SYNOPSIS: Having been told that his father's health was failing, Joseph went to see him and took his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, with him. Jacob blesses Joseph, and adopts his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as his own, making them his heirs. Then Jacob, who can no longer see, asks for the two young men to be brought to him. Although Joseph has placed his oldest son, Manasseh, on Jacob's right hand side, Jacob places his right hand on his younger brother Ephraim's head by crossing his arms, and so he gives them his blessing. When Joseph saw that Jacob had placed his right hand on Ephraim's head he thought he had got mixed up, so he tried to correct him. "No father," he says, "this one is the eldest." "I know, son, I know," replies Jacob, "but the younger one is going to become greater than his brother."
Genesis, the book, is drawing to a close now, but let us not lower our guard for it isn't over yet, and it continues to challenge us in this its antepenultimate chapter. The scene is a poignant one as Jacob, now a very old man nearing his end, receives a private visit from his best-loved Joseph, who appears here not in the guise of the virtual ruler of Egypt, as in the last few passages but, for one more time, as the first son of Jacob and Rachel, to receive his father's parting words and blessing, and he brings along with him his own two oldest sons, Menasseh and Ephraim, whom he begot with his Egyptian wife in Egypt before Jacob's arrival there. This makes for a fitting and moving scene prior to Jacob's final goodbye, but wait: there's more going on here than that. This is a passage that begs to be read on several levels, in fact the audience is spoilt for choice, and if it is not too overwhelming it may even attempt to read it on these different levels simultaneously. This is true whether we try to read the chapter as history (i.e. looking for facts) or as literature (attending to the storyteller's message).
And to give it even more dimensions, this chapter is full of parallels or recaps of figures and themes that have been presented previously in the course of this great book, which somehow seems longer psychologically than it actually is in words or pages, so that one gets a bit of a feeling here of Jacob's and his fathers' lives proverbially passing before our eyes, as perhaps they are before Jacob's.
For the source critics, meanwhile, there are still further problems of layering and intertwining strands to be unravelled and collated, because the text undoubtedly shows signs of a composite process of formulation. The chapter is therefore complicated on ever level and in every direction, and it is difficult to know where to begin.
The way the whole business about Jacob's apparent mix-up when blessing the grandchildren is narrated might almost be viewed as slapstick humour: old man's eyes are dimmed and his mind seems to be befuddled too, Joseph brings over his sons taking care to line them up with his father's right and left hand to conserve the proper order of precedence, father crosses his arms over (really??) and so switches their blessings. He gets their order wrong when naming them too! It's Menasseh and Ephraim, not Ephraim and Menasseh, Dad! "I know what I'm doing" responds Dad, who will not be corrected.
We might be forgiven for thinking this is the author allowing us to sneak in a smile or two before the increasingly inevitable and sad moment of Jacob's passing away, which the audience knows cannot be far off now, and at the same time probably a clever way of conveying the idea of Jacob's feeble-mindedness in his extreme old age, if it were not that we know better, for wait a minute: this is all too familiar, isn't it? If Jacob himself was not winking to us here behind Joseph's back, then the narrator certainly must be. Switched blessings, making the younger of two sons the primary heir, old blind father asking who is before him before giving his benediction: I wonder where we've heard all that before!
This may just be an optical illusion but it almost looks as if the author decided to play a joke on our latter-day documentary hypothesists too. Whether it is through haplessness and chance or through the cleverness of the narrator, there are non-sequiturs in this scene which we can choose whether to read either as seams missing a stitch in the compiler's handiwork when patching together his sources, or as a brilliant, highly realistic portrayal of a revered patriarch's senior moments. One such would be the switching of hands during the blessing of the boys, already referred to above: Jacob resists Joseph's attempt to correct him with the words, "I know, Joseph, I know", I know what I'm doing, don't tell me what I have to do! Does he really know, or is it just an old man's expression of annoyance at being called out, coupled, of course, with fate (or God) pursuing her own designs? Well actually, the story works both ways and it would be nice to think it is a little of each.
Then there is the impression of an old man's rambling which is just a little too realistic to be discounted, even if it might be possible to construct alternative explanations of why he isn't really rambling at all, what he's saying is all pertinent if you will just listen properly (I suspect a lot of old people feel the same way about their own "ramblings"; so what?). He does it more than once: have another look at vv. 3-7, and I think you can't fail to miss it if you silently read the paragraph imagining the voice of Abe Simpson. Now read verse 8.
Now there are admittedly other ways in which the audience (and we, as part of that audience) may choose to hear this. In an analysis of sources we might defend the logical integrity of Jacob's mind by arguing that it isn't his fault that subsequent editors happened to fit originally alternative accounts into one whole in just such a manner as allows this impression spuriously to arise. Apart from that approach, we can also keep Jacob sane by blaming his eyes. Joseph heard that his father's health was failing and he went to see him, taking his sons with him. He announces himself to Jacob: "I am your son Joseph, I have come to see you." It doesn't say anywhere prior to v. 8 that Joseph had told Jacob that his sons were there with him. Jacob launches into a monologue full of reminiscences which takes him from Luz (Bethel) to Bethlehem via Padan-Aram, in the middle of which he mentions Joseph's two sons Menasseh and Ephraim (or rather, as he insists on calling them, Ephraim and Manasseh): that doesn't prove that Jacob knew they were there, if he were blind and they hadn't opened their mouths yet, it could just have been a coincidence.
Even if so, would the audience have been likely to hear it that way, given the present shape of the passage and their knowledge that the grandchildren were in the room?
Perhaps we should take the position that there is more than one kind of "logic" (or coherence) in terms of which such a passage can be read and understood. There is the logic of "the facts", which may or not be historically "true" facts but which are facts assumed to be true for the sake of the story: facts such as that the boys were in the room, Jacob did or didn't know they were there, Menasseh was the firstborn, Jacob did or didn't actually know which one was the firstborn, and all the other "data" that are treated as factual (or as unknown) in the framework of the narrative. Then there is the "logic" of the story qua story as told by the narrator and as grasped by the listener or reader who is listening to or reading the story qua story. That story demands to be listened to as well, and it may also have things to say to us. There are even things that make perfect sense to us as part of a story even if they might not quite seem to fit on the level of "facts", and so there can be more than one criterion for what amounts to coherence. Playing with those borderline uncertainties is part of what literature is about, surely; and the audience's complicity, its willingness to "play the game" within such coordinates, on such a playing field, in accordance with such unspoken rules, is what reading literature is about (and listening to it, too). Back all those years ago, was Jacob's father Isaac really so perceptually and cognitively challenged that he could be fooled by Jacob as he was through the quite unsophisticated sham that Rebeccah devised? Is this a historical question or a literary one? As a literary question, the answer is yes, and the proof is that he was, in the story - so he must have been. Is that true?? Is what true?
Now put on your Abe Simpson voice again and read vv. 21-22 (at the end of the passage), doing a gradual fade-out in the course of verse 22. There are two ways to "read" this two-verse sequence: that's one. The other (which I certainly have no intention of belittling or ridiculing) is that generally adopted by scholars, who ask questions and puzzle over what Jacob meant about Shechem, and "giving" Shechem to Ephraim and Manasseh. Don't feel bad if you don't quite recall the episode concerning Jacob and Shechem (see ch. 34) as having gone quite as implied by Jacob's words here: you're right, it didn't! Unless Jacob's memory is wavering too...
This verse implies a conquest of Shechem by united Israel, and a special gift of the city to the tribe of Joseph. Verses 21, 22 are commonly given to E; as are also the statements in xxxiii.19 that Jacob came in peace to Shechem and bought land there; and portions of the story in ch. xxxiv that Simeon and Levi sacked Shechem, and that Jacob had to flee from the vengeance of the Canaanites. These traditions cannot be reconciled... (CB, p. 393)
A laconic and obscure allusion. Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that Heb. [sh'khem] may stand either for the city of Shechem or the common noun "shoulder." In the latter case, we would have here a reference to a mountain side or slope, specifically Mount Gerizim, which dominated Shechem... To be sure, we have no independent notice of a conquest of Shechem by Joseph; nor does xxxiv state that the brothers who massacred the inhabitants actually retained the city itself. But the alternative interpretation runs up against the same difficulty, inasmuch as "mountain slope" would likewise presuppose possession of Shechem. For the present, at any rate, no plausible solution is in sight. (EAS, p. 358)
It is likely... that that sh'khem here... is connected with the city of Shechem, a place closely associated with Jacob and Joseph... In that understanding, the passage refers to some tradition in the life of Jacob (other than the one in chapter 34) concerning his participation in a war against Shechem, which the Bible has not otherwise preserved. (EH p. 298)
Hebrew unclear. We do not know to what event Yaakov is referring in this entire verse. (EF, p. 207)
48:1 wayyómer l'yosef
Occasionally, as here, wayyómer l' means not 'he told him' but 'he was told.'
48:4 hin'ni mafr'kha w'hirbitíkha un'tattíkha liqhal ‛amim
'I will make you fertile and numerous, making of you an assemly of peoples.' As a matter of fact it was Jacob's father, Isaac, who gave Jacob this blessing upon sending him away to Padan-Aram (28:3): w'el shadday y'varekh ot'kha w'yafr'kha w'yarbékha w'hayíta liqhal ‛amim 'May El Shaddai bless you and make you fertile and numerous, so that you become an assembly of peoples.'
48:7 méta ‛alay raxel
'Rachel died on me.' This English translation may jar too much stylistically to be used, probably because it belongs to too colloquial a register for the solemnity of both the present occasion and the sorrowful fact Jacob is returning; it is nonetheless the meaning of méta ‛alay, which is better rendered into Spanish as se me murió Raquel; it is also perfectly translated by Yeh. as איז מיר געשטאָרבן רחל iz mir geshtorbn rokhl. That is to say, ‛alay lit. 'on me' expresses an ethic dative with an adversative connotation, i.e. it suggests that it was something bad (for him) that happened. But that implication is backgrounded, and I am therefore not entirely convinced by translations such as JPS 'Rachel died, to my sorrow' which foreground the sentiment and make it more explicit and specific. It is a bit like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.
48:11 r'o fanékha ló fillálti
(JPS) 'I never expected to see you again.' 'Expect' is one of the meanings of the piel of p-l-l; cf. the meaning 'to pray' of the more common hitpael. Its complement is the fronted infinitival phrase 'to see your face.'
w'hinne her'a oti elohim gam et zar‛èkha
'And here God has let me see your children as well.' In this context her'a is perhaps best translated not as 'to show' but in the more primary causative (or rather "permissive") sense of 'to allow to see', though in fact either way works.
48:12 wayyotze... wayyishtáxu ár'tza
Note that both verbs are singular: Joseph performed both acts then, he brought the boys out from between his knees (me‛im birkaw) and he bowed down. I may be missing something but I fail to see any textual evidence for Speiser's and EH's unexplained assertion that birkaw refers to Jacob's knees; it could, but where does it say it must? Most translations say 'his', which is prudent. So also the LXX; the Vulg. however, inserts patris after de gremio rather than suo, but either choice would have implied the same default interpretation. The LXX, however, commits another mistake by rendering wayyishtáxu as prosekunêsan 'they prostrated themselves' (which would have been wayyishtaxawu).
48:14 sikkel et yadaw
The verb is a hapax legomenon, but such a meaning seems to be necessary from the context. In the perspective of tribal history the assumed meaning of this episode is that in an earlier period the Menasseh tribe dominated but later on Ephraim became the stronger tribe; this anecdote may be seen as an a posteriori rationalization of this change of course, insinuating that the rise of Ephraim was sanctioned by the will of the ancestors.To later generations, of course, that story is no longer known or pertinent, whereas the episode itself remains; henceforth it will have a different "meaning." The human intellect likes everything to have a meaning and it appears to be programmed to search for one; an orphaned signifiant bereft of its earlier signifié may drop out of circulation or it may have a new sense attached to it if one is deemed felicitous, so getting a new lease on life. It is a form of recycling. The proper question is not: "What does this mean?", it is "What does this mean... to whom?"
48:15 wayvarekh et yosef
Note that although in the following blessing the beneficiaries are the boys, it says here that Jacob blessed Joseph. However, perhaps a blessing on Joseph's sons was considered to be, by implication, a blessing on Joseph himself too. The LXX says êulogêsen autous 'he blessed them' rather than êulogêsen iôsêph.
haro‛e oti me‛odi ‛ad hayyom hazze
'My guide/shepherd all my life up until this day.' This is the first intimation in the Hebrew Bible of the figure of speech which compares the God of the patriarchs, in his relation to his people, to a shepherd; cf. the 23rd Psalm's YHWH ro‛i lo exsar 'YHWH is my shepherd, I shall not want.' The word is ro‛e, the participle of r-‛-h 'to pasture, tend, keep (flocks) etc.' The metaphor is natural enough in a pastoral community and is furthermore said to haven been widespread throughout the ancient Middle East that frequently occurs in its literature (EH, p. 296).
48:17 wayyéra‛ b'‛enaw
(JPS) 'he thought it wrong', but this verb usually means 'be displeasing' (cf. 21:11 wayyéra‛ haddavar m'od b'‛ene avraham ‛al odot b'no 'The matter was to displeasing to Abraham on account of his son' (this is about the suggestion that his son Ishmael and Hagar should sent away); God reassures him, saying (21:12): al yera‛ b'‛enékha ‛al haná‛ar etc. 'Do not be displeased (or worried) on account of the boy...' Some translations translate this as 'Abraham was distressed...'
48:19 w'zar‛o yihye m'lo haggoyim
The tradition translation of m'lo haggoyim as 'a multitude of nations' which goes back to the LXX (eis plêthos ethnôn) is questioned by Speiser who glosses the phrase as meaning 'shall suffice for nations' which he suggests is a way of saying "'shall become a quantity of (=sufficient for) nations,' i.e., sufficient in numbers to constitute nations."
NOTE ON 73: Jacob foretells the fortunes of the Israelite tribes (49:1-27)
The passage that follows this one is considered the most archaic part of Genesis, and it presents special challenges to translators and commentators. I am going to continue my policy of skipping this section for the time being and dealing first of all with the small amount of material that still remains to complete Genesis, after which I will have to come back to passage 73 and perhaps devote a special study to it. Therefore the next passage commented on in the blog will be number 74.
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