Year 7, Day 47: Genesis 48

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Once more we see a picture of grace in the book of Genesis.  Joseph hears that his father may not have too much longer to live.  When he hears this, he takes his sons to Jacob and asks for him to bless the sons.  Jacob willingly does this.

Naturally, this makes a bunch of sense.  Jacob spent a good portion of his life without Joseph.  Joseph’s children have not known Jacob like Jacob’s other grandchildren know him.  Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son from his favorite wife.  There seem to be every reason for Jacob to bless Joseph’s boys.

On the other hand, there are some hidden reasons why Jacob could not have wanted to bless them.  Jacob didn’t know them all that well.  They were children from a marriage that Joseph had with an Egyptian priest’s daughter. 

What I like about this chapter is that Jacob does not dwell on these reasons.  Instead, Jacob blesses the children.  Jacob looks to the positives and dwells on what the relationship means instead of looking at the negatives in life.  This is truly a show of grace.  Jacob desires to bestow his blessing upon them.

As we look at this blessing, we very much see an additional place of grace.  Jacob blesses the younger son as if he were the eldest.  In fact, we know that Jacob does this intentionally.  At first, we might simply say that Jacob was the younger and got his brother’s blessing, so he is just continuing the tradition.  But I truly think that there is more to it than that.

Let’s look back through Genesis.  Seth (and Abel) were both chosen ahead of Cain.  Isaac was chosen ahead of Ishmael.  Jacob was chosen ahead of Esau.  Joseph was chosen ahead of the vast majority of his brothers.  The pattern we see in Genesis is that the former is looked over in favor of the latter.

There is a profound spiritual message being passed along here.  We hear in the book of Hebrews that in Christ God is doing a new thing.  Hebrews 10:8-10 states that God has been working throughout history to “do away with the first” in order to “establish the second.”  God does away with the old system of forgiveness/repentance/sanctification in favor of a new system of forgiveness/repentance/sanctification through Jesus’ death on the cross.

This is a sign of grace in its own right.  God gives us grace when we do not deserve it.  He passes over our guilt with His forgiveness and even pays the cost Himself!  This is indeed a pattern that God is creating through His servants in the Old Testament.  When Jacob blesses the younger son over the elder, Jacob is laying down the foundation of a long line – and an even longer line in the future – of preparing His people to accept that the second is preferred to the first.  God’s grace through Christ on the cross is far more preferred than the sacrificial system for forgiveness.

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