Genesis 48

ADOPTION AND BLESSING OF JOSEPH’S SONS, Genesis 48:1-22.

“At the very close of his career, Jacob’s character greatly rises in moral grandeur. The spirit of prophecy comes upon him, and he utters some of the most inspiring words of revelation. The world is fading on his dim eyes, but he has now the piercing vision of the seer, which reveals what is to take place ‘in the last days.’ Cut off from the outer world by his infirmities, his soul has retired within the great covenant promises made to his fathers, which he now sees to be splendid prophetic blessings for his children. He recalls the heavenly stairway of Bethel, on which he saw the angels in his youthful exile; the struggle and victory of Peniel, where ‘Jacob’ was changed to ‘Israel;’ the renewal of the covenant promise and covenant name on his return to Bethel; the grave of Bethlehem, into which his hopes were crushed with his beloved Rachel; and finally, the strange career of Joseph, which must have seemed in retrospect like the death and resurrection of his best beloved son. All these providences he now recounts to his son Joseph, and by them he ascends into the mount of vision. Genesis 47:3-7. There is a dramatic vividness and life-like warmth in this picture of the aged patriarch, ‘strengthening himself’ to speak these last words, rising from his Egyptian bed, and sitting upon its side, as did Socrates in his last day . Phaedo, 60, B . He sees not Joseph’s sons so much as the tribes behind them; for these are not personal, but national predictions; and yet they are suggested by individual peculiarities, along which, by the path of prophetic association, the patriarch travels into the future. The return to Canaan and the far-off possession of that land of promise, are the field of his contemplation, and he takes no notice of the intervening ages of Egyptian sojourn and servitude.” Newhall.