to Canaan to be buried. 48:1 begins a new deathbed scene, seemingly some time later (“after these things”).

So basically three deathbed scenes all at once here: J’s in Gen 47, and P and E interwoven here (though P doesn’t mark it as such - I don’t think P has any explicit deathbed speeches).