“The blessings of your father are more powerful
than the blessings of my parents,
extending to the farthest of the everlasting hills;
they will be on the head of Yosef,
on the brow of the prince among his brothers.”
Genesis 49:26
So in my last post I talked about how the main theme of the blessing that Joseph received from his father was “fruitfulness“.
And that this fruitfulness was ultimately manifested through Joseph’s two sons Ephraim and Manasseh (who actually became Jacob’s two sons).
Now in terms of Biblical history, we can see that this is exactly what happened.
Manasseh received the most territory that spanned both the east and west banks of the Jordan River.
When we come to that part in the Torah where a census is taken of all Israel, the House of Joseph represented by the combined tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh will end up with the largest population count of about 75,900 men.
So according to God’s promise, we can see on a physical level that Joseph and his descendants became quite fruitful indeed, to the point of overwhelming the other tribes with their numbers.
However, Joseph’s fruitfulness didn’t end there.
Remember, the tribe of Ephraim became so big that it ended up dominating all of the other tribes with the exception of Judah and Benjamin.
In fact, Ephraim’s influence was so far-reaching that the 10 northern tribes eventually just came to be known as Ephraim.
However, the story doesn’t end there.
When Ephraim (referring to the northern 10-tribe entity) was taken over by the Assyrians, Ephraim was scattered resulting in them joining their genes with the genes of the gentiles from every known non-Hebrew nation in the world at the time.
As a result of this scattering and assimilation, two things happened.
First, although scattered throughout the Gentile nations, we now know that there were many tribes of Ephraim who successfully maintained their Hebrew identity throughout the centuries.
And today these self-aware Israelite tribes number in the millions!
In fact, the Israeli government has recognized their claims and is now in the process of airlifting these tribes back to Israel as you read this.
Second, there are probably hundreds of millions of us in the world today who have the genes of Ephraim flowing through our veins but have no way of knowing it.
This is another part of the fulfillment of Genesis 48:19 that “Ephraim’s descendants will become the fullness of the nations”.
Now one thing that is still fuzzy but will become clearer in the future is how exactly will the split blessing that went to Ephraim ultimately manifest itself?
Will it be only a physical or genealogical matter?
In other words, will it only be those Gentiles who unknowingly have Ephraim blood flowing through their veins who will receive some kind of significant blessing?
Or will it be a spiritual matter?
In other words, will God’s blessing upon the gentiles be based upon those who spiritually identify with Ephraim-Israel but don’t necessarily have any Hebrew blood in them?
Or could it be a combination of both?
Well, it’s hard to know at this stage in history but one thing for sure is that the fruitfulness of Joseph through Ephraim has resulted in both a physical and spiritual connecting of the world of the Jews with the world of the gentiles.
The biggest takeaway we get from all of this is that it is the destiny of ALL believers in Yeshua to eventually identify with Israel.
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