Chapter 48

At some time in every person’s life they always take a look back. This is normal, and Jacob does it. He looks backward for our benefit and does it in the first seven verses of this chapter.

Verse 1 – Jacob had some pain in his death. Joseph immediately went to his father’s house and took his two sons, mentioned in the order of their birth, with him.

Verse 2 – “… and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.” In other words, this is a death-bed visit.

Verse 3 – why do we have this verse? He is saying, Don’t worry about me, I’m saved. This is recounting the point of time in which he found Christ as saviour. The word Luz is simply the Canaanite word for Bethel. It actually became Bethel in the time of Moses. So we have a saved man looking back.

There are two recollections. The first one is found in verses 4-6 and in it Jacob recalls a blessing. The second one is found in verse 7 where he recalls one of the most sorrowful moments of his life. So he recalls a blessing and he recalls an adversity. Life is made up of blessing and adversity, success and failure. This is the pattern of any and every life. But the tragedy of human life is that we are influenced by these things to the point where we depend for our happiness on which circumstance we find ourselves in. If we find ourselves in a point of blessing and we are all happy about it, and if we find ourselves in a point of adversity we become miserable. Jacob is recalling the pattern of his life for 130 years. The bad thing about Jacob’s life was that he was a slave to his circumstances even as a believer. This is not what God intends for us and that is why he looks back; he looks back to teach us a great lesson: that while life is made up of both happiness and sorrow, blessing and misery, God has provided for the believer for both occasions and God’s provision (the inner resources) means that you can have happiness on the inside regardless of whether you are in a time of blessing or a time of adversity. Jacob didn’t discover that until the last 17 years of his life.

Verse 4 – this is what the Lord said to Jacob at Bethel. “And said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.” This was something he recalled. Jesus Christ promised him after salvation, and He couldn’t make this promise unless Jacob had eternal life. Jacob must have eternal life to have possession of the land forever. So it wasn’t until after he was saved at Bethel that God could promise him the land forever and that he would have a progeny forever.

Verse 5 – “And now thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh.” Jacob mentions Ephraim first, even though Manasseh was the eldest. The eldest was always mentioned first because he is the heir. But Manasseh is going to be set aside, he will not be the heir. Ephraim will be the heir. So he prepares Joseph for this. Ephraim and Manasseh both became tribes of Israel, but Manasseh would die on the vine and become a shrivelled up, weak tribe. Ephraim would become a powerful and great tribe. That is the prophetical end, but there is something more important. Those two boys are as different as day and night, and the difference between them was a difference of the use of doctrine. Ephraim was a man who grew up to use the faith-rest technique. From his youth Ephraim was a man who was stabilised by doctrine. He didn’t wait until he was an old man like his father before he got with it, he got with doctrine from the start and became a great man who represents the productiveness when one uses the inner resources that come from doctrine. Manasseh was just the opposite. One would learn and one would not, and yet they were brothers.

Now Jacob looks upward, verses 8-22. In the rest of this chapter the whole thing is built around the fact the two grandsons now come forward for their blessing. As they approach Jacob is practically blind. He can see grey, he is shadow blind. Now, he knows what is being done and he crosses his hands so that the left hand drops on Manasseh’s head and the right hand drops on Ephraim’s head. Joseph intervenes and says, ‘You are making a mistake.’ But Jacob says, ‘Oh no, I know what I am doing.’ And he did. He knew a great deal about what he was doing. It was a wise switch because he knew that Ephraim was going to be the faith-rest man and Manasseh was going to be Jacob, the one who was doing the blessing, for the first 130 years.

But there are some other lessons here too. There is the lesson that God does not bless the line of natural birth. All of God’s blessing to the human race comes through regeneration, the new birth. God’s blessings of grace come through regeneration. It isn’t with what assets you are born, it is what assets you use after you are born again. A second lesson is the doctrine of substitution and imputation. Let’s let the elder represent the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and the younger represent any member of the human race who believes in Christ. At the moment we believe in Christ the righteousness which belongs to Christ is transferred to us and the double portion blessing is transferred back. Christ bears our sins and in the crossing of the hands we receive His righteousness. The third lesson is the importance of being guided by the Word of God. Jacob had revelation from God. He had prophecy and knew how these two boys were going to turn out and he could not take into consideration human tradition when he was facing the Word of God. The Word of God often runs contrary to human tradition and when there is a conflict Jacob went the right way in the conflict, he went with the Word. Application to us: we must do likewise.

Jacob also blesses Joseph in verses 15 & 16.

Verse 15 – “…the God which fed me all my life long unto this day.” In other words, “God took care of me.” The word fed here actually means to be shepherded. Most of Jacob’s life was as a carnal believer. For only 17 years, a small percentage of his saved life, was he a spiritual believer. But Jesus Christ shepherded him all of the time, carnal or spiritual—the faithfulness of the Lord.

“unto this day” – and Jacob is saying this while he is dying, while he is in pain. It doesn’t make any difference whether we are young and healthy or old and dying, the Lord is always faithful. Application: You can’t do anything to shake the faithfulness of God toward you, and you can’t think anything to shake the faithfulness of God toward you.

Verse 16 – he mentions again the fact that he is saved. The angel here refers to the angel of Jehovah, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“bless the lads” – they are adopted as tribes in Israel.