Jacob and Joseph

Jacob and Joseph’s relationship reaches its final shape in Egypt: a long-separated father welcomes his son and grandsons, orders their place in the family inheritance, and entrusts Joseph with his burial in Canaan. Joseph carries out that obligation, binding their personal bond to the family’s continuing hope of return to the ancestral land.

Reunion and Adoption

When Joseph hears that Jacob is ill, he brings Manasseh and Ephraim to visit him. Jacob, whose eyes are dim with age, gathers strength and sits up. He recalls that God appeared to him at Luz in Canaan and promised to make him fruitful, multiply his descendants, and give the land to them as an everlasting possession.

Jacob adopts Joseph’s two sons into his own line of inheritance: Ephraim and Manasseh are to count as Reuben and Simeon do. Joseph’s later children, by contrast, will remain his own and be counted under their brothers’ names. The reunion therefore also establishes the standing of Joseph’s sons within Jacob’s family.

The Blessing and Birth Order

Jacob kisses and embraces the young men, expressing gratitude that he has seen Joseph again and now also sees Joseph’s children. Joseph places Manasseh, the firstborn, toward Jacob’s right hand and Ephraim toward his left. Jacob deliberately crosses his hands, laying his right hand on Ephraim and his left on Manasseh.

Joseph objects and tries to redirect his father’s right hand to Manasseh, but Jacob refuses. He affirms that Manasseh will also become a people and be great, while declaring that the younger brother will be greater and his descendants a multitude of nations. Jacob blesses both, placing Ephraim before Manasseh; the resulting formula invokes both names when expressing a blessing.

Inheritance and Ancestral Memory

Jacob’s blessing invokes the God of Abraham and Isaac, who shepherded him throughout his life, and the angel who redeemed him from evil. He asks that his name and the names of his fathers be carried in Joseph’s sons, and that the boys grow into a multitude. The blessing joins Joseph’s household to the older ancestral line.

Jacob tells Joseph that God will be with him and bring him back to the land of his fathers. He also grants Joseph one portion above his brothers, which he says he took from the Amorite with sword and bow. The extra portion, like the adoption of Ephraim and Manasseh, gives Joseph’s branch a distinct place in the family inheritance.

Burial and the Promise of Return

Before his death, Jacob makes Joseph swear not to bury him in Egypt, but to carry him out and bury him with his fathers. Joseph agrees. After Jacob dies, Joseph weeps over him, arranges for the physicians to embalm him, and obtains Pharaoh’s permission to fulfill the oath. Jacob’s sons carry him to Canaan and bury him in the cave at Machpelah, where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah were buried; Joseph then returns to Egypt.

The burial completes the charge Jacob placed on Joseph and gives physical expression to their shared orientation toward Canaan. Jacob has said that God will bring Joseph back to the ancestral land; Joseph’s later deathbed words likewise promise that God will remember the family and bring them up from Egypt, and he makes the children of Israel swear to carry his bones from there.