Israel's Destiny

In our study of Genesis 46–47 last week, we read about Jacob’s family—which is also the beginning of the nation of Israel—moving from Canaan to the land of Egypt to survive a famine and to be reunited with Joseph. We observed that this move was explained most not by escape from famine or reunification of the family but by the providence of God. The God of Israel is a shepherd who leads his people to the places where he wants them to be. So, when Jacob and his family arrive in Egypt, they don’t just survive the famine. They thrive there. They “were fruitful and multiplied greatly,” Genesis 47:27 says. And that phrase, we remember, indicates that Jacob’s family in Egypt is part of the larger story about God’s saving purpose in the biblical story, going back to Genesis 1:28 and running straight through from Noah (Gen 9:1, 7) and on to Abraham and the promise God made to him (Gen 17:6).

We need to keep this point in our focus as we come to the end of Genesis. It is in the story of ancient Israel that we come to trust in God and his promise to bring salvation to his creation. What, then, will happen to Israel, to ancient Israel, who have now made their home in Egypt? What is Israel’s destiny?

At the end of chapter 47 we find Jacob knocking on death’s door (Gen 47:29). He made his deathbed wish, making Joseph promise to bury him back in the land of Canaan. But before he dies, we are told in these two chapters about the blessing that he passes on to his children. Chapter 48 tells us about Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, the two sons that were born to Joseph in Egypt before Israel moved the whole family there. Then in chapter 49, Jacob called all his sons together and blessed each one of them. The chapter ends with a reiteration of Jacob’s directions for his burial back in Canaan, and then he dies.

In these two chapters, we see Jacob’s blessing passed down, God’s choice made clear, and Israel’s future being predicted.

Passing on the Blessing

First, Jacob passes down the blessing. Just before he dies, we see that Jacob seems intent to do this. It is what preoccupies these two chapters in Genesis. What is so important about Jacob passing down the blessing?

The Abrahamic Blessing

We might be thinking of this as Jacob’s putting together a will. We might be thinking of him passing down his stuff, of leaving an inheritance to his children. Perhaps Jacob wants to ensure that his money and possessions give his children a better, more comfortable life than he has had. This is often what aging people in our day are thinking about as they move toward the end of their lives. But that is not what is in view here. This is not the importance of Jacob’s blessing being passed down to his children.

In verses 3-4, Jacob recalls how “God Almighty” appeared to him and blessed him. God’s blessing was this:

Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.

And so, down in verse 9, Jacob tells Joseph to bring his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to him, so that he can bless them. And in verses 15-16 we find the content of his blessing of them.

The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys; and in them let my name be carried on, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

Jacob sees himself passing along what was given to him, which was itself something that had been given to his father and grandfather, Isaac and Abraham. To understand the significance of the blessing in Genesis, we have to understand the covenantal promise of Genesis that has been the driving feature of the entire book.

The blessings that Jacob is here passing on to his children, first to Joseph individually, then to all his sons collectively in chapter 49, are the patriarchal blessings of Isaac his father and Abraham his grandfather. And these blessings are not simply a matter of individual or even national prosperity. In the storyline of Genesis, and consequently, in the storyline of the whole Bible, these blessings are the key to everyone and everything.

Hope Lives On

This cannot be stressed enough. So much that passes as Christianity has practically ignored the point that is being communicated clearly and repeatedly throughout Genesis. This first book of the Bible tells us about God and his creation, then quickly tells us that God’s good creation has run up against a serious problem, which has to do with human disobedience. That’s Genesis 1–3, and the rest of the primordial history through chapter 11 communicates the disasters that inevitably follow.

Now, stay with this story here. If this is what Genesis sets up for us, then when we get to Abraham in chapter 12, we are not seeing a further decline in the overarching story. Rather,

Abraham emerges within the structure of Genesis as the answer to the plight of all humankind. The line of disaster and of the ‘curse’, from Adam, through Cain, through the Flood to Babel, begins to be reversed when God calls Abraham and says ‘in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed’.[1]

If you are a Christian, Jacob’s blessing here is of prime importance to your faith. If with the blessing of Abraham God has begun to reverse the tragedy of Genesis, then it is the passing on of that blessing to the next generation that needs to happen to keep hope alive. What hope? The hope of salvation. But notice: “salvation” is not about souls going to heaven at death. It is about seeing God’s creation, God’s world, the “land of the living” as the Bible often calls it—it is about seeing God’s world rescued from the curse and decay that result from human disobedience.

The Joseph story that has preoccupied most of these final 14 chapters in Genesis reached its pinnacle when Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers and was reunited with his father in the previous three chapters. This stuff we find in the final three chapters can seem so anticlimactic to modern readers, but it is here that we find what really matters in the Joseph story. The book of Genesis is most interested in the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, the promise “of land, descendants, covenant, and blessing to the nations.”[2]That is the central concern of the book. The question is, do we share in that concern?

The Prosperity Gospel

If not, then it might well be because we have ignored the message of Genesis, exchanging it for what we thought was the more important story in the Bible. And if we’ve made that mistake, then it would come as no surprise to find out that we have miscalculated the significance of our own lives within the storyline of the Bible, too.

I’ll ask it this way: what is it you are hoping for? To be more specific, what hope do you seek to find in the Bible, Jesus, and the Christian faith? What do you think that these promise and that you are willing to trust in? What is it the Bible offers that can give you hope?

We can understand the appeal of a so-called prosperity gospel that says the Bible holds the key to health, wealth, comfort, and general happiness here on earth. Many are attracted to that hope, but we can see that it is a devastatingly false hope to hold. But have we who reject that theology actually given the impression that the Bible is indeed about such prosperity, the catch being that it is found in a different place, in heaven rather than on earth? I simply want us to notice that if our primary hope is in “making it to heaven when we die” then we’re going to find our hope out of line with the primary hope of Genesis, the hope which here motivates Jacob to pass along the blessing to his children.

Clarifying the Chosen Status

Next, we see in these two chapters God’s choice made clear. The concept of divine election, of divine chosenness, stands out here. And like the theme of blessing, divine chosenness has come up again and again in Genesis. The blessing is passed down from Abraham to Isaac, not to Ishmael. It is passed down from Isaac to Jacob, not to Esau. Now, to whom does Jacob pass along the blessing? From Jacob to whom?

Jacob’s Favorite Son

Ever since chapter 37, it has been clear that Jacob’s choice is Joseph. Joseph is the favored son of Jacob, as the firstborn of his favored wife. The question is, is Joseph God’s choice as well?

The blessing scene in chapter 48 continues to emphasize Jacob’s choice of Joseph. Here we see Jacob making explicit that the blessing he received from Isaac he is passing along to Joseph by virtue of Joseph’s two oldest sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. And at the end of the chapter, in verse 22, Jacob says he has given to Joseph “rather than to your brothers” a particular possession in Canaan. The meaning of this verse is not entirely clear other than this one fact that Jacob is again showing favoritism for Joseph.[3]

Expecting the Unexpected

But there is more going on here. The meaning of this chapter should be discerned by noting how the story is told. The meaning of the story is found in the author’s intentions, which he signals to us through narrative devices. One such device is found in verse 8. “When Israel saw Joseph’s sons, he said, ‘Who are these’?”

Now that’s a strange question, isn’t it? How does he not know who the boys are? He has been in Egypt now for about 17 years. He has already mentioned them by name in verse 5.

The answer comes when we see what the narrator is doing here. He tells us in verse 10 that “the eyes of Israel were dim with age, so that he could not see.” So, the answer seems simple enough: Jacob was legally blind so that he could not easily recognize the young men standing before him.

But the narrator is reminding us of another blessing scene in Genesis. Remember that when Jacob stole the blessing from his older brother, Esau, he did it by tricking his father, Isaac, whose “eyes were dim so that he could not see” (Gen 27:1). And when Jacob pretended to be his brother Esau, and brought his father the dinner he had asked Esau to prepare for him, Isaac asked, “Who are you, my son?” (Gen 27:18).

When we put these two blessing scenes side-by-side, what do we observe? We see the similarities between them, but we also note some of the differences. While Isaac inadvertently game the blessing to Jacob, Jacob seems to know exactly what he is doing. Verse 14 speaks of how he crossed his hands so that his right hand would be on the younger son’s head—indicating that he would have the higher place of honor and blessing.

What is the meaning of that? In verse 11, Jacob says to Joseph, “I never expected to see your face; and behold, God has let me see your offspring also.” As Jacob comes to the end of his life, a life which has been marked by constant struggle, he has come to see God fulfill his promise to him beyond anything he could hope for, beyond his wildest imaginations. So now he has come to expect the unexpected, to know that God has often chosen to work through the less prominent, the second rather than the first, the poor rather than the rich, the foolish rather than the wise.

God’s Purposes in Election

We can also see here another very important truth about election. Notice that though Ephraim, the younger son, gets promoted ahead of his older brother, Manasseh, Jacob quite clearly blesses them both. To be the chosen one does not mean, then, that God’s blessing does not also come to the non-chosen. Here Jacob “put Ephraim before Manasseh,” but his hope is that both will be blessed, that in them both his name and the name of Abraham and Isaac would be carried on.

If we think of “election” as God’s choice of who goes to heaven and who doesn’t, then we’re going to have a problem here. Unfortunately, so many have thought that was what divine choice was all about, and they’ve read the New Testament passages about election with that as the assumed meaning. But Genesis insists we see it differently and then read the New Testament accordingly. The question about election that matters most is the question of purpose. Why is one person chosen rather than another? The answer: because God has a particular purpose for them, a job which he has called them to do. And that job, by the way, is to extend God’s blessing into the world. God brings his blessing to Abraham (the chosen one) so that God’s blessing will be extended through Abraham (to the non-chosen ones).

The notion of election in Genesis “is begun by a mysterious divine process . . , but somehow this process is brought to fruition through the human response of characters who react to the divine in appropriate ways.”[4]Thus election is God’s choice, standing apart from any basis in human agency. But God’s choice is not isolated from the human response, because God chooses people for a reason. And because God’s choice is effective—God is sovereign, he does what he sets out to do—election necessarily involves human response, or election is meaningless. When God elects someone, he does so because he has a job for them to do. For them to not do that job would make God’s election of them a failure and their status of election meaningless.

We can ask then, in these two chapters, what was God’s purpose for election? The blessing is being passed down from Jacob to the next generation, so who is the chosen one, and what is his purpose for being chosen?

This, too, is another place where an important truth about election springs up. If all we had was Genesis 48, we could easily conclude that it is Joseph who is elect, and the blessing is being passed down to his younger son, Ephraim. But then we have Genesis 49, where Jacob gathers his twelve sons, and, according to verse 28, blessed each of them “with the blessing suitable to him.”

Predicting the Future

That’s how the passage ends, but it begins by Jacob announcing that he is going to tell his sons “what shall happen to you in days to come” (Gen 49:1). He’s going to give them their fortunes. Jacob is seen here predicting Israel’s future, that is, Israel as a nation. Although he speaks to each of the tribes individually, and some of what he says to each of them sounds more like a curse than a blessing, the emphasis on Genesis 49 is about the nation as a whole, the sons of Jacob gathered together. The announcement is about what will happen to “you”—that is, to the nation as a whole. The prophecy is about Israel’s destiny “in days to come,” a phrase which in the prophets refers to “Israel’s future restoration and preeminence.”[5]And when the narrator here says in verse 28, “All these are the twelve tribes of Israel,” it is the first time the Bible mentions Israel’s “twelve tribes.”

The Non-Chosen Tribes

God has chosen Israel. God will complete the mission for which he has chosen them.

But, to borrow a line from the Apostle Paul, “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel” (Rom 9:6). God has chosen Israel, but remember the question we should be asking then is “chosen for what purpose”? And whatever that purpose is, there is some distinction, some chosenness, going on within Israel, too. Just as the blessing is broadening out from Joseph in chapter 48 to all Israel in chapter 49, there is a simultaneous narrowing happening: verses 3-7 tell us “not Reuben, not Simeon, not Levi.” They seem to be ruled out because of disqualifying actions we’ve seen them do in the Genesis record.

We can add here not Zebulon, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali, or Benjamin either. Not that they have done anything necessarily disqualifying, but nothing much stands out in the 10 verses dedicated to these 7 tribal futures.

But two of the tribes get a lot of attention in Jacob’s blessing: Judah and Joseph.

The Prominence of Joseph

We can understand the prominence of Joseph, who receives the longest blessing of Jacob in this chapter. He certainly deserves it, we might say, given the salvific role he played in this last major section in Genesis.

But before Joseph had done anything good or bad, it was clear in chapter 37 that he had been given a special status. Certainly he was Jacob’s favored son, and it appears he was God’s choice as well. The dreams Joseph had in chapter 37 were indeed from God, and just as God had promised in those dreams, so it came to be.

The Future of Judah

But this chapter also tells us that God has sovereign purposes that go well beyond the Joseph story. And verses 8-12 are concentrated on Judah, Jacob’s fourth-born son. Interestingly, Jacob says of Judah that his “father’s sons shall bow down before you,” as they had done to Joseph.

The royal imagery that comes in verse 10 is of course the imagery which the New Testament says has reached its climactic fulfillment. “Weep no more,” John the revelator is told. “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev 5:5).

Yes, the “chosen one” is our Lord Jesus Christ, the greater Joseph who has brought salvation to the entire world. He is Israel’s favorite son and the true and only king of the world. And those who trust in him are grafted in to the true Israel and share his chosen status.

If God’s plan is not simply to bring blessing to his people, but then to also extend his blessing through his people to all creation, then our obedience to him, as verse 10 predicted, really does matter. As disciples of Jesus follow his lead, God does in our day exactly what he said he would do and advances his sovereign rule over the world.

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[1] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, vol. 1, Christian Origins and the Question of God, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 262.

[2] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, vol. 2, Word Biblical Commentary, ed. Bruce M. Metzger, David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 491–92.

[3] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, vol. 1B, The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 882.

[4] Joel S. Kaminsky, Yet I Loved Jacob: Reclaiming the Biblical Concept of Election (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 91.

[5] Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, 885-86.