Bible Commentaries

Genesis 48:1-7

Thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh,. . . are mine:--

Jacob’s adoption of Joseph’s two sons

I.
THE AUTHORITY WHICH HE CLAIMED FOR THIS ACT. He refers to a leading point in the covenant history. God the Almighty, who is able to perform His Word, had appeared to him, had promised to make him a great nation, and to give his seed the land of Canaan (Genesis 48:3). God had spoken to him, and this is his authority. On this he bases all the family hopes. The mention of God’s appearance and promise would inspire confidence in Joseph.

II. THE PURPOSE HE HAD IN VIEW.

1. To deliver them from the corrupting influences of the world. Though they had an Egyptian mother, and belonged to that nation by birth and circumstances, yet they were not to be suffered to remain Egyptians. Ordinary men would regard them as having brilliant prospects in the world. But it was a far nobler thing that they should espouse the cause of God, and cast in their lot with His people.

2. To give them a recognized place in the covenant family. This would impart a dignity and meaning to their life, and an impulse and an elevation to all their thoughts Godward.

3. To do special honour to Joseph.

III. THE SAD MEMORIES WHICH AWOKE.

1. They were selected in the room of Jacob’s two sons, who had forfeited the blessing. Instead of Reuben and Simeon. They had grievously sinned, and thus lost their inheritance. The portion of Reuben was given to Ephraim; and of Simeon to Manasseh. The grounds of this are given in 1 Chronicles 5:1; see also Genesis 34:1-31; Genesis 49:5-7; Numbers 26:28-37; 1 Chronicles 7:14-29.

2. They reminded him of one whom he had loved and lost (Genesis 37:7). (T. H.Leale.)

Jacob adopts Joseph’s sons

I. THE OLD MAN’S SICKNESS. The pain and sorrow of dying mitigated by the presence and kind offices of dear friends. The joy of Jacob when it is told him that Joseph is coming. He strengthened himself, and sat up. Good news infuse new life. How strong in death are those who feel that Christ, the Great Deliverer, is near.

II. THE OLD MAN’S MEMORY. In youth hope is strong, in old age, memory. The memory of the aged recalls distant things. The recent are apt to be forgotten. Before the old man’s mind memory rolls out the picture of his journey from Padan. Happy shall we be if, among our memories of the past, we can recall an early attachment of truth, &c., especially to Jesus. The past never dies. Memory carries the present forward into the future.

III. THE OLD MAN’S BLESSING.

1. Valuable. The blessing of a good old man not to be slighted. The blessing of such a man as Jacob most precious. It involved the transmission of covenant mercies. Jacob’s relation to the people of God, federal and representative.

2. Discriminating. He distinguished between the elder and younger son. By supernatural illumination he specially indicated the supremacy of the younger.

3. Prophetic. He not only foretold the pre-eminence of Ephraim, but predicted their admitted greatness by all Israel.

4. Practical. He gave, as the covenant owner of the promised land, great material wealth to these adopted children of Joseph. His blessing had the force of law--a last will and testament. The bequest was allowed.

5. Pious. He referred what he did to the will of God. Acknowledged the good hand’ of the Lord his God, and the angel who redeemed him from all evil. Learn:

Manasseh and Ephraim

We have in this chapter a further illustration of the truth, which runs throughout Scripture, of the first-born being set aside and the younger being chosen. So bent are we upon expecting God to move in our own circle, and according to our ideas of things, that it is hard to dislodge it from the mind. It is well that this law should be reversed, to show us that “ God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor His ways our ways,” and lest we should imagine that grace must always wait upon nature. It is a truth with which we are presented in every phase of our history, that God is constantly reversing our order of things. These crossed hands of blessing meet us everywhere. Like Joseph here, we have some favourite plan or scheme, and we are always expecting God will bless it. He suddenly crosses all our plans and puts before us not only what we had never thought of, but perhaps something we had despised. Or we had prayed for some favourite son on whom we had set very high expectations, when we find God crossing our plans, and blessing another whose talents or abilities we had looked down upon. Like Joseph we are constantly thrusting forward some Manasseh to bless, and God is continually crossing us by taking up some Ephraim and blessing him. Like Joseph, too, we are “displeased” when things do not turn out as we expected them, but in some very opposite way, and we rush to set God right by taking up some other course of our own. Sometimes we never can understand the meaning of these crossings in life. They baffle us, and we begin to think God is neither hearing our prayers nor caring for us. We are constantly saying as Joseph, “Not so, my father; for this is the first-born: put thy right hand on his head.” “Not this course, not this plan, not this way, not this place”--such are some of the thoughts which possess us, and which we are constantly thrusting before God. It needs a lifetime’s discipline sometimes to make men see that “God’s ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts.” The soul has to be constantly emptied from vessel to vessel, to be bruised and broken, before it can learn it. Mark, in the next place, the character of the blessing: “And he blessed Joseph and said, God,” &c. Here we have distinctly the Triune blessing brought before us--the grand source from which all blessings flow. The first clause is that of the Father; the second that of the Holy Spirit; the third that of the Son. God in His threefold Person and office as the Almighty Father, the Supplier of all grace to the soul, and the Redeemer from all evil. From such a source we are warranted in expecting large blessings, even that Ephraim’s seed should become “a multitude of nations,” or, as the word means, “the fulness of nations.” And where and when is this blessing to be fulfilled? It will be fulfilled in Israel’s own land, when the Lord shall return from heaven the second time as “the King of the Jews,” to reign over them. And so God declares, through Jacob: “Behold, I will make thee fruitful and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people, and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.” Mark the words, “this land”; and “for an everlasting possession.” Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. The Turk may hold it temporarily, or any other power, but they are usurpers. Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. God gave it them. It is, and is shall be, theirs “for ever.” (F. Whitfield, M. A.)

THE BLESSINGS OF THE TRIBES

Genesis 48:1-22; Genesis 49:1-33

JACOB’S blessing of his sons marks the close of the patriarchal dispensation. Henceforth the channel of God’s blessing to man does not consist of one person only, but of a people or nation. It is still one seed, as Paul reminds us, a unit that God will bless, but this unit is now no longer a single person-as Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob-but one people, composed of several parts, and yet one whole: equally representative of Christ, as the patriarchs were, and of equal effect every way in receiving God’s blessing and handing it down until Christ came. The Old Testament Church, quite as truly as the New, formed one whole with Christ. Apart from Him it had no meaning, and would have had no existence. It was the promised seed, always growing more and more to its perfect development in Christ. As the promise was kept to Abraham when Isaac was born, and as Isaac was truly the promised seed-in so far as he was a part of the series that led on to Christ, and was given in fulfilment of the promise that promised Christ to the world-so all through the history of Israel we must bear in mind that in them God is fulfilling this same promise, and that they are the promised seed in so far as they are one with Christ. And this interprets to us all those passages of the prophets regarding which men have disputed whether they are to be applied to Israel or to Christ: passages in which God addresses Israel in such words as, "Behold My servant," "Mine elect," and so forth, and in the interpretation of which it has been thought sufficient proof that they do not apply to Christ, to prove that they do apply to Israel; whereas, on the principle just laid down, it might much more safely be argued that because they apply to Israel, therefore they apply to Christ. And it is at this point-where Israel distributes among his sons the blessing which heretofore had all lodged in himself-that we see the first multiplication of Christ’s representatives; the mediation going on no longer through individuals, but through a nation; and where individuals are still chosen by God, as commonly they are, for the conveyance of God’s communications to earth, these individuals, whether priests or prophets, are themselves but the official representatives of the nation.

As the patriarchal dispensation ceases, it secures to the tribes all the blessing it has itself contained. Every father desires to leave to his sons whatever he has himself found helpful, but as they gather round his dying bed, or as he sits setting his house in order, and considering what portion is appropriate for each, he recognises that to some of them it is quite useless to bequeath the most valuable parts of his property, while in others he discerns a capacity which promises the improvement of all that is entrusted to it. And from the earliest times the various characters of the tribes were destined to modify the blessing conveyed to them by their father. The blessing of Israel is now distributed, and each receives what each can take; and while in some of the individual tribes there may seem to be very little of blessing at all, yet, taken together, they form a picture of the common outstanding features of human nature, and of that nature as acted upon by God’s blessing, and forming together one body or Church. A peculiar interest attaches to the history of some nations, and is not altogether absent from our own, from the precision with which we can trace the character of families, descending often with the same One knows at once to what families to look for restless and turbulent spirits, ready for conspiracy and revolution; and one knows also where to seek steady and faithful loyalty, public-spiritedness, or native ability. And in Israel’s national character there was room for the great distinguishing features of the tribes, and to show the richness and variety with which the promise of God could fulfil itself wherever it was received. The distinguishing features which Jacob depicts in the blessings of his sons are necessarily veiled under the poetic figures of prophecy, and spoken of as they would reveal themselves in worldly matters; but these features were found in all the generations of the tribes, and displayed themselves in things spiritual also. For a man has not two characters, but one; and what he is in the world, that he is in his religion. In our own country, it is seen how the forms of worship, and even the doctrines believed, and certainly the modes of religious thought and feeling, depend on the natural character, and the natural character on the local situation of the respective sections of the community. No doubt in a country like ours, where men so constantly migrate from place to place, and where one common literature tends to mould us all to the same way of thinking, you do get men of all kinds in every place; yet even among ourselves the character of a place is generally still visible, and predominates over all that mingles with it. Much more must this character have been retained in a country where each man could trace his ancestry up to the father of the tribe, and cultivated with pride the family characteristics, and had but little intercourse, either literary or personal, with other minds and other manners. As we know by dialect and by the manners of the people when we pass into a new country, so must the Israelite have known by the eye and ear when he had crossed the county frontier, when he was conversing with a Benjamite, and when with a descendant of Judah. We are not therefore to suppose that any of these utterances of Jacob are mere geographical predictions, or that they depict characteristics which might appear in civil life, but not in religion and the Church, or that they would die out with the first generation.

In these blessings, therefore, we have the history of the Church in its most interesting form. In these sons gathered round him, the patriarch sees his own nature reflected piece by piece, and he sees also the general outline of all that must be produced by such natures as these men have. The whole destiny of Israel is here in germ, and the spirit of prophecy in Jacob sees and declares it. It has often been remarked that as a man draws near to death, he seems to see many things in a much clearer light, and especially gets glimpses into the future, which are hidden from others.

"The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time hath made."

Being nearer to eternity, he instinctively measures things by its standard, and thus comes nearer a just valuation of all things before his mind, and can better distinguish reality from appearance. Jacob has studied these sons of his for fifty years, and has had his acute perception of character painfully enough called to exercise itself on them. He has all his life long had a liking for analysing men s rune life, knowing that, when he understands that, he can better use them for his own ends; and these sons of his own have cost him thought over and above that sometimes penetrating interest which a father win take in the growth of a son’s character; and now he knows them thoroughly, understands their temptations, their weaknesses, their capabilities, and, as a wise head of a house, can, with delicate and unnoticed skill, balance the one against the other, ward off awkward collisions, and prevent the evil from destroying the good. This knowledge of Jacob prepares him for being the intelligent agent by whom God predicts in outline the future of His Church.

One cannot but admire, too, the faith which enables Jacob to apportion to his sons the blessings of a land which had not been much of a resting-place to himself, and regarding the occupation of which his sons might have put to him some very difficult questions. And we admire this dignified faith the more on reflecting that it has often been very grievously lacking in our own case-that we have felt almost ashamed of having so little of a present tangible kind to offer, and of being obliged to speak only of invisible and future blessings; to set a spiritual consolation over against a worldly grief; to point a man whose fortunes are ruined to an eternal inheritance; or to speak to one who knows himself quite in the power of sin of a remedy which has often seemed illusory to ourselves. Some of us have got so little comfort or strength from religion ourselves, that we have no heart to offer it to others; and most of us have a feeling that we should seem to trifle were we to offer invisible aid against very visible calamity. At least we feel that we are doing a daring thing in making such an offer, and can scarce get over the desire that we had something to speak of which sight could appreciate, and which did not require the exercise of faith. Again and again the wish rises within us that to the sick man we could bring health as well as the promise of forgiveness, and that to the poor we could grant an earthly, while we make known a heavenly, inheritance. One who has experienced these scruples, and known how hard it is to get rid of them, will know also how to honour the faith of Jacob, by which he assumes the right to bless Pharaoh-though he is himself a mere sojourner by sufferance in Pharaoh’s land, and living on his bounty-and by which he gathers his children round him and portions out to them a land which seemed to have been most barren to himself, and which now seemed quite beyond his reach. The enjoyments of it, which he himself had not very deeply tasted, he yet knew were real; and if there were a look of scepticism, or of scorn, on the face of any one of his sons; if the unbelief of any received the prophetic utterances as the ravings of delirium, or the fancies of an imbecile and worn-out mind going back to the scenes of its youth, in Jacob himself there was so simple and unsuspecting a faith in God’s promise, that he dealt with the land as if it were the only portion worth bequeathing to his sons, as if every Canaanite were already cast out of it, and as if he knew his sons could never be tempted by the wealth of Egypt to turn with contempt from the land of promise. And if we would attain to this boldness of his, and be able to speak of spiritual and future blessings as very substantial and valuable, we must ourselves learn to make much of God’s promise, and leave no taint of unbelief in our reception of it.

And often we are rebuked by finding that when we do offer things spiritual, even those who are wrapped in earthly comforts appreciate and accept the better gifts. So it was in Joseph’s case. No doubt the highest posts in Egypt were open to his sons; they might have been naturalised, as he himself had been, and, throwing in their lot with the land of their adoption, might have turned to their advantage the rank their father held, and the reputation he had earned. But Joseph turns from this attractive prospect, brings them to his father, and hands them over to the despised shepherd-life of Israel. One need scarcely point out how great a sacrifice this was on Joseph’s part. So universally acknowledged and legitimate a desire is it to pass to one’s children the honour achieved by a life of exertion, that states have no higher rewards to confer on their most useful servants than a title which their descendants may wear. But Joseph would not suffer his children to risk the loss of their share in God’s peculiar blessing, not for the most promising openings in life, or the highest civil honours. If the thoroughly open identification of them with the shepherds, and their profession of a belief in a distant inheritance, which must have made them appear madmen in the eyes of the Egyptians, if this was to cut them off from worldly advancement, Joseph was not careful of this, for resolved he was that, at any cost, they should be among God’s people. And his faith received its reward; the two tribes that sprang from him received about as large a portion of the promised land as fell to the lot of all the other tribes put together.

You will observe that Ephraim and Manasseh were adopted as sons of Jacob. Jacob tells Joseph, "They shall be mine," not my grandsons, but as Reuben and Simeon. No other sons whom Joseph might have were to be received into this honour, but these two were to take their place on a level with their uncle, as heads of tribes, so that Joseph is represented through the whole history by the two populous and powerful tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. No greater honour could have been put on Joseph, nor any more distinct and lasting recognition made of the indebtedness of his family to him, and of how he had been as a father bringing new life to his brethren, than this, that his sons should be raised to the rank of heads of tribes, on a level with the immediate sons of Jacob. And no higher honour could have been put on the two lads themselves than that they should thus be treated as if they were their father Joseph-as if they had his worth and his rank. He is merged in them, and all that he has earned is, throughout the history, to be found, not in his own name, but in theirs. It all proceeds from him; but his enjoyment is found in their enjoyment, his worth acknowledged in their fruitfulness. Thus did God familiarise the Jewish mind through its whole history with the idea, if they chose to think and have ideas, of adoption, and of an adoption of a peculiar kind, of an adoption where already there was an heir who, by this adoption, has his name and worth merged in the persons now received into his place. Ephraim and Manasseh were not received alongside. of Joseph, but each received what Joseph himself might have had, and Joseph’s name as a tribe was henceforth only to be found in these two. This idea was fixed in such a way, that for centuries it was steeping into the minds of men, so that they might not be astonished if God should in some other case, say the case of His own Son, adopt men into the rank He held, and let His estimate of the worth of His Son, and the honour He puts upon Him, be seen in the adopted. This being so, we need not be alarmed if men tell us that imputation is a mere legal fiction, or human invention; a legal fiction it may be, but in the case before us it was the never-disputed foundation of very substantial blessings to Ephraim and Manasseh; and we plead for nothing more than that God would act with us as here He did act with these two, that He would make us His direct heirs, make us His own sons, and give us what He who presents us to Him to receive His blessing did earn, and merits at the Father’s hand.

We meet with these crossed hands of blessing frequently in Scripture; the younger son blessed above the elder-as was needful, lest grace should become confounded with nature, and the belief gradually grow up in men’s minds that natural effects could never be overcome by grace, and that in every respect grace waited upon nature. And these crossed hands we meet still; for how often does God quite reverse our order, and bless most that about which we had less concern, and seem to put a slight on that which has engrossed our best affection. It is so, often in precisely the way in which Joseph found it so; the son whose youth is most anxiously cared for, to whom the interests of the younger members of the family are sacrificed, and who is commended to God continually to receive His right-hand blessing, this son seems neither to receive nor to dispense much blessing; but the younger, less thought of, left to work his own way, is favoured by God, and becomes the comfort and support of his parents when the elder has failed of his duty. And in the case of much that we hold dear, the same rule is seen; a pursuit we wish to be successful in we can make little of, and are thrown back from continually, while something else into which we have thrown ourselves almost accidentally prospers in our hand and blesses us. Again and again, for years together, we put forward some cherished desire to God’s right hand, and are displeased, like Joseph, that still the hand of greater blessing should pass to some other thing. Does God not know what is oldest with us, what has been longest at our hearts, and is dearest to us? Certainly He does: "I know it, My son, I know it," He answers to all our expostulations. It is not because He does not understand or regard your predilections, your natural and excusable preferences, that He sometimes refuses to gratify your whole desire, and pours upon you blessings of a kind somewhat different from those you most. earnestly covet. He will give you the whole that Christ hath merited; but for the application and distribution of that grace and blessing you must be content to trust Him.

You may be at a loss to know why He does no more to deliver you from some sin, or why He does not make you more successful in your efforts to aid others, or why, while He so liberally prospers you in one part of your condition, you get so much less in another that is far nearer your heart; but God does what He will with His own, and if you do not find in one point the whole blessing and prosperity you think should flow from such a Mediator as you have, you may only conclude that what is lacking there will elsewhere be found more wisely bestowed. And is it not a perpetual encouragement to us that God does not merely crown what nature has successfully begun, that it is not the likely and the naturally good that are most blessed, but that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are? In Reuben, the firstborn, conscience must have been sadly at war with hope as he looked at the blind, but expressive, face of his father. He may have hoped that his sin had not been severely thought of by his father, or that the father’s pride in his first-born would prompt him to hide, though it could not make him forget it. Probably the gross offence had not been made known to the family. At least, the words "he went up" may be understood as addressed in explanation to the brethren. It may indeed have been that the blind old man, forcibly recalling the long-past transgression, is here uttering a mournful, regretful soliloquy, rather than addressing any one. It may be that these words were uttered to himself as he went back upon the one deed that had disclosed to him his son’s real character, and rudely hurled to the ground all the hopes he had built up for his first-born. Yet there is no reason to suppose, on the other hand, that the sin had been previously known or alluded to in the family. Reuben’s hasty, passionate nature could not understand that if Jacob had felt that sin of his deeply, he should not have shown his resentment; he had stunned his father with the heavy blow, and because he did not cry out and strike him in return, he thought him little hurt. So do shallow natures tremble for a night after their sin, and when they find that the sun rises and men greet them as cordially as before, and that no hand lays hold on them from the past, they think little more of their sin-do not understand that fatal calm that precedes the storm. Had the memory of Reuben’s sin survived in Jacob’s mind all the sad events that had since happened, and all the stirring incidents of the emigration and the new life in Egypt? Could his father at the last hour, and after so many thronged years, and before his brethren, recall the old sin? He is relieved and confirmed in his confidence by the first words of Jacob, words ascribing to him his natural position, a certain conspicuous dignity too, and power such as one may often see produced in men by occupying positions of authority, though in their own character there be weakness. But all the excellence that Jacob ascribes to Reuben serves only to embitter the doom pronounced upon him. Men seem often to expect that a future can be given to them irrespective of what they themselves are, that a series of blessings and events might be prepared for them and made over to them; whereas every man’s future must be made by himself, and Is already in great part formed by the past. It was a vain expectation of Reuben to expect that he, the impetuous, unstable, superficial son, could have the future of a deep, and earnest, and dutiful nature, or that his children should derive no taint from their parent, but be as the children of Joseph. No man’s future need be altogether a doom to him, for God may bless to him the evil fruit his life has borne; but certainly no man need look for a future which has no relation to, his own character. His future will always be made up of his deeds, his feelings, and the circumstances which his desires have brought him into.

The future of Reuben was of a negative, blank kind-"Thou shalt not excel"; his unstable character must empty it of all great success. And to many a heart since have these words struck a chill, for to many they are as a mirror suddenly held up before them. They see themselves when they look on the tossing sea, rising and pointing to the heavens with much noise, but only to sink back again to the same everlasting level. Men of brilliant parts and great capacity are continually seen to be lost to society by instability of purpose. Would they only pursue one direction, and concentrate their energies on one subject, they might become true heirs of promise, blessed and blessing; but they seem to lose relish for every pursuit on the first taste of success-all their energy seems to have boiled over and evaporated in the first glow, and sinks as the water that has just been noisily boiling when the fire is withdrawn from under it. No impression made upon them is permanent: like water, they are plastic, easily impressible, but utterly incapable of retaining an impression; and therefore, like water, they have a downward tendency, or at the best are but retained in their place by pressure from without, and have no eternal power of growth. And the misery of this character is often increased by the desire to excel which commonly accompanies instability. It is generally this very desire which prompts a man to hurry from one aim to another, to give up one path to excellence when he sees that other men are making way upon another: having no internal convictions of his own, he is guided mostly by the successes of other men, the most dangerous of all guides. So that such a man has all the bitterness of an eager desire doomed never to be satisfied. Conscious to himself of capacity for something, feeling in him the excellency of power, and having that "excellency of dignity," or graceful and princely refinement, which the knowledge of many things, and intercourse with many kinds of people, have imparted to him, he feels all the more that pervading weakness, that greedy, lustful craving for all kinds of priority, and for enjoying all the various advantages which other men severally enjoy, which will not let him finally choose and adhere to his own line of things, but distracts him by a thousand purposes which ever defeat one another.

The sin of the next oldest sons was also remembered against them, and remembered apparently for the same reason-because the character was expressed in it. The massacre of the Shechemites was not an accidental outrage that any other of the sons of Jacob might equally have perpetrated, but the most glaring of a number of expressions of a fierce and cruel disposition in these two men. In Jacob’s prediction of their future, he seems to shrink with horror from his own progeny-like her who dreamt she would give birth to a firebrand. He sees the possibility of the direst results flowing from such a temper, and, under God, provides against these by scattering the tribes, and thus weakening their power for evil. They had been banded together so as the ‘more easily and securely to accomplish their murderous purposes. "Simeon and Levi are brethren"-showing a close affinity, and seeking one another’s society and aid, but it is for bad purposes; and therefore they must be divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel. This was accomplished by the tribe of Levi being distributed over all the other tribes as the ministers of religion. The fiery zeal, the bold independence, and the pride of being a distinct people, which had been displayed in the slaughter of the Shechemites, might be toned down and turned to good account when the sword was taken out of their hand. Qualities such as these, which produce the most disastrous results when fit instruments can be found, and when men of like disposition are suffered to band themselves together, may, when found in the individual and kept in check by circumstances and dissimilar dispositions, be highly beneficial.

In the sin, Levi seems to have been the moving spirit, Simeon the abetting tool, and in the punishment, it is the more dangerous tribe that s scattered, so that the other is left companionless. In the blessings of Moses, the tribe of Simeon is passed over in silence; and that the tribe of Levi should have been so used for God’s immediate service stands as evidence that punishments, however severe and desolating, even threatening something bordering on extinction, may yet become blessings to God’s people. The sword of murder was displaced in Levi’s hand by the knife of sacrifice; their fierce revenge against sinners was converted into hostility against sin; their apparent zeal for the forms of their religion was consecrated to the service of the tabernacle and temple; their fanatical pride, which prompted them to treat all other people as the offscouring of the earth, was informed by a better spirit, and used for the upbuilding and instruction of the people of Israel. In order to understand why this tribe, of all others, should have been chosen for the service of the sanctuary and for the instruction of the people, we must not only recognise how their being scattered in punishment of their sin over all the land fitted them to be the educators of the nation and the representatives of all the tribes, but also we must consider that the sin itself which Levi had committed broke the one command which men had up till this time received from the mouth of God; no law had as yet been published but that which had been given to Noah and his sons regarding bloodshed, and which was given in circumstances so appalling, and with sanctions so emphatic, that it might ever have rung in men’s ears, and stayed the hand of the murderer. In saying, "At the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man," God had shown that human life was to be counted sacred. He Himself had swept the race from the face of the earth, but adding this command immediately after, He, showed all the more forcibly that punishment was His own prerogative, and that none but those appointed by Him might shed-blood-"Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord." To take private revenge, as Levi did, was to take the sword out of God’s hand, and to say that Gods was not careful enough of justice, and but a poor guardian of right and wrong in the world; and to destroy human life in the wanton and cruel manner in which Levi had destroyed the Shechemites, and to do it under colour and by the aid of religious zeal, was to God the most hateful of sins. But none can know the hatefulness of a sin so distinctly as he who has fallen into it, and is enduring the punishment of it penitently and graciously, and therefore Levi was of all others the best fitted to be entrusted with those sacrificial symbols which set forth the value of all human life, and especially of the life of God’s own Son. Very humbling must it have been for the Levite who remembered the history of his tribe to be used by God as the hand of His justice on the victims that were brought in substitution for that which was so precious in the sight of God.

The blessing of Judah is at once the most important and the most difficult to interpret in the series. There is enough in the history of Judah himself, and there is enough in the subsequent history of the tribe, to justify the ascription to him of all lion-like qualities-a kingly, fearlessness, confidence, power, and success; in action a rapidity of movement and might that make him irresistible, and in repose a majestic dignity of bearing. As the serpent is the cognisance of Dan, the wolf of Benjamin, the hind of Naphtali, so is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He scorns to gain his end by a serpentine craft, and is himself easily taken in; he does not ravin like a wolf, merely plundering for the sake of booty, but gives freely and generously, even to the sacrifice of his own person: nor has he the mere graceful and ineffective swiftness of the hind, but the rushing onset of the lion-a character which, more than any other, men reverence and admire-"Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise"-and a character which, more than any other, fits a man to take the lead and rule. If there were to be kings in Israel, there could be little doubt from which tribe they could best be chosen; a wolf of the tribe of Benjamin, like Saul, not only hung on the rear of retreating Philistines and spoiled them, but made a prey of his own people, and it is in David we find the true king, the man who more than. any other satisfies men’s ideal of the prince to whom they will pay homage; -falling indeed into grievous error- and sin, like his forefather, but, like him also, right at heart, so generous and self-sacrificing that men served him with the most devoted loyalty, and were willing rather to dwell in caves with him than in palaces with any other.

The kingly supremacy of Judah was here spoken of in Words which have been the subject of as prolonged and violent contention as any others in the Word of God. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come." These words are very generally understood to mean that Judah’s supremacy would continue until it culminated or flowered into the personal reign of Shiloh; in other words, that Judah’s sovereignty was to be perpetuated in the person of Jesus Christ. So that this prediction is but the first whisper of that which was afterwards so distinctly declared, that David’s seed should sit on the throne for ever and ever. It was not accomplished in the letter, any more than the promise to David was; the tribe of Judah cannot in any intelligible sense be said to have had rulers of her own up to the coming of Christ, or for some centuries previous to that date. For those who would quickly judge God and His promise by what they could see in their own day, there was enough to provoke them to challenge God for forgetting His promise. But in due time the King of men, He to whom all nations have gathered, did spring from this tribe; and need it be said that the very fact of His appearance proved that the supremacy had not departed from Judah? This prediction, then, partook of the character of very many of the Old Testament prophecies; there was sufficient fulfilment in the letter to seal, as it were, the promise, and give men a token that it was being accomplished, and yet so mysterious a falling short, as to cause men to look beyond the literal fulfilment, on which alone their hopes had at first rested, to some far higher and more perfect spiritual fulfilment.

But not only has it been objected that the sceptre departed from Judah long before Christ came, and that therefore the word Shiloh cannot refer to Him, but also it has been truly said that wherever else the word occurs it is the name of a town-that town, viz., where the ark for a long time was stationed, and from which the allotment of territory was made to the various tribes; and the prediction has been supposed to mean that Judah should be the leading tribe till the land was entered. Many objections to this naturally occur, and need not be stated. But it comes to be an inquiry of some interest, How much information regarding a personal Messiah did the brethren receive from this prophecy? A question very difficult indeed to answer. The word Shiloh means "peace-making," and if they understood this as a proper name, they must have thought of a person such as Isaiah designates as the Prince of Peace-a name it was similar to that wherewith David called his son Solomon, in the expectation that the results of his own lifetime of disorder and battle would be reaped by his successor in a peaceful and prosperous reign. It can scarcely be thought likely, indeed, that this single term "Shiloh," which might be applied to many things besides a person, should give to the sons of Jacob any distinct idea of a personal Deliverer; but it might be sufficient to keep before their eyes, and specially before the tribe of Judah, that the aim and consummation of all lawgiving and ruling was peace. And there was certainly contained in this blessing an assurance that the purpose of Judah would not be accomplished, and therefore that the existence of Judah as a tribe would not terminate, until peace had been through its means brought into the world: thus was the assurance given, that the productive power of Judah should not fail until out of that tribe there had sprung that which should give peace.

But to us who have seen the prediction accomplished it plainly enough points to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, who in His own person combined all kingly qualities. In Him we are taught by this prediction to discover once more the single Person who stands out on the page of this world’s history as satisfying men’s ideal of what their King should be, and of how the race should be represented; -the One who without any rival stands in the mind’s eye as that for which the best hopes of men were waiting, still feeling that the race could do more than it had done, and never satisfied but in Him.

Zebulun, the sixth and last of Leah’s sons, was so called because said Leah, "Now will my husband dwell with me" (such being the meaning of the name), "for I have borne him six sons." All that is predicted regarding this tribe is that his dwelling should be by the sea, and near the Phoenician city Zidon. This is not to be taken as a strict geographical definition of the tract of country occupied by Zebulun, as we see when we compare it with the lot assigned to it and marked out in the Book of Joshua; but though the border of the tribe did not reach to Zidon, and though it can only have been a mere tongue of land belonging to it that ran down to the Mediterranean shore, yet the situation ascribed to it is true to its character as a tribe that had commercial relations with the Phoenicians, and was of a decidedly mercantile turn. We find this same feature indicated in the blessing of Moses: "Rejoice, Zebulun, in thy going out, and Issachar in thy tents"-Zebulun having the enterprise of a seafaring community, and Issachar the quiet bucolic contentment of an agricultural or pastoral population: Zebulun always restlessly eager for emigration or commerce, for going out of one kind or other; Issachar satisfied to live and die in his own tents. It is still, therefore, character rather than geographical position that is here spoken of-though it is a trait of character that is peculiarly dependent on geographical position: we, for example, because islanders, having become the maritime power and the merchants of the world; not being shut off from other nations by the encompassing sea. but finding paths by it equally in all directions ready provided for every kind of traffic.

Zebulun, then, was to represent the commerce of Israel, its outgoing tendency; was to supply a means of communication and bond of connection with the world outside, so that through it might be conveyed to the nations what was saving in Israel, and that what Israel needed from other lands might also find entrance. In the Church also, this is a needful quality: for our well-being there must ever exist among us those who are not afraid to launch on the wide and pathless sea of opinion, those in whose ears its waves have from their childhood sounded with a fascinating invitation, and who at last, as if possessed by some spirit of unrest, loose from the firm earth, and go in quest of lands not yet discovered, or are impelled to see for themselves what till now they have believed on the testimony of others. It is not for all men to quit the shore, and risk themselves in the miseries and disasters of so comfortless and hazardous a life; but happy the people which possesses, from one generation to another, men who must see with their own eyes, and to whose restless nature the discomforts and dangers of an unsettled life have a charm: It is not the instability of Reuben that we have in these men, but the irrepressible longing of the born seaman, who must lift the misty veil of the horizon and penetrate its mystery. And we are not to condemn, even when we know we should not imitate, men who cannot rest satisfied with the ground on which we stand, but venture into regions of speculation, of religious thought which we have never trodden, and may deem hazardous. The nourishment we receive is not all native-grown; there are views of truth which may very profitably be imported from strange and distant lands: and there is no land, no province of thought, from which we may not derive what may advantageously be mixed with our own ideas; no direction in which a speculative mind can go in which it may not find something which may give a fresh zest to what we already use, or be a real addition to our knowledge. No doubt men who refuse to confine themselves to one way of viewing truth-men who venture to go close to persons of very different opinions from their own, who determine for themselves to prove all things, who have no very special love for what they were native to and originally taught, who show rather a taste for strange and new opinions-these persons live a life of great hazard, and in the end are generally, like men who have been much at sea, unsettled; they have not fixed opinions, and are in themselves, as individual men, unsatisfactory and unsatisfied; but still they have done good to the community, by bringing to us ideas and knowledge which otherwise we could not have obtained. Such men God gives us to widen our views; to prevent us from thinking that we have the best of everything; to bring us to acknowledge that others, who perhaps in the main are not so favoured as ourselves, are yet possessed of some things we ourselves would be the better of. And though these men must themselves necessarily hang loosely, scarcely attached very firmly to any part of the Church, like a seafaring, population, and often even with a border running very close to heathenism, yet let us own that the Church has need of such-that without them the different sections of the Church would know too little of one another, and too little of the facts of this world’s life. And as the seafaring population of a country might be expected to show less interest in the soil of their native land than others, and yet we know that in point of fact we are dependent on no class of our population so much for leal patriotism, and for the defence of our country, so one has observed that the Church also must make similar use of her Zebuluns-of men who, by their very habit of restlessly considering all views of truth which are alien to our own ways of thinking, have become familiar with, and better able to defend us against the error that mingles with these views.

Issachar receives from his father a character which few would be proud of or would envy, but which many are very content to bear. As the strong ass that has its stall and its provender provided can afford to let the free beasts of the forest vaunt their liberty, so there is a very numerous class of men who have no care to assert their dignity as human beings, or to agitate regarding their rights as citizens, so long as their obscurity and servitude provide them with physical comforts, and leave them free of heavy responsibilities. They prefer a life of ease and plenty to a life of hardship and glory. They are not lazy nor idle, but are quite willing to use their strength so long as they are not overdriven out of their sleekness. They have neither ambition nor enterprise, and willingly bow their shoulders to bear, and become the servants of those who will free them from the anxiety of planning and managing, and give them a fair and regular remuneration for their labour. This is not a noble nature, but in a world in which ambition so frequently runs through a thorny and difficult path to a disappointing and shameful end, this disposition has much to say in its own defence. It will often accredit itself with un-challengeable common sense, and will maintain that it alone enjoys life and gets the good of it. They will tell you they are the only true utilitarians, that to be one’s own master only brings cares, and that the degradation of servitude is only an idea; that really servants are quite as well off as masters. Look at them: the one is as a strong, powerful, well-cared-for animal, his work but a pleasant exercise to him, and when it is over never, following him into his rest; he eats the good of the land, and has what all seem to be in vain striving for, rest and contentment: the other, the master, has indeed his position, but that only multiplies his duties; he has wealth, but that proverbially only increases his cares and the mouths that are to consume it; it is he who has the air of a bondsman, and never, meet him when you may, seems wholly at ease and free from care.

Yet, after all that can be said in favour of the bargain an Issachar makes, and however he may be satisfied to rest, and in a quiet, peaceful way enjoy life, men feel that at the best there is something despicable about such a character. He gives his labour and is fed, he pays his tribute and is protected; but men feel that they ought to meet the dangers, responsibilities, and difficulties of life in their own persons, and at first hand, and not buy themselves off so from the burden of individual self-control and responsibility. The animal enjoyment of this life and its physical comforts may be a very good ingredient in a national character: it might be well for Israel to have this patient, docile mass of strength in its midst: it may be well for our country that there are among us not only men eager for the highest honours and posts, but a great multitude of men perhaps equally serviceable and capable, but whose desires never rise beyond the ordinary social comforts; the contentedness of such, even though reprehensible, tempers or balances the ambition of the others, and when it comes into personal contact rebukes its feverishness. They, as well as the other parts of society, have amidst their error a truth-the truth that the ideal world in which ambition, and hope, and imagination live is not everything; that the material has also a reality, and that though hope does bless mankind, yet attainment is also something, even though it be a little. Yet this truth is not the whole truth, and is only useful as an ingredient, as a part, not as the whole; and when we fall from any high ideal of human life which we have formed, and begin to find comfort and rest in the mere physical good things of this world, we may well despise ourselves. There is a pleasantness still in the land that appeals to us all; a luxury in observing the risks and struggles of others while ourselves secure and at rest; a desire to make life easy, and to shirk the responsibility and toil that public-spiritedness entails. Yet of what tribe has the Church more cause to complain than of those persons who seem to imagine that they have done enough when they have joined the Church and received their own inheritance to enjoy; who are alive to no emergency, nor awake to the need of others; who have no idea at all of their being a part of the community, for which, as well as for themselves, there are duties to discharge; who couch, like the ass of Issachar, in their comfort without one generous impulse to make common cause against the common evils and foes of the Church, and are unvisited by a single compunction that while they lie there, submitting to whatever fate sends, there are kindred tribes of their own being oppressed and spoiled?

There seems to have been an improvement in this tribe, an infusion of some new life into it. In the time of Deborah, indeed, it is with a note of surprise that, while celebrating the victory of Israel, she names even Issachar as having been roused to action, and as having helped in the common cause -" the princes of Issachar were with Deborah, even Issachar"; but we find them again in the days of David wiping out their reproach, and standing by him manfully.. And there an apparently new character is given to them-"the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do." This quite accords, however, with the kind of practical philosophy which we have seen to be imbedded in Issachar’s character. Men they were not distracted by high thoughts and ambitions, but who judged things according to their substantial value to themselves; and who were, therefore, in a position to give much good advice on practical matters-advice which would always have a tendency to trend too much towards mere utilitarianism and worldliness, and to partake rather of crafty politic diplomacy than of far-seeing statesmanship, yet trustworthy for a certain class of subjects. And here, too, they represent the same class in the Church, already alluded to; for one often finds that men who will not interrupt their own comfort, and who have a kind of stolid indifference as to what comes of the good of the Church, have yet also much shrewd practical wisdom; and were these men, instead of spending their sagacity in cynical denunciation of what the Church does, to throw themselves into the cause of the Church, and heartily advise her what she ought to do, and help in the doing of it, their observation of human affairs, and political understanding of the times, would be turned to good account, instead of being a reproach.

Next came the eldest son of Rachel’s handmaid, and the eldest son of Leah’s handmaid. Dan and Gad. Dan’s name, meaning "judge," is the starting point of the prediction-"Dan shall judge his people." This word "judge" we are perhaps somewhat apt to misapprehend; it means rather to defend than to sit in judgment on; it refers to a judgment passed between one’s own people and their foes, and an execution of such judgment in the deliverance of the people and the destruction of the foe. We are familiar with this meaning of the word by the constant reference in the Old Testament to God’s judging His people; this being always a cause of joy as their sure deliverance from their enemies. So also it is used of those men who, when Israel had no king, arose from time to time as the champions of the people, to lead them against the foe, and who are therefore familiarly called "The Judges." From the tribe of Dan the most conspicuous of these arose, Samson, namely, and it is probably mainly with reference to this fact that Jacob so emphatically predicts of this tribe, "Dan shall judge his people." And notice the appended clause (as reflecting shame on the sluggish Issachar), "as one of the tribes of Israel," recognising always that his strength was not for himself alone, but for his country; that he was not an isolated people who had to concern himself only with his own affairs, but one of the tribes of Israel. The manner, too, in which Dan was to do this was singularly descriptive of the facts subsequently evolved. Dan was a very small and insignificant tribe, whose lot originally lay close to the Philistines on the southern border of the land. It might seem to be no obstacle whatever to the invading Philistines as they passed to the richer portion of Judah, but this little tribe, through Samson, smote these terrors of the Israelites with so sore and alarming a destruction as to cripple them for years and make them harmless. We see, therefore, how aptly Jacob compares them to the venomous snake that lurks in the road and bites the horses’ heels: the dust-coloured adder that a man treads on before he is aware, and whose poisonous stroke is more deadly than the foe he looking for in front. And especially significant did the imagery appear to the Jews, with whom this poisonous adder was indigenous, but to whom the horse was the symbol of foreign armament and invasion. The whole tribe of Dan, too, seems to have partaken of that "grim humour" with which Samson saw his foes walk time after time into the traps he set for them, and give themselves an easy prey to him-a humour which comes out with singular piquancy in the narrative given in the Book of Judges of one of the forays of this tribe, in which they carried off Micah’s priest and even his gods.

But why, in the full flow of his eloquent description of the varied virtues of his sons, does the patriarch suddenly check himself, lie back on his pillows, and quietly say, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O God?" Does he feel his strength leave him so that he cannot go on to bless the rest of his sons, and has but time to yield his own spirit to God? Are we here to interpolate one of those scenes we are all fated to witness when some eagerly watched breath seems altogether to fail before the last words have been uttered, when those who have been standing apart, through sorrow and reverence, quickly gather round the bed to catch the last look, and when the dying man again collects himself and finishes his work? Probably Jacob, having, as it were, projected himself forward into those stirring and warlike times he has been speaking of, so realises the danger of his people, and the futility even of such help as Dan’s when God does not help, that, as if from the midst of doubtful war, he cries, as with a battle cry, "I have waited for Thy salvation, O God." His longing for victory and blessing to his sons far overshot the deliverance from Philistines accomplished by Samson. That deliverance he thankfully accepts and joyfully predicts, but in the spirit of an Israelite indeed, and a genuine child of the promise, he remains unsatisfied, and sees in all such deliverance only the pledge of God’s coming nearer and nearer to His people bringing with Him His eternal salvation. In Dan, therefore, we have not the catholic spirit of Zebulun, nor the practical, though sluggish, temper of Issachar; but we are guided rather to the disposition which ought to be maintained through all Christian life, and which, with special care, needs to be cherished in Church-life-a disposition to accept with gratitude all success and triumph, but still to aim through all at that highest victory which God alone can accomplish for His people. It is to be the battle-cry with which every Christian and every Church is to preserve itself, not merely against external foes, but against the far more disastrous influence of self-confidence, pride, and glorying in man-"For Thy salvation, O God, do we wait."

Gad also is a tribe whose history is to be warlike, his very name signifying a marauding, guerilla troop; and his history was to illustrate the victories which God’s people gain by tenacious, watchful, ever-renewed warfare. The Church has often prospered by her Dan-like insignificance; the world not troubling itself to make war upon her. But oftener Gad is a better representative of the mode in which her successes are gained. We find that the men of Gad were among the most valuable of David’s warriors, when his necessity evoked all the various skill and energy of Israel. "Of the Gadites," we read, "there separated themselves unto David into the hold of the wilderness men of might. and men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like. the faces of lions, and were as swift as the roes upon the mountains: one of the least of them was better than a hundred, and the greatest mightier than a thousand." And there is something particularly inspiriting to the individual Christian in finding this pronounced as part of the blessing of God’s people-"a troop shall overcome him, but he shall overcome at the last." It is this that enables us to persevere-that we have God’s assurance that present discomfiture does not doom us to final defeat. If you be among the children of promise, among those that gather round God to catch His blessing, you shall overcome at the last. You may now feel as if assaulted by treacherous, murderous foes, irregular troops, that betake themselves to every cruel deceit, and are ruthless in spoiling you; you may be assailed by so many and strange temptations that you are bewildered and cannot lift a hand to resist, scarce seeing where your danger comes from; you may be buffeted by messengers of Satan, distracted by a sudden and tumultuous incursion of a crowd of cares so that you are moved away from the old habits of your life amid which you seem to stand safely; your heart may seem to be the rendezvous of all ungodly and wicked thoughts, you may feel trodden under foot and overrun by sin, but, with the blessing of God, you shall overcome at the last. Only cultivate that dogged pertinacity of Gad, which has no thought of ultimate defeat, but rallies cheerfully and resolutely after every discomfiture.

PREFACE.

Much is now denied or doubted, within the Church itself, concerning the Book of Exodus, which was formerly accepted with confidence by all Christians.

But one thing can neither be doubted nor denied. Jesus Christ did certainly treat this book, taking it as He found it, as possessed of spiritual authority, a sacred scripture. He taught His disciples to regard it thus, and they did so.

Therefore, however widely His followers may differ about its date and origin, they must admit the right of a Christian teacher to treat this book, taking it as he finds it, as a sacred scripture and invested with spiritual authority. It is the legitimate subject of exposition in the Church.

Such work this volume strives, however imperfectly, to perform. Its object is to edify in the first place, and also, but in the second place, to inform. Nor has the author consciously shrunk from saying what seemed to him proper to be said because the utterance would be unwelcome, either to the latest critical theory, or to the last sensational gospel of an hour.

But since controversy has not been sought, although exposition has not been suppressed when it carried weapons, by far the greater part of the volume appeals to all who accept their Bible as, in any true sense, a gift from God.

No task is more difficult than to exhibit the Old Testament in the light of the New, discovering the permanent in the evanescent, and the spiritual in the form and type which it inhabited and illuminated. This book is at least the result of a firm belief that such a connection between the two Testaments does exist, and of a patient endeavour to receive the edification offered by each Scripture, rather than to force into it, and then extort from it, what the expositor desires to find. Nor has it been supposed that by allowing the imagination to assume, in sacred things, that rank as a guide which reason holds in all other practical affairs, any honour would be done to Him Who is called the Spirit of knowledge and wisdom, but not of fancy and quaint conceits.

If such an attempt does, in any degree, prove successful and bear fruit, this fact will be of the nature of a scientific demonstration.

If this ancient Book of Exodus yields solid results to a sober devotional exposition in the nineteenth Christian century, if it is not an idle fancy that its teaching harmonises with the principles and theology of the New Testament, and even demands the New Testament as the true commentary upon the Old, what follows? How comes it that the oak is potentially in the acorn, and the living creature in the egg? No germ is a manufactured article: it is a part of the system of the universe.

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE PROLOGUE, Exodus 1:1-6.

Books linked by conjunction "And:" Scripture history a connected whole.

So is secular history organic: "Philosophy of history." The Pentateuch being a still closer unity, Exodus rehearses the descent into Egypt.

Heredity: the family of Jacob.

Death of Joseph. Influence of Egypt on the shepherd race.

A healthy stock: good breeding. Goethe's aphorism.

Ourselves and our descendants.

GOD IN HISTORY, Exodus 1:7.

In Exodus, national history replaces biography.

Contrasted narratives of Jacob and Moses. Spiritual progress from Genesis to Exodus.

St. Paul's view: Law prepares for Gospel, especially by our failures.

This explains other phenomena: failures in various circumstances, of innocence in Eden; of an elect family; now of a race, a nation.

Israel, failing with all advantages, needs a Messiah. Faith justifies, in Old Testament as in New.

Scripture history reveals God in this life, in all things.

True spirituality owns God in the secular: this is a gospel for our days.

THE OPPRESSION, Exodus 1:7-22.

Early prosperity: its dangers: political supports vain.

Joseph forgotten. National responsibilities: despotism.

Nations and their chiefs. Our subject races.

The Church and her King: imputation. Pharaoh precipitates what he fears.

Egypt and her aliens: modern parallels.

Tyranny is tyrannous even when cultured.

Our undue estrangement from the fallen: Jesus a brother. Toil crushes the spirit

Israel idolatrous. Religious dependence.

Direct interposition required. Bitter oppression.

Pharaoh drops the mask. Defeated by the human heart. The midwives.

Their falsehood. Morality is progressive.

Culture and humanity.

Religion and the child.

CHAPTER II.

THE RESCUE OF MOSES, Exodus 2:1-10.

Importance of the individual.

A man versus "the Time-spirit."

The parents of Moses.

Their family: their goodly child.

Emotion helps faith, 30.

The ark in the bulrushes.

Pharaoh's daughter and Miriam.

Guidance for good emotions: the Church for humanity.

THE CHOICE OF MOSES, Exodus 2:11-15.

God employs means.

Value of endowment. Moses and his family. "The reproach of Christ."

An impulsive act.

Impulses not accidents. The hopes of Moses.

Moses and his brethren. His flight.

MOSES IN MIDIAN, Exodus 2:16-22.

Energy in disaster.

Disinterested bravery. Parallels with a variation.

The Unseen a refuge. Duty of resisting small wrongs. His wife.

A lonely heart.

CHAPTER III.

THE BURNING BUSH, Exodus 2:23-25.

Death of Raamses. Misery continues.

The cry of the oppressed.

Discipline of Moses.

How a crisis comes.

God hitherto unmentioned. The Angel of the Lord.

An unconsuming fire.

Inquiry: reverence. God finds, not man.

"Take off thy shoe." "The God of thy father."

Immortality. "My people," not saints only.

The good land. The commission.

God with him. A strange token, 53.

A NEW NAME, Exodus 3:14; Exodus 6:2-3.

Why Moses asked the name of God: idolatry: pantheism.

A progressive revelation.

Jehovah. The sound corrupted. Similar superstitions yet.

What it told the Jews. Reality of being.

Jews not saved by ideas. Streams of tendency. The Self-contained. We live in our past.

And in our future.

Yet Jehovah not the impassive God of Lucretius.

The Immutable is Love. This is our help.

Human will is not paralysed.

The teaching of St. Paul. All this is practical.

This gives stability to all other revelations. Our own needs.

THE COMMISSION, Exodus 3:10, Exodus 3:16-22.

God comes where He sends.

The Providential man. Prudence.

Sincerity of demand for a brief respite.

God has already visited them. By trouble He transplants.

The "borrowing" of jewels.

CHAPTER IV.

MOSES HESITATES, Exodus 4:1-17.

Scripture is impartial: Josephus.

Hindrance from his own people. The rod.

The serpent: the leprosy.

"I am not eloquent."

God with us. Aaron the Levite.

Responsibility of not working. The errors of Moses.

Power of fellowship. Vague fears.

With his brother, Moses will go. The Church.

This craving met by Christ.

Family affection. Examples.

MOSES OBEYS, Exodus 4:18-31.

Fidelity to his employer. Reticence.

Resemblance to story of Jesus. He is the Antitype of all experiences.

Counterpoint in history. "Israel is My son."

A neglected duty Zipporah. Was she a helpmeet?

Domestic unhappiness. History v. myth.

The failures of the good.

Men of destiny are not irresponsible.

His first followers: a joyful reception.

Spiritual joy and reaction.

CHAPTER V.

PHARAOH REFUSES, Exodus 5:1-23.

Moses at court again. Formidable.

Power of convictions but also of tyranny and pride. Menephtah: his story.

Was the Pharaoh drowned? The demand of Jehovah.

The refusal.

Is religion idleness? Hebrews were taskmasters.

Demoralised by slavery. They are beaten.

Murmurs against Moses. He returns to God. His remonstrance.

His disappointment. Not really irreverent.

Use of this abortive attempt.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES, Exodus 6:1-30.

The word Jehovah known before: its consolations now.

The new truth is often implicit in the old.

Discernment more needed than revelation. "Judgments."

My people: your God.

The tie is of God's binding.

Fatherhood and sonship.

Faith becomes knowledge. The body hinders the soul.

We are responsible for bodies. Israel weighs Moses down.

We may hold back the saints.

The pedigree.

Indications of genuine history.

"As a god to Pharaoh."

We also.

CHAPTER VII.

THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART, Exodus 7:3-13.

The assertion offends many.

Was he a free agent? When hardened. A.V. incorrect.

He resists five plagues spontaneously. The last five are penal.

Not "hardened" in wickedness, but in nerve. A.V. confuses three words: His heart is

(a) "hardened,"

(b) it is made "strong"

(c) "heavy."

Other examples of these words.

The warning implied.

Moses returns with the signs.

The functions of miracle.

THE PLAGUES, Exodus 7:14.

Their vast range.

Their relation to Pantheism, Idolatry, Philosophy.

And to the gods of Egypt. Their retributive fitness.

Their arrangement.

Like our Lord's, not creative.

God in common things.

Some we inflict upon ourselves. Yet rationalistic analogies fail.

Duration of the conflict.

THE FIRST PLAGUE, Exodus 7:14-25.

The probable scene.

Extent of the plague. The magicians. Its duration.

Was Israel exempt? Contrast with first miracle of Jesus.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SECOND PLAGUE, Exodus 8:1-15.

Submission demanded. Severity of plague.

Pharaoh humbles himself.

"Glory over me." Pharaoh breaks faith.

THE THIRD PLAGUE, Exodus 8:16-19.

Various theories. A surprise. Magicians baffled.

What they confess.

THE FOURTH PLAGUE, Exodus 8:20-32.

"Rising up early."

Bodily pain. Beetles or flies? "A mixture."

Goshen exempt. Pharaoh suffers. He surrenders.

Respite and treachery. Would Moses have returned?

CHAPTER IX.

THE FIFTH PLAGUE, Exodus 9:1-7.

First attack on life. Animals share our fortunes.

The new summons. Murrain.

Pharaoh's curiosity.

THE SIXTH PLAGUE, Exodus 9:8-12.

No warning, yet Author manifest. Ashes of the furnace.

Suffering in the flesh. The magicians again. Pharaoh's heart "made strong."

Dares not retaliate.

THE SEVENTH PLAGUE, Exodus 9:13-35.

Expostulation not mockery.

God is wronged by slavery.

Civil liberty is indebted to religion. "Plagues upon thine heart."

A mis-rendering: why he was not crushed.

An opportunity of escape. The storm.

Ruskin upon terrors of thunderstorm.

Pharaoh confesses sin.

Moses intercedes. The weather in history. Job's assertion

CHAPTER X.

THE EIGHTH PLAGUE, Exodus 10:1-20.

Moses encouraged.

Deliverances should be remembered. A sterner rebuke. Locusts in Egypt.

Their effect. The court interferes. Yet "their hearts hardened" also.

Infatuation of Pharaoh. Parallel of Napoleon.

Women and little ones did share in festivals.

A gentle wind. Locusts. Another surrender.

Relief. Our broken vows.

THE NINTH PLAGUE, Exodus 10:21-29.

Menephtah's sun-worship.

Suddenness of the plague. Concentrated narrative.

Darkness represents death.

The Book of Wisdom upon this plague.

Isaiah's allusions. The Pharaoh's character.

Altercation with Moses.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LAST PLAGUE ANNOUNCED, Exodus 11:1-10.

This chapter supplements the last. The blow is known to be impending. Uses of its delay.

Israel shall claim wages. The menace.

Parallel with St. John.

CHAPTER XII.

THE PASSOVER, Exodus 12:1-28.

Birthday of a nation. The calendar.

"The congregation." The feast is social.

The nation is based upon the family. No Egyptian house escapes.

National interdependence. The Passover a sacrifice.

What does the blood mean? Rationalistic theories. Harvest festivals.

The unbelieving point of view: what theories of sacrifice were then current? "A sacrifice was a meal."

Human sacrifices. The Passover "unhistorical." Kuenen rejects this view.

Phenomena irreconcilable with it.

What is really expressed? Danger even to Jews.

Salvation by grace. Not unbought.

The lamb a ransom. All firstborn are forfeited. Tribe of Levi.

Cash payment. Effect on Hebrew literature.

Its prophetic import.

The Jew must co-operate with God: must also become His guest.

Sacred festivals. Lamb or kid. Four days reserved.

Men are sheep. Heads of houses originally sacrifice. Transition to Levites in progress under Hezekiah, complete under Josiah.

Unleavened bread. The lamb. Roast, not sodden.

Complete consumption. Judgment upon gods of Egypt.

The blood a token unto themselves. On their lintels.

The word "pass-over."

Domestic teaching.

Many who ate the feast perished. Aliens might share.

THE TENTH PLAGUE, Exodus 12:29-36.

The blow falls. Pharaoh was not "firstborn": his son "sat upon his throne."

The scene.

The demands of Israel. St. Augustine's inference.

THE EXODUS, Exodus 12:37-42.

The route.

Their cattle, a suggested explanation.

"Four hundred and thirty years."

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAW OF THE FIRSTBORN, Exodus 13:1.

The consecration of the firstborn.

The Levite. "They are Mine."

Joy is hopeful. Tradition?

Phylacteries. The ass.

The Philistines. No spiritual miracle.

Education.

THE BONES OF JOSEPH, Exodus 13:19.

Joseph influenced Moses.

His faith.

Circumstances overcome by soul. God in the cloud.

Hebrew poetry and modern.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE RED SEA, Exodus 14:1-31.

Stopped on the march.

Pharaoh presumes.

The panic.

Moses. Prayer and action. "Self-assertion"?

The midnight march.

The lost army.

ON THE SHORE, Exodus 14:30-31.

Impressions deepened. "They believed in Jehovah." So the faith of the apostles grew.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SONG OF MOSES, Exodus 15:1-22.

A song remembered in heaven. Its structure.

The women join. Instruments. Dances.

God the Deliverer, not Moses. "My salvation."

Gratitude. Anthropomorphism. "Ye are gods." "Jehovah is a Man--of war."

The overthrow.

First mention of Divine holiness.

An inverted holiness.

"Thou shalt bring them in."

SHUR, Exodus 15:22-27.

Disillusion. Marah.

A universal danger.

Prayer, and the use of means.

"A statute and an ordinance." Such compacts often repeated. The offered privilege.

It is still enjoyed.

"The Lord for the body." Elim.

CHAPTER XVI.

MURMURING FOR FOOD, Exodus 16:1-14.

We too fear, although Divinely guarded.

They would fain die satiated.

Relief tries them as want does.

The Sabbath. A rebuke.

Moses is zealous. His "meekness."

The glory appears.

Quails and manna.

MANNA, Exodus 16:15-36.

Their course of life is changed.

A drug resembles manna.

The supernatural follows nature.

They must gather, prepare, be moderate.

Nothing over and no lack. Socialistic perversion.

Socialism. Christ in politics.

SPIRITUAL MEAT, Exodus 16:15-36.

Manna is a type. When given.

An unearthly sustenance.

What is spirituality? Christ the true Manna.

Universal, daily, abundant.

The Sabbath. The pot of manna.

CHAPTER XVII.

MERIBAH, Exodus 17:1-7.

A greater strain. What if Israel had stood it?

They murmured against Moses. The position of Aaron. An exaggerated outcry.

Witnesses to the miracle. The rock in Horeb.

The rod. Privilege is not acceptance.

AMALEK, Exodus 17:8-16.

A water-raid.

God's sheep must become His warriors. War.

Joshua. The rod of God.

A silent prayer. Aaron and Hur must join in it.

So now. But the army must fight.

"The Lord my banner." Unlike a myth.

CHAPTER XVIII.

JETHRO, Exodus 18:1-27.

Gentiles in new aspect. Church may learn from secular wisdom.

Little is said of Zipporah: Jethro's pleasure.

A Gentile priest recognised. Religious festivity.

Jethro's advice: its importance.

Divine help does not supersede human gift.

THE TYPICAL BEARINGS OF THE HISTORY.

Narrative is also allegory. Danger of arbitrary fancies. Example from Bunyan. Scriptural teaching.

Some resemblances are planned: others are reappearances of same principle.

So that these are evidential analogies, like Butler's.

Others appear forced. "I called My Son out of Egypt" refers to Israel.

But the condescending phrase promised more, and the subsequent coincidence is significant.

Truths cannot all be proved like Euclid's.

CHAPTER XIX.

AT SINAI, Exodus 19:1-25.

Sinai and Pentecost. The place. Ras Sufsâfeh. God speaks in nature.

Moses is stopped; the people must pledge themselves. Dedication services.

An appeal to gratitude, and a promise.

"A peculiar treasure." "A kingdom and priests."

The individual, and Church order. "On eagles' wings."

Israel consents. The Lord in the cloud. Manifestations are transient.

Precautions. The trumpet.

"The priests." A plébiscite. Contrast between Law and Gospel: Methodius.

Theophanies.

None like this.

CHAPTER XX.

THE LAW, Exodus 20:1-17.

What the law did. It could not justify. It reveals obligation.

It convicts, not enables. It is an organic whole. And a challenge.

The Spirit enables: love is fulfilment of law. Luther's paradox.

Law and Gospel contrasted. Its spiritual beauty: two noble failures.

The Jewish arrangement of the Commandments. St. Augustine's. The Anglican. An equal division.

THE PROLOGUE, Exodus 20:2.

Their experience of God.

God and the first table. The true object of adoration: men must adore. Agnosticism.

God and the second table.

Law appeals to noble motives.

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:3.

Monotheism and a real God.

False creeds attractive. Spiritualism. Science indebted to Monotheism.

Unity of nature a religious truth. Strength of our experimental argument.

Informal apostacy. Luther's position. Scripture. The Chaldeans.

Animal pleasure.

The remedy: "Thou shalt have ... Me."

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:4-6.

Imagery not all idolatry. The subtler paganisms.

Spiritual worship, like a Gothic building, aspires: images lack expansiveness.

God is jealous.

The shadow of love.

Visiting sins on children.

Part of vast beneficent law.

Gospel in law.

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:7.

Meaning of "in vain."

Jewish superstition. Where swearing is wholly forbidden.

Fruitful and free use of God's name.

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:8-11.

Law of Sabbath unique. Confession of Augsburg. Of Westminster.

Anglican position. St. Paul.

The first positive precept. Love not the abolition of the law.

Property of our friends. The word "remember." The story of creation.

The manna. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.

Christ's freedom was that of a Jew. "Sabbath for man."

Our help, not our fetter. "My Father worketh."

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:12.

Bridge between duty to God and to neighbour.

Father and child.

"Whosoever hateth not." Christ and His mother. Its sanction.

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:13.

Who is neighbour? Ethics and religion.

Science and morals.

A Divine creature. Capital punishment.

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:14.

Justice forbids act: Christ forbids desire. Sacredness of body.

Human body connects material and spiritual worlds. Modifies, while serves.

Marriage a type.

THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:15.

Assailed by communism, by Rome. Various specious pleas.

Laws of community binding.

None may judge his own case, St. Paul enlarges the precept.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:16.

Importance of words. Various transgressions.

Slander against nations, against the race. Love.

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:17.

The list of properties.

The heart. The law searches.

THE LESSER LAW, Exodus 20:18 - Exodus 23:33.

A remarkable code. The circumstances.

Moses fears: yet bids them fear not.

Presumption v. awe. He receives an expanded decalogue, an abridged code.

Laws should educate a people; should not outrun their capabilities.

Five subdivisions.

I. THE LAW OF WORSHIP, Exodus 20:22-26.

Images again forbidden.

Splendour and simplicity. An objection.

Modesty.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE LESSER LAW (continued).

II. RIGHTS OF THE PERSON, Exodus 21:1-32.

The Hebrew slave. The seventh year. Year of jubilee. His family.

The ear pierced. St. Paul's "marks of the Lord." Assaults.

The Gentile slave.

The female slave.

Murder and blood-fiends.

Parents. Kidnappers.

Eye for eye. Mitigations of lex talionis.

Vicious cattle.

III. RIGHTS OF PROPERTY, Exodus 21:33 - Exodus 22:15.

Negligence: indirect responsibility: various examples.

Theft.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LESSER LAW (continued).

IV. VARIOUS ENACTMENTS, Exodus 22:16 - Exodus 23:19.

Disconnected precepts. No trace of systematic revision. Certain capital crimes.

SORCERY, Exodus 22:18.

Abuses have recoiled against religion.

Sorcerers are impostors, but they existed, and do still.

Moses could not leave them to enlightened opinion. Propagated apostacy.

Traitors in a theocracy.

When shall witchcraft die?

THE STRANGER, Exodus 22:21; Exodus 23:9.

"Ye were strangers."

A fruitful principle. Morality not expediency.

Cruelty often ignorance: Moses educates.

The widow. The borrower.

Other precepts.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LESSER LAW (continued).

An enemy's cattle. A false report.

Influence of multitude: the world and the Church.

Favour not the poor.

Other precepts. "A kid in his mother's milk."

V. ITS SANCTIONS Exodus 23:20-33.

A bold transition: the Angel in Whom is "My Name."

Not a mere messenger.

Nor the substitute of Exodus 33:2-3.

Parallel verses.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE COVENANT RATIFIED. THE VISION OF GOD, Exodus 24:1-18

The code is accepted, written, ratified with blood.

Exclusion and admittance. The elders see God: Moses goes farther. Theophanies of other creeds.

How could they see God?

Moses feels not satisfaction, but desire.

His progress is from vision to shadow and a Voice.

We see not each other.

St. Augustine.

The vision suits the period: not post-Exilian.

Contrast with revelation in Christ.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SHRINE AND ITS FURNITURE, Exodus 25:1-40.

The God of Sinai will inhabit a tent. His other tabernacles.

The furniture is typical. Altar of incense postponed.

The ark enshrines His law and its sanctions.

The mercy-seat covers it.

Man's homage. The table of shewbread.

The golden candlestick (lamp-stand).

THE PATTERN IN THE MOUNT, Exodus 25:9-40.

Use in Hebrews. Plato.

Not a model, but an idea. Art.

Provisional institutions.

The ideal in creation, 388.--In life.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE TABERNACLE.

"Temple" an ambiguous word.

"Curtains of the Tabernacle."

Other coverings.

The boards and sockets.

The bars. The tent.

Position of veil and of the front.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE OUTER COURT.

The altar.

The quadrangle.

General effect.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE HOLY GARMENTS.

Their import.

The drawers. "Coat." Head-tires. Robe of the ephod. Ephod. Jewels.

Breastplate. Urim and Thummim. Mitre. Symbolism.

THE PRIESTHOOD.

Universal desire and dread of God.

Delegates.

Scripture. First Moses.

His family passed over. The double consciousness expressed.

Messianic priesthood.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CONSECRATION SERVICES.

Why consecrate at all?

Moses officiates. The offerings.

Ablution, robing, anointing.

The sin-offering.

"Without the camp."

The burnt-offering.

The peace-offering ("ram of consecration").

The wave-offerings.

The result.

CHAPTER XXX.

INCENSE, Exodus 30:1-10.

The impalpable in nature.

"The golden altar."

Represents prayer. Needs cleansing.

A CENSUS, Exodus 30:2-16.

A census not sinful. David's transgression. The half-shekel. Equality of man.

Christ paid it.

Its employment.

THE LAVER, Exodus 30:17-21.

Behind the altar. Purity of priests.

Made of the mirrors.

ANOINTING OIL AND INCENSE, Exodus 30:22-38.

Their ingredients. All the vessels anointed.

Forbidden to secular uses.

Modern analogies.

CHAPTER XXXI.

BEZALEEL AND AHOLIAB, Exodus 31:1-18.

Secular gifts are sacred.

The Sabbath. The tables and "the finger of God."

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE GOLDEN CALF.

Sin of the people; of Aaron. God rejects them.

Intercession. The Christian antitype.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

PREVAILING INTERCESSION.

The first concession. The angel.

"The Tent of the Meeting."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE VISION OF GOD.

To know is to desire to know. A fit season. The greater Name.

The covenant renewed. The tables. The skin of his face shone.

Lessons.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CONCLUSION, Exodus 35:1-35 - Exodus 40:1-38.

The people obey.

The forming of the nation: review.

Genesis 48:8-14

Israel beheld Joseph’s sons

Lessons

1. Prudence in good men may divert nature from the remembrance of sad events. About Rachel.

2. Weak nature may see in part that which it doth not discern. So Jacob.

3. Reason suggests inquiry to know what sight doth not discern (Genesis 48:8).

4. Sons in strength should help the weakness of aged parents. So Joseph to his father.

5. It concerns fathers to own their children especially in order to a blessing. So Joseph his.

6. Godly parents account their children God’s gift unto them. So Joseph.

7. It is a mercy remarkable to have children for blessing in a strange place.

8. Gracious fathers desire their children’s children to bless them (Genesis 48:9).

9. Old age makes the saints subject to the same infirmities as other men. So to Jacob.

10. Dimness of sight is a usual symptom of old age.

11. Weakness in sight makes mistakes that need direction in the holiest men.

12. Good fathers yield to the desires of bringing children to them that can bless them.

13. Kisses and embracings are not unseemly from holy ancestors to their seed’s seed in order to blessing (Genesis 48:10).

14. It is meet for the holy ancestors to acquaint the sons of God’s dealings, with them.

15. Hopelessness of mercy with good souls makes them remember it more sweetly.

16. God’s mercies sometimes over-reach hope and expectation of His people.

17. Saints delight to show their over-abounding mercies to His praise (Genesis 48:11).

18. Suitable motions to dispose for a ministerial blessing is but meet.

19. Filial obeisance in honour of parents is a just duty in expectation of a blessing (Genesis 48:12).

20. There are right-hand and left-hand blessings, which God giveth by His ministers, greater and less.

21. Good men may aim one to the right, and another to the left.hand blessing, whom God changeth.

22. It is needful to come near So the ministers of blessing if men desire to have it (Genesis 48:13). (G. Hughes, B. D.)

Genesis 48:15-16

And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, &c

Jacob’s deathbed

When St.
Paul wished to select from the history of Jacob an instance of faith, he took the scene described in the text, when Joseph brings his two sons to the deathbed of his father. The text is therefore to be considered as one in which faith was signally exhibited.

I. Jacob seems to make it his object, and to represent it as a privilege, that he should take the lads out of the family of Joseph, though that family was then one of the noblest in Egypt, and transplant them into his own, though it had no outward distinction but what is derived from its connection with the other. Faith gave him this consciousness of superiority; he knew that his posterity were to constitute a peculiar people, from which would at length arise the Redeemer. He felt it far more of an advantage for Ephraim and Manasseh to be counted with the tribes than numbered among the princes of Egypt.

II. Observe the peculiarity of Jacob’s language with regard to his preserver, and his decided preference of the younger brother to the elder, in spite of the remonstrances of Joseph. There was faith, and illustrious faith, in both. By the “Angel who redeemed him from all evil,” he must have meant the Second Person of the Trinity; he shows that he had glimmerings of the finished work of Christ. The preference of the younger son to the elder was typical of the preference of the Gentile Church to the Jewish. Acting on what he felt convinced was the purpose of God, Jacob did violence to his own inclination and that of those whom he most longed to please.

III. Jacob’s worshipping (referred to in Hebrews 11:1-40.) may be taken as proving his faith. What has a dying man to do with worshipping, unless he is a believer in another state? He leans upon the top of his staff as if he would acknowledge the goodness of his heavenly Father, remind himself of the troubles through which he had been brought, and of the Hand which alone had been his guardian and guide. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The last days of Jacob

I. WE SEE HERE THE BEAUTY OF FILIAL PIETY. Jacob was only a shepherd, and Joseph was an exalted and powerful statesman. Had there been a trace of meanness and pride and self-seeking in the son, he might easily have waited till the patriarch was dead before doing him honour. Death often compels a child to respect a neglected parent. But Joseph was a great man, so great that the distinction of station had no influence upon his mind. Like many other great men, his personal attachments were intense, and his loyalty to his family was deep and unchanged. Besides this, his father was the heir of the covenant whose mercies would enrich him more than all Egypt’s lands, and he could not alienate himself from that future commonwealth of Israel to which his faith pointed. This journey of Joseph to his father shows the man, and the man of God. He felt that the less was to be blessed of the greater.

II. WE ARE INTERESTED IS JACOB’S OWN VIEW OF HIS LIFE. When Israel strengthened himself for this last interview, and there came to him a flash of his old prowess and undaunted vigour, his memory was aroused, and the past in its great features lay spread out before him. The dark parts of his life seemed to remind him of Divine mercies, and from the summit he had gained appeared to him only as the shadows of summer clouds on distant hills.

III. THE BLESSING WAS A SOLEMN ACT OF PROPHECY, FAITH, AND WORSHIP.

IV. SEE HERE THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY, Oldest son, the most promising child, does not always, perhaps not usually, share the largest part of the joys and honours of life. Parental hopes are often thwarted, and we desire in vain to change the manifest development of character and circumstance. In the history of nations, outside Israel, we witness the same phenomenon, and wonder why the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong; why smaller states eclipse greater ones, and why heroes and leaders spring from such unexpected quarters. All is of God. In the workings of redemption around us every day we meet the same fact. One is taken and another left. Nor can we read the reasons. (E. N. Packard.)

The blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh

I. ITS NATURE AND PROSPERITY.

1. They were blessed in the person of Joseph. He is blessed in his sons (verses 15, 20). The principle is recognized of blessing mankind in the name and for the sake of another.

2. With the covenant blessing. Not with that of the gods of Egypt, though he had cause to be grateful to that nation. He would have his children to know the true fount of blessedness. He invoked the blessing of the God of his fathers (verse 15). The assurance that others have shared the gifts of grace with us is a support to our faith. We of the Church belong to a holy nation, which has a great and venerable past.

3. With the blessing of which he himself had experience. “The God which fed me all my life long until this day” (verse 15). He felt that God had tended and cared for him like a shepherd.

4. With a different blessing for each. He bestows the larger blessing upon the younger (verse 19).

II. ITS OUTWARD FORM. It was conveyed by the imposition of hands (verse 14). The blessing was not merely a wish or a hope, but a reality, This laying on of hands was the outward means or symbol of its conveyance. Outward forms impress, they steady the mind, and assist contemplation. The blessing was as real as the outward act which accompanied it, the reality of nature leading on to the reality of grace.

III. ITS WARRANT.

1. The covenant position in which God had placed him. He stood with his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, in the same covenant relation with God (verses 15, 16).

2. The act was Divinely directed. Old Jacob crossed his hands, and thus in bestowing the blessing reversed the order of nature (verses 14, 17). He refused to be corrected by Joseph, for though his sight was dim, his spiritual eye discerned the will of God. He guided his hands “wittingly,” with full knowledge of the decree of the Most High. God, who distributes His gifts as He will, prefers the younger to the elder. Nature and grace often take cross directions. (T. H. Leale.)

Jacob’s prayer for the sons of Joseph

I. THE GLORIOUS PERSONAGE ADDRESSED. “The Angel,” &c.

1. The title of this glorious personage.

2. His achievements.

II. THE INTERESTING PRAYER PRESENTED.

1. What is sought? “Bless.”

2. Who should thus pray?

3. The manner of presenting this supplication.

The last days of Jacob

I. THE HEIRS OF THE BLESSING--A SURPRISE.

1. The adoption of Joseph’s two sons to be reckoned among the patriarchs, equal with Jacob’s own sons, while Joseph personally is left out, was doubt]ass a surprise.

2. This adoption of Joseph’s two sons was by Divine direction.

II. THE CHARACTER OF THE BLESSING IS SUGGESTIVE.

1. The “elevated glow” of the dying patriarch must be regarded as the result of the Divine power that wrought upon him.

2. The spirit and terms of the blessing are very touching and instructive.

3. The sovereignty of God in the expression of His choice of the younger over the elder must be fully recognized.

III. THE PATRIARCH’S PERSONAL CONDITION WHEN THE BLESSING WAS BESTOWED.

1. Physical.

2. Mental.

3. Spiritual. Lessons:--

1. The sovereignty of God.

2. Divine sovereignty is not exercised in unreasoning arbitrariness, but in perfect harmony with the laws of justice and love.

3. Learn how gloriously a child of God can die. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)

Jacob owning Divine care, and blessing his grandchildren

I. To ILLUSTRATE THE TEXT.

1. Here is Jacob’s recollection and acknowledgment of the Divine goodness and care. He acknowledgeth God, as the God of his pious ancestors, and as his constant preserver and benefactor.

II. TO CONSIDER WHAT INSTRUCTIVE LESSONS AGED CHRISTIANS MAY DRAW FROM HENCE.

1. It is their duty to recollect and acknowledge their long experience of God’s goodness and care.

2. It is the duty of aged and dying Christians to bless and pray for their descendants.

Concluding reflections:

1. Let children desire and value the prayer and blessing of their aged, dying parents.

2. Let the children of good men labour to secure the blessing for themselves. (J. Often.)

The last days

There is a splendour peculiar to the meridian sun. There is a majestic and uncontrollable energy, and boldness, with which it spreads light and blessedness on all around. The sun shining in its strength is a grand and exhilarating sight. But there is a still deeper interest attendant on its decline; when the warm and mellow tints of evening soften the dazzling brightness of its ray; and when surrounded, but not obscured by clouds, and rich in a golden radiance, on which the eye lingers with chastened and inexpressible delight, it sinks below the horizon. It is with similar feelings that we regard the faithful servant of God, when he comes towards the close of a long, consistent, and useful life. It is when viewed in this light, that the last hours of the patriarch Jacob become valuable to us. All is resolved into the Divine care. All the vicissitudes of his course, when thus scrutinized, by the accurate discernment of one who from long experience could not be deceived, appear but as evidences to him of the gracious and providential guardianship of his Almighty Friend and Father.

1. He admits without reserve the providential care of God through a long life. “God Almighty that appeared unto me in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, hath fed me all my life long unto this day.” Many there are whose last year’s savour of a very different spirit from this. They have set out in life with false and unwarranted expectations of prosperity. They began without God for their friend, and they lived a life of business or of folly. They never cherished any hope, but the hope of extracting happiness from a world which was never calculated to give it. And what has been the result? Year after year has brought its disappointments.

2. There is another essential point of difference between the experience of this venerable Patriarch and yours. Jacob recognizes fully the gracious, as well as the protecting care of his God. In looking back upon his way, he broadly and joyfully admits the truth of God’s redeeming mercy. This is the great secret of the exalted sublimity of his character, and the serenity of his end. We can recognize then in the creed of Jacob, precisely the same ground of hope as that of which we ourselves now rest. As truly as we see

Christians in the full confidence of the faith of the gospel approaching their dying hour, and saying, “I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain”; so truly do we see Jacob in the exercise of the very same faith--a faith in a nameless Saviour. Learn that you can leave no better blessing to your children and your friends, than the mantle of your own piety--a measure of your own Christian hope. The last lesson is encouragement. Be encouraged to seek the Lord early, and to trust him through life. Jacob is one of an innumerable host of instances adducible in proof of the faithfulness of God. “He will never fail them that trust in Him.” (E. Craig.)

Joseph’s blessing

1. Though Ephraim and Manasseh were each constituted heads of tribes, yet they were blessed in the person of their father Joseph. Here, as elsewhere, God would exemplify the great principle on which He designed to act in blessing mankind in the name and for the sake of another.

2. Jacob, though now among the Egyptians, and kindly treated by them, yet makes no mention of their gods, but holds up to his posterity the living and true God. In proportion as Egypt was kind to the young people, such would be their danger of being seduced; but let them remember the dying words of their venerable ancestor, and know from whence their blessedness cometh.

3. The God whose blessing was bestowed upon them was not only the true God, but the God of their fathers; a God in covenant with the family, who loved them, and was loved and served by them. “God, before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, did walk.” How sweet and endearing the character; and what a recommendation of these holy patterns to the young people! Nor was He merely the God of Abraham and Isaac, but Jacob himself also could speak well of His name; adding, “The God who fed me all my life long unto this day!” Sweet and solemn are the recommendations of aged piety. “Speak reproachfully of Christ,” said the persecutors to Polycarp, when leading him to the stake. “Eighty six years I have served Him” answered the venerable man, during all which time He never did me an injury; how then can I blaspheme Him who is my King, and my Saviour?” Hearken, oh, young people, to this affecting language! It is a principle dictated by common prudence, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not”: and how much more forcibly does it apply to the God of your fathers!

4. This God is culled “the Angel who redeemed him from all evil.” Who this was it is not difficult to decide. It was the Angel, no doubt, with whom Jacob wrestled and prevailed, and concerning whom he said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”

5. The blessing of God under all these endearing characters is invoked upon the lads, their forefathers’ names put upon them, and abundant increase promised to them. Surely it is good to be connected with them that fear God; yet those only who are of faith will ultimately be blessed with their faithful predecessors. (A. Fuller.)

A bit of history for old and young

1. Our text tells us that Jacob blessed Joseph, and we perceive that he blessed him through blessing his children; which leads us to the next remark, that no choicer favour could fall upon ourselves than to see our children favoured of the Lord. Joseph is doubly blessed by seeing Ephraim and Manasseh blessed.

2. Those of us who are parents are bound to do our best, that our children may be partakers with us of the Divine inheritance. As Joseph took Ephraim and Manasseh to see their aged grandfather, let us bring our children where blessings may be expected.

3. Furthermore, observe that if we want to bless young people, one of the likeliest means of doing so will be our personal testimony to the goodness of God. Young men and women usually feel great interest in their fathers’ life-story--if it be a worthy one--and what they hear from them of their personal experience of the goodness of God will abide with them. This is one of the best ways in which to bless the lads. The benediction of Jacob was intertwisted with his biography; the blessing which he had himself enjoyed he wished for them, and as he invoked it he helped to secure it by his personal testimony.

4. One thing further: I want you to note, that Jacob, in desiring to bless his grandsons, introduced them to God. He speaks of “ God before whom my fathers did walk: God who blessed me all my life long.” This is the great distinction between man and man: there are two races, he that feareth God, and he that feareth Him not. The religion of this present age, such as it is, has a wrong direction in its course. It seeks after what is called “ the enthusiasm of humanity,” but what we want far more is enthusiasm for God. We shall never go right unless God is first, midst, and last. All this is introduction; so now we must come at once and plunge into the discourse.

Jacob’s testimony, wherewith he blessed the sons of Joseph, has in it four points.

I. First HE SPEAKS OF ANCESTRAL MERCIES he begins with that” God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk.” As with a pencil he sketches the lives of Abraham and Isaac.

1. They were men who recognized God and worshipped Him, beyond all others of their age. God was to them a real existence; they spake with God, and God spake with them; they were friends of God, and enjoyed familiar acquaintance with Him.

2. They not only recognized God, but they owned Him in daily life. I take the expression, “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk,” to mean that He was their God in common life. They not only knelt before God when they prayed, but they walked before Him in everything. This is the kind of life for you and for me; whether we live in a great house or in a poor cottage, if we walk before God we shall lead a happy and a noble life, whether that life be public or obscure. Oh that our young people would firmly believe this!

3. They walked before God; that is they obeyed His commands. His call they heard, His bidding they followed. To them the will of the Lord was paramount: He was law and life to them, for they loved and feared Him. They were prompt to hear the behests of God, and rose up early to fulfil them. They acted as in the immediate presence of the All-seeing.

4. To the full they trusted Him. In this sense they always saw Him. We sometimes talk about tracing Him. We cannot trace Him, except as we trust Him; and because they trusted, they traced Him.

5. They enjoyed the favour of God, for this also is intended by walking before Him. His face was towards them: they sunned themselves in His smile. God’s love was their true treasure. God was their wealth, their strength, their exceeding joy. I say again, happy sons who have such ancestors! happier still if they follow in their track! So Jacob spoke of Abraham and Isaac, and so can some of us speak of those who went before us. Those of us who can look back upon godly ancestors now in heaven must feel that many ties bind us to follow the same course of life.

6. There is a charm about that which was prized by our fathers. Heirlooms are treasured, and the best heirloom in a family is the knowledge of God. The way of holiness in which your fathers went is a fitting way for you, and it is seemly that you maintain the godly traditions of your house. In the old times they expected sons to follow the secular calling of their fathers; and although that may be regarded as an old-world mistake, yet it is well when sons and daughters receive the same spiritual call as their parents. Grace is not tied to families, but yet the Lord delights to bless to a thousand generations. Very far are we from believing that the new birth is of blood, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man. The will of God reigns here supreme, and absolute; but yet there is a sweet fitness in the passing on of holy loyalty from grandsire to father, and from father to son. A godly ancestry casts responsibility upon young people. These Ephraims and Manassehs perceive that their fathers knew the Lord, and the question arises, Why should they not know Him? Oh my beloved young friends, the God of your fathers will be found of you and be your God. The prayers of your fathers have gone before you; let them be followed by your own. A godly ancestry should invest a man’s case with great hopefulness. May he not argue, “If God blessed my ancestors, why should He not bless me?”

II. Now he comes to deal with PERSONAL MERCIES. The old man’s voice faltered as he said, “The God which fed me all my life long.” The translation would be better if it ran, “The God which shepherded me all my life long.”

1. He spoke of the Lord as his shepherd. Jacob had been a shepherd, and therefore he knew what shepherding included: the figure is full of meaning. There had been a good deal of Jacob about Jacob, and he had tried to shepherd himself. Poor sheep that he was, while under his own guidance he had been caught in many thorns, and had wandered in many wildernesses. Because he would be so much a shepherd to himself, he had been hard put to it. But over all, despite his wilfulness, the shepherding of the covenant God had been exercised towards him, and he acknowledged it. Oh dear saints of God, you to whom years are being multiplied, give praise to your God for having been your shepherd. Bear your witness to the shepherding of God, for this may lead others to become the sheep of His pasture.

2. This shepherding had been perfect. Our version rightly says that the Lord had fed Jacob all his life long. Take that sense of it, and you who have a daily struggle for subsistence will see much beauty in it. Mercies are all the sweeter when seen to come from the hand of God. But besides being fed Jacob had been led, even as sheep are guided by the shepherd who goes before them. His journeys, for that period, had been unusually long, perilous, and frequent. He had fled from home to Padanaram; after long years he had come back again to Canaan, and had met his brother Esau; and after that, in his old age, he had journeyed into Egypt. To go to California or New Zealand in these times is nothing at all compared to those journeys in Jacob’s day. But he says, “God has shepherded me all my life long”; and he means that the great changes of his life had been wisely ordered. Life ends in blighted hope if you have not hope in God. But with God you are as a sheep with a shepherd--cared for, guided, guarded, fed, and led, and your end shall be peace without end.

III. Thirdly, bear with me while I follow Jacob in his word upon REDEEMING MERCIES. “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” There was to Joseph a mysterious Personage who was God, and yet the Angel or messenger of God. He puts this Angel in apposition with the Elohim: for this Angel was God. Yet was He his Redeemer. Brothers and sisters, let us also tell of the redeeming mercies of the Lord Jesus towards us. You remember, too, when that pinch came in business, so that you could not see how to provide things honest in the sight of all men; then Jesus revealed His love and bade you think of the lilies and the ravens, which neither spin nor sow, and yet are clothed majestically and fare sumptuously. Many a time has the Lord delivered you because He delighted in you.

IV. Jacob has spoken of ancestral mercies, personal mercies and redeeming mercies, and now he deals with FUTURE MERCIES, as he cries “Bless the lads.” He began with blessing Joseph, and he finishes with blessing his lads. Oh dear friends, if God has blessed you, I know you will want Him to bless others. There is the stream of mercy, deep, broad, and clear; you have drunk of it, and are refreshed, but it is as full as ever. It will flow on, will it not? In closing, I wish to bear a personal testimony by narrating an incident in my own life. I have been preaching in Essex this week, and I took the opportunity to visit the place where my grandfather preached so long, and where I spent my earliest days. Last Wednesday was to me a day in which I walked like a man in a dream. Everybody seemed bound to recall some event or other of my childhood. What a story of Divine love and mercy did it bring before my mind! Among other things, I sat down in a place that must ever be sacred to me. There stood in my grandfather’s manse garden two arbours made of yew trees, cut into sugar-loaf fashion. Though the old manse has given way to a new one, and the old chapel has gone also, yet the yew trees flourish as aforetime. I sat down in the right hand arbour and bethought me of what had happened there many years ago. When I was a young child staying with my grandfather, there came to preach in the village Mr. Knill, who had been a missionary at St. Petersburg, and a mighty preacher of the gospel. He came to preach for the London Missionary Society, and arrived on the Saturday at the manse. He was a great soul-winner, and he soon spied out the boy. He said to me, “Where do you sleep? for I want to call you up in the morning.” I showed him my little room. At six o’clock he called me up, and we went into that arbour. There, in the sweetest way, he told me of the love of Jesus, and of the blessedness of trusting in Him and loving Him in our childhood. With many a story he preached Christ to me, and told me how good God had been to him, and then he prayed that I might know the Lord and serve Him. He knelt down in that arbour and prayed for me with his arms about my neck. He did not seem content unless I kept with him in the interval between the services, and he heard my childish talk with patient love. On Monday morning he did as on the Sabbath, and again on Tuesday. Three times he taught me and prayed with me, and before he had to leave, my grandfather had come back from the place where he had gone to preach, and all the family were gathered to morning prayer. Then, in the presence of them all, Mr. Knill took me on his knee, anal said, “This child will one day preach the gospel, and he will preach it to great multitudes. I am persuaded that he will preach in the chapel of Rowland Hill, where (I think he said) I am now the minister.” He spoke very solemnly, and called upon all present to witness what he said. Then he gave me sixpence as a reward if I would learn the hymn--

“God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.”

I was made to promise that when I preached in Rowland Hill’s chapel that hymn should be sung. Think of that as a promise from a child I Would it ever be other than an idle dream? Years flew by. After I had begun for some little time to preach in London, Dr. Alexander Fletcher had to give the annual sermon to children in Surrey Chapel, but as he was taken ill, I was asked in a hurry to preach to the children. “Yes,” I said, “I will, if the children will sing ‘God moves in a mysterious way.’ I have made a promise long ago that so that should be sung.” And so it was; I preached in Rowland Hill’s chapel, and the hymn was sung. My, emotions on that occasion I cannot describe. Still that was not the chapel which Mr. Knill intended. All unsought by me, the minister at Wotton-under-Edge, which was Mr. Hill’s summer residence, invited me to preach there. I went on the condition that the congregation should sing, “God moves in a mysterious way”--which was also done. After that I went to preach for Mr. Richard Knill himself, who was then at Chester. What a meeting we had! Mark this! he was preaching in the theatre! His preaching in a theatre took away from me all fear about preaching in secular buildings, and set me free for the campaigns in Exeter Hall and the Surrey Music Hall. How much this had to do with other theatre services you know. After more than forty years of the Lord’s loving-kindness, I sat again in that arbour! No doubt it is a mere trifle for outsiders to hear, but to me it was an overwhelming moment. The present minister of Stambourn meeting-house, and the members of his family, including his son and his grandchildren, were in the garden, and I could not help calling them together around that arbour, while I praised the Lord for His goodness. One irresistible impulse was upon me it was to pray God to bless those lads that stood around me. Do you not see how the memory begat the prayer? I wanted them to remember when they grew up my testimony of God’s goodness to me; and for that same reason I tell it to you young people who are around me this morning. God has blessed me all my life long, and redeemed me from all evil, and I pray that He may be your God. You that have godly parents, I would specially address. I beseech you to follow in their footsteps, that you may one day speak of the Lord as they were able to do in their day. Remember that special promise, “I love them that love Me; and those that seek Me early shall find Me.” May the Holy Spirit lead you to seek Him this day; and you shall live to praise His name as Jacob did. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Jacob blessing Joseph’s children

I. First of all, THE REFERENCE TO JACOB’S FOREFATHERS: he says, “God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk.” How various must be the thoughts suggested to all our minds by that same expression--“God, before whom my fathers did walk!” How many of us can say that it was the God of Abraham before whom our fathers did walk? How many must be constrained to say that it was the “god of this world . . . before whom their fathers did walk!” It is an awful question which we read in the prophet, “Your fathers, where are they?” How solemnly it recalls the history of our own youth! How solemnly it bids us ask, “Were those we loved in the flesh in Christ, or were they out of Christ? “But I stay not to dwell upon that: it is clear that the feelings which were in the mind of the patriarch were those of joy and gratitude; he knew who was “the God of his fathers”; he knew that their God was his God. In the expression, therefore, “God, before whom my fathers did walk,” he doubtless had reference to the sovereign grace of God, which had called Abraham from the midst of an idolatrous nation, to be “ the father of the faithful”--to be he in whose “seed all the families of the earth should be blessed.” His mind, therefore, was filled with lone to that God who had made Abraham “to differ,” and who had so mercifully kept Abraham, even to the end.

II. But, secondly, let us speak of THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT WHICH IS HERE GIVEN OF JACOB’S EXPERIENCE when he says, “the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil.” He appears here, I think, to refer to God’s providential care of him, as well as to the spiritual mercies vouchsafed to him, when he says, “the God who fed me all my life long.” For he would refer to His support in his early days at home. He would refer also to the manifest way in which God’s presence was vouchsafed to him at the time he was in the family of Laban; and even perhaps now he was referring also to the mysterious manner in which God had been pleased to allow his son--his beloved son Joseph--to be taken from him for a times when he was constrained to exclaim, “All these things are against me.” But now, having been taught of God the reason of the Lord’s dealings; having seen how good was brought out of evil; having perceived that the Lord had sent Joseph before him, so that he might be the instrument in the Lord’s hand of feeding him in the time of want and famine, he says, “the God which fed me all my life long unto this day.” But I apprehend that, grateful as the patriarch must have felt for these temporal mercies, his feelings upon this point were very far less intense than they were for those spiritual mercies which God had so graciously vouchsafed to him; for we see him also saying, “the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.” “The Angel who redeemed.” And who was this Angel whose blessing he was invoking? Had it not been the Angel of the covenant, the very expression made use of by the patriarch must have been the language of blasphemy; but, instead of that, we know that it was the Angel of the covenant, even the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; and from that we gather what the nature of those spiritual mercies are to which the patriarch more especially alludes: “The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.”

III. But, thirdly, we must remark upon THE BLESSING WHICH IS INVOKED: the patriarch says, “bless the lads.” He doubtless desired that there should be daily food provided for them; he doubtless desired that God’s care should constantly watch over them; but there was something far greater than this he desired for them. He desired the full blessings of God’s redeeming love, so that he might be able to feel that that Angel which had “redeemed him from all evil” would also redeem those children which were before him, and that they might have all that comfortable experience which he himself enjoyed. And what could be the groundwork of such anticipations existing in the aged patriarch’s breast? Think you, he considered that they would merit these blessings at the hands of God, while he disclaimed all merit himself? There were no feelings of this kind in his breast, for he had been taught of God; but he knew what God he had to deal with; he felt that he had to deal with a covenant-keeping God, and he was assured that all those blessings which he besought were covenant mercies in Christ Jesus. (H. M. Villiers, M. A.)

Jacob blessing Joseph

I. WE ARE TO CONSIDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES AND THE IMPORT OF JACOB’S BLESSING: “And Jacob blessed Joseph.” But more particularly--

1. Contemplate the persons before us: Jacob, Joseph, and his two sons.

2. Mark now the place where these persons met.

3. Remember the time when these persons met. It was the time of Jacob’s death.

4. Observe the import of the solemn action in our text. It is a dying blessing! “God-bless the lads!” God is the author of every blessing. We are, secondly--

II. To CONSIDER THE INSTRUCTION WHICH THE BLESSING CONVEYS.

1. This blessing teaches the nature of true religion. It is “walking before God.”

2. This blessing teaches the benefits of practical godliness.

3. This blessing teaches the advantages of pious parents. “The God of my fathers.” The children of pious parents have the advantage of religious instruction. Again: such children have the advantage of fervent and constant prayer for their eternal welfare. Further: such children have the advantage of religious example. Finally: such children, like Jacob’s sons, may have the advantage of their parents’ dying testimony and last blessing.

4. This blessing teaches the importance of educating the young. (J. Cawood, M. A.)

An old man’s blessing

I. A DISTINCTION OF BLESSING. Jacob was, doubtless, divinely guided to make this distinction. The choice he made was inspired by God; and God’s will was discerned and obeyed. We may learn to avoid pride, envy, and ambition, and to abide by God’s will and the Divine disposal of events and circumstances (comp. 1 Samuel 2:7; Psalms 75:6-7; 1 Corinthians 12:11).

II. A CONTINUITY OF BLESSING (read Genesis 48:15; Genesis 16:1-16, and note the reference to Abraham and Isaac).

III. A FUTURITY OF BLESSING.

IV. A UNITY OF BLESSING. The lots of one and another among God’s people may differ. But all that is good, and hopeful, and blessed, comes from the One source of blessing--the One God, Guide, Deliverer. Conclusion: Let us ask ourselves these questions: Are we trying to learn from our elders God’s truth? Are we seeking to live as those who look for God’s blessing as the best thing? Do we wish to hand down the truth and premises of the Lord to those that come after us (Psalms 78:3-4)? (W. S. Smith, B. D.)

And he blessed Joseph

In blessing his seed, he blesses himself. In exalting his two sons into the rank and right of his brothers, he bestows upon them the double portion of the first-born. In the terms of the blessing, Jacob first signalizes the threefold function which the Lord discharges in effecting the salvation of a sinner. “The God, before whom walked my fathers,” is the Author of salvation, the Judge who dispenses justice and mercy, the Father, before whom the adopted and regenerate child walks. From Him salvation comes, to Him the saved returns, to walk before Him and be perfect. “The God, who fed me from my being unto this day,” is the Creator and Upholder of life, the Quickener and Sanctifier, the potential Agent, who works both to will and to do in the soul. “The Angel that redeemed me from all evil” is the all-sufficient Friend, who wards off evil by Himself, satisfying the demands of justice and resisting the devices of malice. There is a beautiful propriety of feeling in Jacob ascribing to his fathers the walking before God, while he thankfully acknowledges the grace of the Quickener and Justifier to himself. The Angel is explicitly applied to the Supreme Being in this ministerial function. The God is the emphatic description of the true, living God, as contra-distinguished from all false gods. “Bless the lads.” The word “bless” is in the singular number. For Jacob’s threefold periphrasis is intended to describe the one God, who wills, works, and wards. “And let my name be put upon them.” Let them be counted among my immediate sons, and let them be related to Abraham and Isaac, as my other sons are. This is the only thing that is special in the blessing. “Let them grow into a multitude.” The word “grow” in the original refers to the spawning or extraordinary increase of the finny tribe. The after-history of Ephraim and Manasseh will be found to correspond with this special prediction. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)

The redeeming Angel

I wonder if you know who the “Angel” is? Who do you think is “the Angel that redeemed him from all evil”? Do you know what the word “angel” means? It means a messenger--a good messenger. And the angels in heaven are so called because they carry messages. It is a nice thing to carry messages, if we carry them well. If we carry kind messages, and do it in an accurate way, like Christ, it is being like the angels in heaven--it is being like Jesus Christ. I hope you will be all good messengers. Perhaps you will have a very important message to carry, and you ought to do it well. I have a very important one to carry to-day. Therefore I am an angel, for ministers are angels. But it is not an angel from heaven, it is not a minister, it is not a common man, that is meant here. Jesus Christ is meant--Jesus Christ is the “Angel.” I want to help you now to understand another word. What is it to be “redeemed”? “Which redeemed me from all evil.” Can you think? Does “redeemed” mean “saved me,” “delivered me”? Is it the same as if it said, “The Angel that delivered me from all evil”? Not quite. That would only be half the meaning. If I were to save you from being drowned, and it was no trouble to me to save you, and if I did not expose my own life, I should not “redeem” you; but if I did it at great danger, at great pain, or at great loss to myself, then it might be called “redeeming.” To “redeem” is to save at great cost to one’s self; because the word means “buy”--to buy back. Therefore, if I spend a great deal of money, and become much poorer by it, in order to do you good, then I “redeem” you. That is the meaning of the word “redeemed.” Did you ever think what was the value of your soul--how much? When I see something very valuable, I sometimes say, “How much did it cost?” “How much did that watch cost?” “How much did that diamond cost?” How much did your soul cost? Thousands of thousands of pounds? The earth? The world? All the stars? Everything that was ever made? Much more! It cost Jesus Christ, who made everything--the life of Jesus Christ! And how had He “redeemed” us from sin? A poor heathen, who had become a Christian, wanted to explain how he became a Christian to another heathen who did not know anything about it; and he took a little worm--a poor, little, miserable worm; and he put the worm on a stone; and he put all round the stone where the worm was some straw. He then lighted the straw, and when it was all blazing he ran through the lighted straw, and took up the little worm in his hand when it was wriggling in the fire. The hot fire had scorched and drawn it up. “This,” he said, “is just what I was--a poor, miserable worm, with afire all round me; and I should have died, and gone to hell; but Christ ran in, took me up in His arms, and saved me; and here I am, a saved one.” I will tell you a remarkable thing which happened in a town in the West of England. One Sunday a clergyman was to preach a sermon. The people in the town did not know him--he was a stranger there; but he was known to be a very excellent clergyman, and a very clever man. A great many people went to hear him preach; and when the prayers were over, the clergyman went into the pulpit. The congregation noticed that he seemed to feel something very much; for he was silent some time, and could not begin his sermon. He hid his face in his hands, and the congregation thought he was unwell; but he was not. However, before he gave out his text, he told them something like this: “I want to say something. Fifteen years ago I was in this town, and I was in this church. I was then very young, and I came to hear the sermon. That evening three young men came to this church. They were very wicked young men. You may suppose how wicked, for they came not only to laugh, but they came actually to throw stones at the clergyman. They filled their pockets with stones, and determined they would throw at him. When the sermon began they were sitting together: and when the clergyman had gone on a little way, one said to the other, ‘Now throw! now throw!’ This is what they said, ‘Now throw at the stupid old blockhead I now throw! ‘The second said, ‘No; wait a little; I want to hear the end of what he is saying now, to see what he makes of it.’ They waited. But presently he said, ‘Now you can throw: I heard the end of it; there was nothing in it.’ The third said, ‘No, no; don’t throw: what he says is very good; don’t hurt the good old man.’ Then the two others left the church, saying something very wicked; they swore at him, and went away very angry, because he had spoiled their fun in not letting them throw.” The clergyman went on to say: “The first of those three young men was hanged some years ago for forgery; the second was a poor, miserable man, brought to poverty and rags, miserable in mind, and miserable in body; and the third is now going to preach to you! Listen!” So “the Angel” “redeemed” that poor boy (for he was only a boy when he went to throw stones) “from all evil.” It is not only sin; there are other “evils.” There are a great many troubles in life, are not there? Have not you a great many troubles? I am sure you have some. It is a great mistake to say to children, “Oh! you have no troubles.” I think children have quite as many as grown-up people--perhaps more. But people often say to children, “You have no troubles now; you have them all to come by-and-by.” That is not the case. I believe you have quite as many troubles as we have; but Christ “redeems” you from all trouble. Now there are two ways Christ can do it. Perhaps Christ will say, “Trouble shall not come to that boy or girl.” That is one way; but He could do it another way. He could say, “Yes, trouble shall come; but when it comes, it shall be turned into joy. I will make him so happy in his troubles, that he shall be glad. His sorrow shall be turned into joy.” Which, think you, will be the best: for trouble not to come at all, or, when it comes, to be turned into joy? I will tell you now about God “redeeming” a little girl in another way. Her name was Alvi, but she was always called Allie. She was three years old; and one day little Allie jumped upon her father’s knee, and said, “Pa, when’s spring?” Her papa stroked her little curly head, and patted her on her cheeks, and she looked up and smiled, and said, “I fat as butter.” She said again, “I loves my pa, I does; I loves my pa.” And her papa loved her very much. She said, “When’s spring, pa?” The father said, “Why do you want to know when spring is? Do you want to see the pretty flowers, and hear the birds sing, and play in the sunshine?” She said. “No, pa; me go to church in spring.” “Do you wish to go to church, Allie?” “Very much, pa.” “Why, Allie?” “God there, God there!” “And do you love God, Allie?” “Oh! so much, papa, so much!” “Well, my dear,” papa said to little Allie, “to-morrow is spring; spring will be to-morrow.” And little Allie jumped down from her father’s knee, saying, “To-morrow! to-morrow! Allie is so happy! To-morrow! to-morrow! to-morrow!” And she went about the house singing, “Allie is so happy! To-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow! Allie so happy!” That night Allie was very tired; she wanted to go to bed an hour before her proper time. During the night she fell into a burning fever, and they sent for a doctor. When he came, he shook his head and said, “Too late! too late! nothing can be done.” They sent for four doctors, and all said, “Too late! too late!” And when the morning came, little Allie was dead; she was gone to heaven. Her mamma stood and looked at her, and thought of what she had said the day before--“To-morrow, to-morrow! Allie so happy to-morrow! “And she wiped away her tears at the thought. So God “redeemed” little Allie. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

The dying blessing

A few days previous to his death, Dr. Belfrage, of Falkirk, hearing his infant son’s voice in an adjoining room, desired that he should be brought to him. When the child was lifted into the bed the dying father placed his hands upon his head, and said in the language of Jacob: “The God before whom my fathers did walk, the God who fed me all my life long to this day, the Angel who redeemed me from all evil, bless the lad.” When the boy was removed he added: “Remember and tell John Henry of this; tell him of these prayers, and how earnest I was that he might become early acquainted with his father’s God.” Happy are they who have their parents’ prayers.

Genesis 48:21-22

Behold, I die

Jacob in the prospect of death

We have here a threefold picture.

I. OF STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.

1. The strength of faith.

2. The strength of godliness.

3. The strength of peace.

II. OF SUCCESS IN FAILURE.

III. OF LIFE IN DEATH. (T. H. Leale.)

Closing days

I. A PERIOD OF UNRUFFLED PEACE AND PROSPERITY.

II. A SEASON OF GRATEFUL RETROSPECT.

III. A SUBLIME DEATH-SCENE. (T. S. Dickson, M. A.)

Death contemplated

I. AN ABSORBING CRISIS.

1. Its nature.

2. Its cause. Result of sin.

3. Its consequences. Everlasting.

II. AN AWAKENING CONSIDERATION. “Behold.” That word suggests to us suitable preparation. In prospect, then, of that amazing hour we ought--

1. To review our past lives.

2. To realise our dying hour.

3. To think of our future prospects. (C. Clayton, M. A.)

The dying believer

I. LET US CONSIDER THE SPIRIT OF THE WORDS OF THE DYING PATRIARCH IN REFERENCE TO HIMSELF. “I die,” as if he had said, I die in peace; I die without reluctance; I have lived long enough; I am satisfied with life; I am willing to depart. What may have been the considerations which induced this state of feeling?

1. He was satisfied with the amount of enjoyment which the God of his life had granted him.

2. The patriarch was satisfied with that duration of life which had been allotted him.

3. The dying patriarch was satisfied with the prospect of a better life which was opening before him. Having thus considered the words of the text, in reference to the views entertained by the patriarch as to himself, let us regard them.

II. As SUGGESTIVE OF THE REASONS OF HIS REPOSE IN REFERENCE TO HIS SURVIVING RELATIVES.

1. The manifestations of the Divine mercy to himself, encouraged his hopes as to his surviving relatives.

2. He was persuaded that the paternal benediction he was authorized to pronounce, had an aspect peculiarly favourable to his descendants.

3. The patriarch felt assured that the covenant made with Abraham, and Isaac, and himself, secured the presence and blessing of God to his survivors, even to the remotest age. (H. F. Burder, M. A.)

Premonitions of death

The first symptom of approaching death with some, is the strong presentiment that they are about to die. Oganan, the mathematician, while in apparent health, rejected pupils from the feeling that he was on the eve of resting from his labours; and he expired soon after, of an apoplectic stroke. Fletcher, the divine, had a dream which shadowed out his impending dissolution, and believing it to be the merciful warning of Heaven, he sent for a sculptor and ordered his tomb. “Begin your work forthwith,” he said at parting; “there is no time to lose.” And unless the artist had obeyed the admonition, death would have proved the quicker workman of the two. Mozart wrote his Requiem under the conviction that the monument he was raising to his genius, would, by the power of association, prove a universal monument to his remains. When life was fleeting very fast, he called for the score, and musing over it, said, “Did I not tell you truly that it was for myself that I composed this death chant.” Another great artist in a different department, convinced that his hand was about to lose its cunning, chose a subject emblematical of the coming event. His friends inquired the nature of his next design; and Hogarth replied, “The end of all things.” “In that case,” rejoined one, “there will be an end of the painter.” What was uttered in jest was answered in earnest, with a solemn look and heavy sigh: “There will,” he said; “and the sooner my work is done the better.” He commenced next day, laboured upon it with unremitting diligence, and when he had given it the last touch, seized his pallet, broke it in pieces and said: “I have finished.” The print was published in March under the title of “Finis”; and in October, the curious eyes which saw the manners in the face were closed in the dust. Our ancestors, who, prone to look in the air for causes which were to be found upon the earth, attributed these intimations to various supernatural agencies. John Hunter solved the mystery, if so it can be called, in a single sentence. “We sometimes,” he says, “feel within ourselves that we shall not live; for the living powers become weak, and the nerves communicate the intelligence to the brain.” His own case has often been quoted among the marvels of which he offered this rational explanation. He intimated, on leaving home, that if a discussion which awaited him at the hospital took an angry turn, it would prove his death. A colleague gave him the lie; the coarse word verified the prophecy, and he expired almost immediately, in an adjoining room. There was everything to lament in the circumstance, but nothing at which to wonder, except that any person could show such disrespect to the great genius, a single year of whose existence was worth the united lives of his opponents. Hunter, in uttering the prediction, had only to take counsel in his own experience, without the intervention of invisible spirits. He had long laboured under a disease of the heart, and he felt the disorder had reached the point at which any sharp agitation would bring on the crisis. Circumstances, which at another time would excite no attention, are accepted as an omen when health is failing. The order for the Requiem with Mozart, the dream with Fletcher, turned the current of their thoughts to the grave. Foote, prior to his departure for the continent, stood contemplating the picture of a brother author, and exclaimed, his eyes full of tears, “Poor Weston!” In the same dejected tone he added, after a pause, “soon others shall say, Poor Foote! “And to the surprise of his friends, a few days proved the justice of his prognostication. The expectation of the event had a share in producing it, for a slight shock completes the destruction of prostrate energies. The case of Wolsey was singular. The morning before he died, he asked Cavendish the hour, and was answered “past eight.” “Eight of the clock!” replied Wolsey, “that cannot be; eight of the clock, nay, nay, it cannot be eight of the clock, for by eight of the clock shall you lose your master.”

The day he miscalculated, the hour came true; on the following morning, as the clock struck eight, his troubled spirit passed from life. Cavendish and the bystanders, thought he must have had a revelation of the time of his death; and from the way in which the fact had taken possession of his mind, we suspect that he relied on astrological prediction, which had the credit of a revelation in his own esteem. Persons in health have died from the expectation of dying. It was common for those who perished by violence to summon their destroyers to appear, within a stated time, before the tribunal of their God; and we have many perfectly attested instances in which, through fear and remorse, the perpetrators withered under the curse, and died. Pestilence does not kill with the rapidity of terror. The profligate abbess of a convent, the Princess Gonzaga of Cleves, and Guise, the profligate Archbishop of Rheims, took it into their heads, for a jest, to visit one of the nuns by night, and exhort her as a person who was visibly dying. While in the performance of this heartless scheme, they whispered to each other, “She is departing.” She departed in earnest. Her vigour, instead of detecting the trick, sank beneath the alarm; and the profane pair discovered, in the midst of their sport, that they were making merry with a corpse. (T. Walker.)

Jacob’s death bed

This is the nearest approach in the Bible to that which is commonly termed a death-bed scene. There is no sadder phrase than that--“a death bed scene”; for a man, when he comes to die, has something different to do than mere acting; it is not then his business to show other people how a Christian can die, but prepare himself to meet his God. It is sad also because the dying hour is often unsatisfactory, often far from triumph; in the Book of Ecclesiastes we read, “How dieth the wise man, as the fool.” For there is stupor, sadness, powerlessness; and spiritual darkness also frequently clouds the last moments of the pious man. This dying hour must however have made an impression on these young men. In death itself there is nothing naturally instructive; but in this death there was simplicity, they saw the sight of an old man gathered ripe unto his fathers, and they would remember in their gaiety and strength what all life at last must come to. Consider too the effect that must have been produced on Joseph. There had been nothing, that we are aware of, with which he had to reproach himself in his conduct to his father; there was therefore no remorse mixed with his sorrow, he was spared the sharpest pang of all. How different must the feeling of the other brethren have been; they would remember that there lay one dying whom they had wronged, one whom they had deceived. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The last days of Jacob

The history is a simple one, yet with wondrous perspective. Seventeen years did Israel dwell in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen, and when he was a hundred and forty and seven years old, the time drew nigh that Israel must die. Who can fight the army of the Years? Those silent soldiers never lose a war. They fire no base cannon, they use no vulgar steel, they strike with invisible but irresistible hands. Noisy force loses something by its very noise. The silent years bury the tumultuous throng. We have all to be taken down. The strongest tower amongst us, heaven-reaching in its altitude, must be taken down--a stone at a time, or shaken with one rude shock to the level ground: man must die. Israel had then but one favour to ask. So it comes to us all. We who have spent a life-time in petitioning for assistance have at the last but one request to make. “Take me,” said one of England’s brightest wits in his dying moments, “to the window that I may feel the morning air.” “Light, more light,” said another man greater still, expressing some wondrous necessity best left as a mystery. “Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt,” said dying Jacob to his son Joseph, “but bury me in the buryingplace of my fathers.” What other heaven had the Old Testament man? The graveyard was a kind of comfort to him. He must be buried in a given place marked off and sacredly guarded. He had not lived up into that universal humanity which says--All places are consecrated, and every point is equally near heaven with every other point, if so be God dig the grave and watch it. By-and-by we shall hear another speech in the tone of Divine revelation; by-and-by we shall get rid of these localities, and limitations, and prisons, for the Lion of the tribe of Judah will open up some wider space of thought, and contemplation, and service. With Joseph’s oath dying Jacob was satisfied. (J. Parker, D. D.)

Jacob’s end

The close of Jacob’s career stands in most pleasing contrast with all the previous scenes of his eventful history. It reminds one of a serene evening, after a tempestuous day: the sun, which during the day had been hidden from view by clouds, mists, and fogs, sets in majesty and brightness, gilding with his beams the western sky and holding out the cheering prospect of a bright to-morrow. Thus is it with our aged patriarch. The supplanting, the bargain-making, the cunning, the management, the shifting, the shuffling, the unbelieving selfish fears--all those dark clouds of nature and of earth seem to have passed away, and he comes forth, in all the calm elevation of faith, to bestow blessings, and impart dignities, in that holy skilfulness, which communion with God can alone impart. Though nature’s eyes are dim, faith’s vision is sharp. He is not to be deceived as to the relative positions assigned to Ephraim and Manasseh, in the counsels of God. He has not, like his father Isaac, in chapter 27., to “tremble very exceedingly,” in view of an almost fatal mistake. Quite the reverse. His intelligent reply to his less instructed son is, “I know it, my son, I know it.” The power of sense has not, as in Isaac’s case, dimmed his spiritual vision. He has been taught, in the school of experience, the importance of keeping close to the Divine purpose, and nature’s influence cannot move him from thence. In Genesis 48:11, we have a very beautiful example of the mode in which our God ever rises above all our thoughts, and proves Himself better than all our fears. “And Israel said unto Joseph, I had not thought to see thy face; and, lo, God hath showed me also thy seed.” To nature’s view, Joseph was dead; whereas in God’s view he was alive, and seated in the highest place of authority, next the throne. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love 1 Corinthians 2:9). Would that our souls could rise higher in their apprehension of God and His ways. (C. H. M.)

Jacob and Israel

It is interesting to notice the way in which the titles “Jacob” and “Israel” are introduced in the close of the Book of Genesis; as, for example, “One told Jacob, and said, Behold thy son Joseph cometh unto thee: and Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.” Then, it is immediately added, “And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz.” Now, we know, there is nothing in Scripture without its specific meaning, and hence this interchange of names contains some instruction. In general, it may be remarked, that “Jacob” sets forth the depth to which God has descended; “Israel,” the height to which Jacob was raised. (C. H. M.)

Men die but God remains

When John Owen was dying, he said, “I am leaving the ship of the Church in a storm; but whilst the Great Pilot is in it, the loss of a poor under-rower will be inconsiderable.” And when a young man whose heart was in the foreign mission work, had to die, he said, “God can evangelize the world without me.” So when we may lose earthly friends, comforters, guides, and helpers, we may and ought ever to fall back on our all-sufficient and ever-present God and Heavenly Father. All the lamps in a house or in a town may be extinguished when the sun rises; all the pumps may also be demolished or taken away, whilst there is a reservoir ever full, from which every one may have an abundant supply of the best water. So we need not be dismayed when we lose any or all earthly friends and advantages, so long as we have God left. They who have God for their Father, and Friend, and Portion, have all things in Him. He is the best Teacher, Guide, Protector, and Provider. But sometimes God has to deprive us of our earthly friends and possessions in order to lead us to trust Him as we ought.

The folly of anxiety about death

What if the leaves were to fall a-weeping, and say, “It will be so painful for us to be pulled from our stalks when autumn comes?” Foolish fear! summer goes, and autumn succeeds. The glory of death is upon the leaves; and the gentle breeze that blows takes them softly and silently from the bough, and they float slowly down like fiery sparks upon the moss. It is hard to die when the time is not ripe. When it is, it will be easy, we need not die while we are living. (H. W.Beecher.)

Death, a ferry-boat

Death to God’s people is but a ferry-boat. Every day and every hour the boat pushes off with some of the saints, and returns for more.

Waiting for death

The Christian, at his death, should not be like the child, who is forced by the rod to quit his play, but like one who is wearied of it and willing to go to bed. Neither ought he to be like the mariner, whose vessel is drifted by the violence of the tempest from the shore, tossed to and fro upon the ocean, and at last suffers wreck and destruction; but like one who is ready for the voyage, and, the moment the wind is favourable, cheerfully weighs anchor, and, full of hope and joy, launches forth into the deep. (Gotthold.)

Peace in death

The ship has set sail, and kept on her course many days and nights, with no other incidents than those that are common to all. Suddenly land appears; but what the character the coast may be, the voyagers cannot discern through the tumult. The first effect of a near approach to land is a very great commotion in the waters. It is one of the coral islands of the South Pacific, encircled by a ring of fearful breakers at some little distance from the shore. Forward the ship must go; the waves are higher and angrier than any they have seen in the open sea. Presently through them, partly over them, they are borne at a bound; strained, giddy, and almost senseless, they find themselves within that sentinel ridge of crested waves that guard the shore; and the portion of sea that still lies before them is calm and clear like glass. It seems a lake of paradise, and not an earthly thing at all. It is inexpressibly sweet to lie on its bosom after the long voyage and the barren ridge. All the heavens are mirrored in the waters; and along its edge lies a flowery land. Across the belt of sea the ship glides gently, and gently touches soon that lovely shore. So many a Christian has been thrown into a great tumult when the shore of eternity suddenly appeared before him. A great fear tossed and sickened him for some days; but, when that barrier was passed, he experienced a peace deeper, stiller, sweeter, than any he ever knew before. A little space of life’s voyage remained after the fear of death had sunk into a calm, and before the immortal felt the solace of eternal rest. (W. Arnot.)
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