There is no speech or language here, but a voice is heard, clear, full, and harmonious, by the ear that is awakened. And as we look back on Joseph alone, we see a page of sacred story, full of Jesus; a rejected Jesus first, a risen and ascended Jesus then, and now at the end, a millennial Jesus, Jesus in His inheritance and kingdom.
"Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world." But what we do not get teaches us this as surely as what we do. He has formed the light and the darkness. "The day is thine, the night also is thine." In all this passing and magnificent exhibition of the inheritance, there is one whom we might have expected to see chiefly, and yet we see her not at all. Asenath the wife is not found here. She and her children get no portions in this great settlement of everything in the land; they are not so much as seen or mentioned. Is it that they were forgotten? That could not be. But she was the heavenly one, the wife given to Joseph from among the Gentiles in the day of his separation from his kindred, and her portion is more excellent than what the land in its best condition could afford her; it is in him and with him who is the lord and dispenser of it all. Asenath is lost in Joseph; or, to be seen only in Joseph.
And thus the full end is told at the beginning; for all this in the Book of Genesis is "the dispensation of the fulness of times," when God shall gather together all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. And surely it is happy, beloved, in the sight of the world's present confusion, in the midst of the agitation of human thoughts which is ever around us, to learn in the mouth of such witnesses, that the end is thus before Him, and has been so from the beginning. "The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations." His people and His purposes are alike before Him; and such truths comforted the apostles, when they found themselves in the midst of church disappointments. See 2 Tim. ii. 19.
Part IV. (xlviii.-l.)--This is rather, I might say, an appendix to the history, than the fourth part of it. It is made up of a few detached actions in Joseph's latter days.
The first thing, however, which we get is kindred with what we have seen to be the characteristic of the history itself. Chapter xlviii., which opens this fourth part, shows us the bestowing of the birthright upon Joseph; and the birthright and the inheritance are, in some sense, one.
In Israel, or under the law, the birthright carried the double portion. The firstborn was to have a double share of the father's goods; and the law enjoined that this should be his by an indefeasible title, a title that was not to be challenged. The double portion was not to be given to any other child of the family on any ground of personal affection or partiality whatever. Deut. xxi. 15-17.
But though this were so, the birthright might have been either sold or forfeited by the firstborn himself. His own acts might alienate it, though his father's partialities or prejudices could not. And we find this to have been the case. Esau sold it, and Reuben forfeited it. Genesis xxv.; 1 Chron. v. In the case of the sale of it by Esau, Jacob who bought it, of course, had title to it. The bargain and sale made it his. That is clear. But in the case of the forfeiture of it by Reuben, who is to take it? It reverted to the father; but on which of the sons would he confer it? That was a question, and it is that question which this chapter answers. It presents us with the solemnity of the aged father, dying Jacob, investing Joseph with the birthright which Reuben his firstborn had forfeited.
Upon hearing of the illness of his father, Joseph comes to his bedside, bringing his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, with him. None of the other sons of Jacob are present. The Spirit of God, through Jacob, has a special business with Joseph.
Jacob begins the action by reciting to Joseph the divine grant of the land of Canaan. This was a setting forth of the family estate, the property which he had to leave among his children. He then adopts the sons of Joseph; for this was needed to the investing of them with the rights of children, inasmuch, as, in a great legal sense, they were strangers to Abraham. Their mother was an Egyptian. They were a seed, therefore, whom the law would, in its day, have put away. Ezra x. 3. But Jacob adopts them. He takes them into the family. "And now," says he to Joseph, "thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine." They are constituted of the seed of Abraham, and made children of Jacob; and this being done, Jacob at once sets them in the place of the firstborn; for he adds immediately, "As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine."
This was a solemn act of investiture, by which the rights of the eldest, the double portion which attached to the birthright, passed over to Joseph in the persons of his two sons. See 1 Chron. v.; Ezek. xlvii. 13.[24]