“⁵And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. Your offspring whom you beget after them shall be yours; they will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance.”

– Genesis 48:5-6 (NKJV)

“And now your two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, are mine ; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine. (Notice that Jacob is here speaking very clearly as Israel The Nation and not Israel the man, for Ephraim and Manasseh are to become tribes of The Nation of Israel, literally just “as Reuben and Simeon”. Also, just as The Nation of Israel are an extension of God Himself, His Body upon the earth as it were – like The Children of God Global become The Body of Christ under The New Covenant – we see Jacob here imitating this expression in the small 🤏🏽 as he considers Ephraim and Manasseh as proceeding out of himself, despite very clearly making the distinction that they were born even before he had come, and that in a foreign land. I can never help but marvel at the fact that an individual can make such profound prophetic utterances of multi-generational, even eternal and exceedingly far-reaching consequence, yet have very little insight in their limited human understanding within the moment of what it is they are actually saying, applying it only to the nearest particular and laughably temporary here-and-now 🙌🏽 oh the Joys of being a mouthpiece for God [Exodus 4:12]!) Your offspring whom you beget after them shall be yours (simply for you to enjoy in & of themselves . . .) ; they will be called by the name of their brothers in their inheritance (. . . and for them to enjoy the benefits and [eternal] inheritance of being legitimate covenant children, without so great and heavy a calling with its coinciding burdens as “The Twelve”: oh how varying our purpose and role in The Kingdom dear reader; let us never put on a brother or sister of feebler mind or sensitive conscience a weight of responsibility that God has not ordained [Romans 14], in our ignorance!).” *

* Finally there is also a very real sense in which a common theme – reiterated again and again throughout the narrative of God’s people – is addressed here, namely, that certain chosen, called individuals belong exclusively to God for the accomplishing of His Purposes within the earth; that not only is He their First and True Parent, but in a very real sense their only parent in that their biological parents can lay very little, if any, claim to them, but must surrender them to God wholeheartedly and fully as Hannah so pointedly, in a fuller revelation of this theme, resolved to do with young Samuel.