Genesis 48

¹ Some time later it was reported to Joseph, ‘Your father has been taken ill’. So he took with him his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim.

² When Jacob was told, ‘Look, your son Joseph has come to you’, Israel, summoning his strength, sat up in bed.

³ ‘El Shaddai appeared to me at Luz in the country of Canaan,’ Jacob told Joseph ‘and he blessed me,

⁴ saying to me, “I will make you fruitful and increase you in numbers. I will make you a group of peoples and give this country to your descendants after you, to own in perpetuity.”

⁵ Now your two sons, born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, shall be mine; Ephraim and Manasseh shall be as much mine as Reuben and Simeon.

⁶ But with regard to the children you have had since them, they shall be yours, and they shall be known by their brothers’ names for the purpose of their inheritance.

⁷ ‘When I was on my way from Paddan, to my sorrow death took your mother Rachel from me, in the land of Canaan, on the journey while we were still some distance from Ephrath. I buried her there on the road to Ephrath at Bethlehem.’

⁸ When Israel saw Joseph’s two sons, he asked, ‘Who are these?’

⁹ ‘They are my sons, whom God has given me here’ Joseph told his father. ‘Then bring them to me,’ he said ‘that I may bless them.’

¹⁰ Israel’s sight was failing because of his great age, and so he could not see. Joseph therefore made them come closer to him and he kissed and embraced them.

¹¹ Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘I did not think that I should see you again, but God has let me see your family as well’.

¹² Joseph took them from his lap and bowed to the ground.

¹³ Joseph took hold of the two of them, Ephraim with his right hand so that he should be on Israel’s left, and Manasseh with his left hand, so that he should be on Israel’s right, and brought them close to him.

¹⁴ But Israel held out his right hand and laid it on the head of Ephraim, the younger, and his left on the head of Manasseh, crossing his hands-Manasseh was, in fact, the elder.

¹⁵ Then he blessed Joseph saying: ‘May God in whose presence my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, may God who has been my shepherd from my birth until this day,

¹⁶ may the angel who has been my saviour from all harm, bless these boys, may my name live on in them, and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac. May they grow and increase on the earth.’

¹⁷ Joseph saw that his father was laying his right hand on the head of Ephraim, and this upset him. He took his father’s hand and tried to shift it from the head of Ephraim to the head of Manasseh.

¹⁸ Joseph protested to his father, ‘Not like that, father! This one is the elder; put your right hand on his head.’

¹⁹ But his father refused. ‘I know, my son, I know’ he said. ‘He too shall become a people; he too shall be great. Yet his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.’

²⁰ So he blessed them that day saying: ‘May you be a blessing in Israel; may they say, “God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh!”‘ In this way he put Ephraim before Manasseh.

²¹ Then Israel said to Joseph, ‘Now I am about to die. But God will be with you and take you back to the country of your fathers.

²² As for me, I give you a Shechem[*a] more than your brothers, the one I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.’