Genesis 48 — The Crossed Hands of Blessing

Today’s Passage: Genesis 48

We come now to an old man’s bedside, and I would have you slow your step as you enter the room, for we are watching a saint make his last great act of faith. Jacob is dying in the land of Egypt, far from the hills where he wrestled with God and buried his fathers, and word reaches Joseph that the old man is failing. So Joseph gathers his two boys, Manasseh and Ephraim, born to him in Egypt, and brings them to their grandfather to be blessed. What follows is one of the tenderest scenes in Genesis. Jacob, whose eyes have grown dim so that he can barely see, rallies the last of his strength, sits up in his bed, and takes these two grandsons to himself as his own sons, giving Joseph in them a double portion among the tribes. Then he reaches out his trembling hands to bless, and here the story turns on a small and deliberate act that Joseph tries to stop. Jacob crosses his arms, laying his right hand not on the firstborn but on the younger, on Ephraim, and when Joseph moves to correct him the old man gently refuses, for he knows exactly what he is doing. Watch, as you read, how the whole strange pattern of Genesis comes to rest in a blind man’s crossed hands, and how a life full of striving and sorrow ends not with a boast but with a confession: that God had been his shepherd all his days, and the Angel had redeemed him from all harm.

As you read, hold this: A dying Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons in the name of the God who shepherded him and the Angel who redeemed him, crossing his hands to set the younger before the elder by grace.

Genesis 48:1-4 (BSB)

¹ Some time later Joseph was told, “Your father is ill.” So he set out with his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. ² When Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has come to you,” Israel rallied his strength and sat up in bed. ³ Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and there He blessed me ⁴ and told me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you; I will make you a multitude of peoples, and will give this land to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’

See how the scene opens with a son hurrying to a dying father, bringing his two boys along, for he wants them near their grandfather while there is still time. And notice the small, brave detail the Bible gives us of the old man himself. He is ill and failing, but when he hears that Joseph has come, Israel rallies his strength and sits up in bed. There is a dignity in that gesture that ought to move us. He will meet this holy moment sitting upright, gathering the last of his failing body to do properly the one thing left to him, which is to bless. And the first words out of his mouth are not about his sickness or his sorrow but about God and the promise. He reaches back across the years to Luz, the place he later called Bethel, where God Almighty had appeared to him and blessed him, and he repeats the promise word for word: fruitfulness, a multitude of peoples, and a land given to his descendants as an everlasting possession. This is how a man of faith prepares to bless. He steadies himself first on the promise of God, and only then does he lift his hands.

Genesis 48:5-7 (BSB)

⁵ And now your two sons born to you in Egypt before I came to you here shall be reckoned as mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine. ⁶ Any children born to you after them shall be yours, and they shall be called by the names of their brothers in the territory they inherit. ⁷ Now as for me, when I was returning from Paddan, to my sorrow Rachel died along the way in the land of Canaan, some distance from Ephrath. So I buried her there beside the road to Ephrath” (that is, Bethlehem).

Here is the great act of the chapter, done in a single quiet sentence. Ephraim and Manasseh shall be mine, the old man says, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine. With those words he adopts his two grandsons as his own sons, lifting them up to stand among the tribes of Israel in their own right. This is Joseph’s double portion, the inheritance of the firstborn given to the beloved son, not in gold but in this, that two tribes rather than one will carry his blood into the land of promise. It is the birthright that Reuben, the true eldest, had thrown away by his sin, now passing quietly to Joseph’s line. And then, in the middle of this careful legal blessing, the old heart breaks open and the sorrow of a lifetime comes flooding back. He remembers Rachel, the wife he loved above all, dying on the road near Ephrath, and how he buried her there in the open country with no city to lay her in. It seems at first a strange thing to speak of just now, until you remember that these boys he is blessing are Rachel’s grandsons through Joseph, her own firstborn. In taking them as his sons he is honoring her, folding the wife he lost and the son he thought he had lost into one last blessing, and carrying them both forward into the future of the people of God.

Genesis 48:8-11 (BSB)

⁸ When Israel saw the sons of Joseph, he asked, “Who are these?” ⁹ Joseph said to his father, “They are the sons God has given me in this place.” So Jacob said, “Please bring them to me, that I may bless them.” ¹⁰ Now Israel’s eyesight was poor because of old age; he could hardly see. Joseph brought his sons to him, and his father kissed them and embraced them. ¹¹ “I never expected to see your face again,” Israel said to Joseph, “but now God has let me see your children as well.”

There is something gently poignant in the way the old man peers toward the two shapes he can barely make out and asks, who are these. His eyes have grown so dim with age that he cannot recognize his own grandsons across the room, and here we should hear an echo of another blind old father, for Jacob himself once stood before his blind father Isaac and received a blessing meant for another. Now he is the one who cannot see, and God will make sure this blessing goes exactly where God intends. Joseph answers with words full of quiet faith, they are the sons God has given me in this place, giving God the credit even for the children born to him in the land of his exile. So the old man draws them near and kisses them and folds them in his arms, and then he says a thing that ought to bring tears to your eyes. I never expected to see your face again, he tells Joseph, but now God has let me see your children as well. For twenty-two years he had believed this son was dead, torn apart by wild animals, gone forever, and now not only is Joseph alive and standing before him but Joseph’s children are climbing onto his knees to be blessed. God had given him back not only the son he mourned but a whole generation beyond, more than the grieving old man had ever dared to hope for.

Genesis 48:12-14 (BSB)

¹² Then Joseph removed his sons from his father’s knees and bowed facedown. ¹³ And Joseph took both of them—with Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel’s right hand—and brought them close to him. ¹⁴ But Israel stretched out his right hand and put it on the head of Ephraim, the younger; and crossing his hands, he put his left on Manasseh’s head, although Manasseh was the firstborn.

Watch now how carefully Joseph arranges everything, and how quietly his careful arrangement is overturned. He takes the boys from his father’s knees and bows to the ground in reverence, and then he sets them just so, thinking of everything. Manasseh, the firstborn, he guides toward Jacob’s right hand, for the right hand carries the greater blessing; Ephraim, the younger, he places toward the left. Joseph has done it exactly right by the custom of the world, the elder to the stronger hand, the younger to the lesser. But the old man reaches out and crosses his arms. He lays his right hand on the head of Ephraim, the younger, and his left on Manasseh, the elder, and the Bible tells us plainly that he did this knowing full well that Manasseh was the firstborn. This is no fumbling of a blind man’s hands. It is a deliberate, deliberate act, the last in a long line of such acts running all through this family, where God keeps choosing the younger over the elder, the unexpected over the expected, grace over the order of nature. The crossed hands are the whole gospel of Genesis pressed into one gesture, the right hand of blessing reaching past the one the world would have chosen to rest on the one God has chosen.

Genesis 48:15-16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Then he blessed Joseph and said: “May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, ¹⁶ the angel who has redeemed me from all harm—may He bless these boys. And may they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude upon the earth.”

Now we come to the very heart of the chapter, and I want you to listen to how the old man names his God, because a man’s dying words about God tell you what a whole life taught him to believe. He does not bless in his own name or by his own strength. He reaches for God with three great titles, each one deeper than the last. First, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the covenant God of the generations before him, the faithful One who kept His word to grandfather and father. Then, more personally, the God who has been my shepherd (רָעָה) raah, pronounced raw-AW. Strong's H7462, to shepherd, tend a flock, feed and lead. This is the plain word a herdsman would use for tending a flock, to feed, to lead sheep out and bring them safely home. Jacob had done exactly this for the greater part of his life, keeping Laban’s flocks through scorching days and freezing nights, and no one at that bedside knew better than he what it costs to shepherd well. So there is a lifetime of understanding packed into the word when he turns it upon God and says, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day. This is the first place in the Bible where God is called a shepherd, and it is worth pausing over the wonder of that. Long before David would sing that the LORD is his shepherd, and long before the Lord Jesus would stand among us and say, “I am the good shepherd,” an old dying man in Egypt reached for this one homely word to sum up everything God had been to him. He had wandered, and he had been led. He had strayed, and he had been sought. He had walked through valleys dark with fear, and he had never once been abandoned. All of that is what he means when he calls God his shepherd, and the word he chose here would echo down the whole of Scripture until it came to rest on the One who lays down His life for the sheep. all my life to this day. This is the first time in all of Scripture that anyone calls God his shepherd, and it comes from the mouth of a man who had himself been a shepherd for decades and knew exactly what the word meant: the long nights, the wandering sheep, the careful leading through danger to water and grass. Looking back over a life of fleeing and grief and exile, Jacob does not say he shepherded himself; he says God shepherded him, every mile of it. And then the third title, deepest of all, the Angel who has redeemed (גֹּאֵל) goel, pronounced go-ALE. Strong's H1350, kinsman-redeemer, one who redeems or avenges on behalf of a relative. This is one of the great words of the Bible, and this is the very first time it is used of God’s deliverance. To redeem, in this sense, is to act as a kinsman-redeemer: to be the near relative who steps in to buy back what a family member has lost, to pay the price, to avenge the wrong, to rescue his own out of trouble and slavery and debt. It is a word of family and of rescue together, the strong relative who will not let his kinsman be lost. Jacob calls God the Angel who has redeemed him from all harm, and in saying it he gathers up his whole stormy life, the flight from Esau, the years under Laban, the terror at the Jabbok, the famine, the grief, and confesses that through every danger a Redeemer had been buying him back. Hold onto this word, for it is the seed of one of the richest promises in all of Scripture. This same word will one day fill the mouth of Job crying “I know that my Redeemer lives,” and Boaz stepping in for Ruth, and the prophets promising a Redeemer for all God’s people, until at the last it comes to rest on the Lord Jesus, the near kinsman who took our flesh and paid our price and redeemed us from every harm. The first time anyone says God has redeemed him, it is an old man on his deathbed, looking back over a hard life and seeing a Redeemer’s hand at work in all of it. me from all harm, and over that word we must linger.

The old man asks that these two titles, Shepherd and Redeemer, be laid like a covering over the two boys before him. May He bless these boys, he says, may they carry my name and the names of Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude upon the earth. He is handing the covenant forward, praying that the God who shepherded and redeemed him will do the same for these grandsons and for all who come after them.

Genesis 48:17-20 (BSB)

¹⁷ When Joseph saw that his father had placed his right hand on Ephraim’s head, he was displeased and took his father’s hand to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s. ¹⁸ “Not so, my father!” Joseph said. “This one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head.” ¹⁹ But his father refused. “I know, my son, I know!” he said. “He too shall become a people, and he too shall be great; nevertheless, his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his offspring shall become a multitude of nations.” ²⁰ So that day Jacob blessed them and said: “By you shall Israel pronounce this blessing: ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.’” So he put Ephraim before Manasseh.

Here Joseph tries to fix what he is sure is a mistake, and the old man’s answer is one of the quietest, surest lines in Genesis. Joseph sees the right hand resting on the younger boy’s head and is troubled by it, so he takes hold of his father’s hand to move it across to Manasseh, the firstborn, saying, not so, my father, this one is the firstborn. It is a natural thing to want, the blessing going where the world says it belongs. But his father refuses, and he does it gently, without a trace of confusion. I know, my son, I know, he says, and you can almost hear the peace in it, the calm of a man who sees more clearly with his blind eyes than Joseph does with his good ones. He does not deny Manasseh a blessing; the elder too shall become a people and shall be great. But the younger, Ephraim, shall be greater still, and out of him shall come a multitude of nations. History would prove the old man right, for Ephraim grew to be the leading tribe of the northern kingdom, its name a byword for all Israel. And so Jacob sets down a blessing so lovely that Israel would speak it over its children for all generations after: may God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh. To this day that is how a father in Israel blesses his sons, with the names of the two boys a blind grandfather crossed his hands to bless, the younger set forever before the elder by the free choosing grace of God.

Genesis 48:21-22 (BSB)

²¹ Then Israel said to Joseph, “Look, I am about to die, but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. ²² And to you, as one who is above your brothers, I give the ridge of land that I took from the Amorites with my sword and bow.”

And so the old man turns from the boys to their father with his parting words, and they are words of faith looking past his own grave. Look, I am about to die, he says, plainly, without fear, as a man who has made his peace with it. But hear what he sets against his own death: but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. He will not be there to see it. He is dying in Egypt, far from the land of promise, and yet he is utterly certain that God will keep the covenant, that this family will not stay forever in Egypt but will one day be carried home to Canaan. His last look is not backward at what he is losing but forward at what God has sworn to give. Then he grants Joseph one particular gift, a ridge of land he had taken long ago, marking the beloved son as the one raised above his brothers. And there we leave the old man, sitting up in his bed, his blessing spoken, his eyes fixed by faith on a homecoming he would not live to see but never once doubted, resting to the end on the God who had shepherded and redeemed him all his life.