We read in chapter 47, verses 28 and following that Jacob lived to be 147 years old, and was now about to die. He would not be buried in Egypt, for he knew God’s promise that Canaan should be his country, and his children’s and no matter how pleasant it might be to be in Egypt, taken care of by his great son, Joseph, his heart was in that land across the desert where he had been born and his parents had died.
Hearing that his father was ill, and knowing that he could not live long, Joseph took his two boys, Ephraim and Manasseh to see Jacob, or Israel. as he is called in this chapter.—the name God had given him on a memorable occasion in his life.
Jacob strengthened himself, and sat upon his bed for the visit of his son and grandsons. He immediately spoke of God, and the lonely place afterward called Bethel. where God had appeared to him when he was running away from home. and what He had said to him. Promising him that land for an everlasting possession. Now Jacob said, Those two boys of yours were born in Egypt before I came here. but they are mine, the same as Reuben and Simeon; all your children belong to the family, and shall share in the inheritance.
But his thoughts went back to his great sorrow, when the much loved wife Rachel, Joseph’s and Benjamin’s mother died, and was buried at Bethlehem where so many centuries afterward Jesus was to be born. Then he asked for Joseph’s boys, that he might bless them. Feeble now, and almost blind from old age, Jacob kissed his two grandsons and put his arms around them, then he laid his hands on their heads to give them his blessing.
Joseph had placed his boys in front of Jacob so that his father’s right hand would be placed on the older one’s (Manasseh’s) head, and his left on the younger one’s (Ephraim’s) head, but Jacob crossed his hands so that his right rested on the younger boy and his left on the older. This meant that Ephraim would receive the greater blessing, and Joseph was displeased and tried to change his father’s hands, but Jacob refused. The younger brother, he said, shall be greater than the older one.
Jacob blessed Joseph too; in verses 15 and 16 we are told what he said of him.
This lesson makes us think how much sadness and trouble Jacob and his mother would have saved themselves, so many years before (chapter 27) when they deceitfully got the oldest son’s (Esau’s) blessing for the younger one. Now God was showing how He could have the right one blessed, even when their father Joseph tried to stop it. How simple everything is, when we leave it to God.