Deuteronomy 33:13

BLESSING OF JOSEPH (Deuteronomy 33:13-17)

"And of Joseph he said, Blessed of Jehovah, be his land, For the precious things of heaven, for the dew, And for the deep that coucheth beneath, And for the precious things of the fruits of the sun, And for the precious things of the growth of the moons, And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, And for the precious things of the everlasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and the fullness thereof, And the good will of him that dwelt in the bush. Let the blessings come upon the head of Joseph, And upon the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren. The firstling of his herd, majesty is his; And his horns are the horns of the wild-ox: With them he shall push the peoples all of them, even the ends of the earth: And they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, .And they are the thousands of Manasseh."

Here Moses followed Jacob in pouring out the richest of all blessings upon Joseph, whose two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, were each elevated to the status of a full tribe, thus bestowing upon Joseph the right of the first-born. Moses indeed might have thought that Joseph was to rule in Israel; and when Ephraim's usurping of the name "Israel" and taking ten tribes away from the house of David are considered, it is clear enough that "majesty" in a sense did pertain to him (Deuteronomy 33:17). Nevertheless, Moses also confirmed the blessing of Jacob to Judah; and, in time, Judah would be the true leader of Israel. The prophecy of Moses here also confirmed the superiority of Ephraim over Manasseh, as had been done by Jacob, ascribing "ten thousands" to Ephraim and "thousands" to Manasseh.

Of special interest is, "the good will of him that dwelt in the bush" (Deuteronomy 33:16). Who but Moses would ever have thought of such a designation for God? As Dummelow pointed out, "Jehovah revealed himself in the bush as the Deliverer of Israel (Exodus 3:2,6-8). The latter part of this verse is identical with Genesis 49:26)."[14]

In Deuteronomy 33:15, the parallelism of "ancient mountains" and "everlasting hills," found frequently in Hebrew poetry was noted by Wright who made the comment that, "The source of this is evidently Canaanite literature!"[15] Wright did not cite any examples of this from Canaanite literature, and, although we have encountered a dozen such claims, no scholar has ever shown a single line of that alleged "Canaanite literature." After awhile, one becomes suspicious of such "discoveries." Frankly, we believe that if there were any such indications, someone would have favored us with some examples of it.

"Horns of the wild-ox ..." In the KJV, this reads, "horns of the unicorns"; from this comes the allegation that "a mythical beast" is mentioned in the Bible. Before we came up with this revised reading, "the wild-ox," Adam Clarke pointed out that, "Of course, there are unicorns, the rhinoceros being just such a beast. He is a very large quadruped with one great horn on his nose."[16] Clarke also mentioned some distinguished scholars who favored such a translation.