Judah, Joseph, Ephraim
When Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) was about to die, he blessed his twelve sons. The two parts of the great covenant that had been passed down from Abraham, were given to Judah and Joseph, and to Joseph’s son Ephraim. The Promise that “Kings Shall Come forth from You” goes to Judah “Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you. Judah is the lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as a lioness; who dares rouse him up?” (Gen. 49:8-9) Thus the promise of the kings went to Judah. All the kings of Israel came from the tribe of Judah. Jacob told Judah that he and his descendants would carry the scepter of authority and be the lawgivers:
“The sceptre shall not depart from Judah; nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh comes; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” (Gen. 49:10) Here Jacob says eventually Shiloh will come, and at that time, the scepter of authority, or the blessing of the kings, would pass “from between… [the] feet” of Judah. The phrase “between the feet” refers to the penis or seed of Judah. This meant the direct, male lineal descendants of Judah would hold the scepter of authority and be the recipients of the blessing of the kings until the coming of Shiloh (KJV). At that point, Shiloh is to gather the peoples of the earth into the Kingdom of God on earth, and the natural sons of the tribe of Judah would no longer be seated on the throne. Later on this site it will be shown how the kingship would be passed to a male lineal descendant who is not a natural heir, but rather an adopted heir to the throne. The Promise that “A Multitude of Nations shall come forth from You and Your Descendants” is passed to Joseph’s Son Ephraim When it came time for Jacob to die, he had Joseph bring his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim to him, and he blessed them. But as Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons he crossed his hands and gave the blessing of Joseph’s first-born son named Manasseh, to the younger son, named Ephraim.
“And he blessed Joseph, and said, ‘The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who had led me all my life long to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads (Ephraim and Manasseh); and in them let my name be perpetuated, and the name of my fathers Abraham and. Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.’” (Gen. 48:15-16) Joseph objected to his father giving his younger son the greater of the blessings, but Jacob (Israel) refused to listen: “And Joseph said to his father, ‘Not so, my father; for this one is the first-born; put your right hand upon his head.’ But his father refused, and said, ‘I know, my son, I know; he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; nevertheless his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations.’” (Gen. 48:18-19) Therefore the blessing of the “multitude of nations” was passed to Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph. Finally, Jacob blessed Joseph:
“Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall. The archers fiercely attacked him, shot at him, and harassed him sorely; yet his bow remained unmoved, his arms were made agile by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob (by the name of the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel), by the God of your father who will help you, by God Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that couches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb. The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of the eternal mountains, the bounties of the everlasting hills; may they be on the head of Joseph, and on the brow of him who was separate from his brothers.” (Gen. 49:22-26) Thus a great blessing went to Joseph, and his son Ephraim would carry on the blessing that a “multitude of nations would come from his descendants.” Review of how the Covenant was Passed Down The first covenant or blessing mentioned in the Bible is the one God made with Noah. Part of that covenant was that Noah’s descendants would multiply and fill the earth.
Noah then gave the greatest blessing to his son Shem. Nine generations later, Abraham was born among the descendants of Shem. Abraham received a two-part covenant or blessing from God: 1. A multitude of nations would come from him and his descendants; and 2. A lineage of kings would come from his descendants. Both parts of this covenant were passed along to Abraham’s son Isaac, and then to Isaac’s son Jacob. Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, which means God’s chosen people. The twelve sons of Jacob (a.k.a. Israel) became the twelve tribes of Israel and wandered from nation to nation. They received the blessings that had been given to Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac and Israel: “He is the Lord our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He is mindful of his covenant forever, of the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant which he made with Abraham, his sworn promise to Isaac, which he confirmed as a statute to Jacob, as an everlasting covenant to Israel, saying, ‘To you I will give the land of Canaan, as your portion of the inheritance.’” (1 Chr. 16:11-22) The covenant God made with the descendants of Israel was this: They would become a great nation, and then a multitude of nations; The One True God would be their God and they would be his people.
After the twelve tribes of Israel moved down to Egypt during the famine, the promise that they would become a great nation began to be fulfilled. While they resided in Egypt the Pharaoh was kind to them and their numbers increased greatly. When the Pharaoh died, however, a new Pharaoh arose who didn’t know Joseph. The new Pharaoh said to his people. “’Behold, the people of, Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens; and they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithorn’ and Ra-am’ses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they made the people of Israel serve with rigor, and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field; in all their work they made them serve with rigor. “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiph’rah and the other Pu’ah, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birth stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live.’” (Exodus 1:8-16)
But the Hebrew midwives feared God and refused to kill the Hebrew women’s babies. They lied to the Pharaoh and told him that the Hebrew women were hearty, and they delivered their own babies before the midwives could arrive: “So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.’” (Exodus 1:20-22)