Hebrews 11:21 Commentary and Bible Study

Jacob was near the end of life when this took place. Seventeen years before he had brought his entire family down to Egypt and been reunited with Joseph, and now Joseph hearing that his father was sick brought his two sons for Jacob to bless them before he died. Manasseh was the older and Ephraim the younger, and accordingly Joseph positioned Manasseh, the older, opposite Jacob’s right hand to receive the primary blessing according to custom. Genesis explains that Jacob was by now partially blind, and so when he crossed his arms and placed his right hand on Ephraim instead of Manasseh, Joseph thought his father must have made a mistake. But he was wrong. God was guiding Jacob’s hand and had revealed to him that the younger would be greater than his older brother. This knowledge came to Jacob by faith. Ephraim would be the more blessed and have the most numerous descendants. Jacob’s words are, ‘The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lad’ (Genesis 48:16), and that is the first mention of redemption in the Bible. He knew of the Angel of the Lord, who had been the one who had blessed him, and he sees him as the one who has purchased his soul. ‘And let my name be named on them’: Jacob adopts his grandsons; he wants them to be regarded as his own sons, and indeed those boys were each given to be the heads of tribes named after them, and they would receive an allotment for their descendants so that there were actually 13 tribes of Israel, though the figure 12 loosely describes them. ‘And let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.’ That is exactly how it turned out, that the tribe of Ephraim became the much larger tribe, so that many times in the Old Testament the name Ephraim is used for all of the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom. Jacob was in his bed, the record of Genesis tells us, and he was so weak he couldn't even bow, which he customarily did whenever he worshiped. Instead he leaned ‘upon the top of his staff’: that is how weak he had become, as he was about to die. And yet right to the very end he is obeying the Lord. He is taking heed; he understands the instructions of God, and he obeys them.