Chronological Plan

¹One day not long after this, word came to Joseph, “Your father is failing rapidly.” So Joseph went to visit his father, and he took with him his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.

²When Joseph arrived, Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has come to see you.” So Jacob gathered his strength and sat up in his bed.

³Jacob said to Joseph, “God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me.

⁴He said to me, ‘I will make you fruitful, and I will multiply your descendants. I will make you a multitude of nations. And I will give this land of Canaan to your descendants after you as an everlasting possession.’

⁵“Now I am claiming as my own sons these two boys of yours, Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born here in the land of Egypt before I arrived. They will be my sons, just as Reuben and Simeon are.

⁶But any children born to you in the future will be your own, and they will inherit land within the territories of their brothers Ephraim and Manasseh.

⁷“Long ago, as I was returning from Paddan-aram, Rachel died in the land of Canaan. We were still on the way, some distance from Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). So with great sorrow I buried her there beside the road to Ephrath.”

⁸Then Jacob looked over at the two boys. “Are these your sons?” he asked.

⁹“Yes,” Joseph told him, “these are the sons God has given me here in Egypt.” And Jacob said, “Bring them closer to me, so I can bless them.”

¹⁰Jacob was half blind because of his age and could hardly see. So Joseph brought the boys close to him, and Jacob kissed and embraced them.

¹¹Then Jacob said to Joseph, “I never thought I would see your face again, but now God has let me see your children, too!”

¹²Joseph moved the boys, who were at their grandfather’s knees, and he bowed with his face to the ground.

¹³Then he positioned the boys in front of Jacob. With his right hand he directed Ephraim toward Jacob’s left hand, and with his left hand he put Manasseh at Jacob’s right hand.

¹⁴But Jacob crossed his arms as he reached out to lay his hands on the boys’ heads. He put his right hand on the head of Ephraim, though he was the younger boy, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, though he was the firstborn.

¹⁵Then he blessed Joseph and said, “May the God before whom my grandfather Abraham and my father, Isaac, walked — the God who has been my shepherd all my life, to this very day,

¹⁶the Angel who has redeemed me from all harm — may he bless these boys. May they preserve my name and the names of Abraham and Isaac. And may their descendants multiply greatly throughout the earth.”

¹⁷But Joseph was upset when he saw that his father placed his right hand on Ephraim’s head. So Joseph lifted it to move it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head.

¹⁸“No, my father,” he said. “This one is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.”

¹⁹But his father refused. “I know, my son; I know,” he replied. “Manasseh will also become a great people, but his younger brother will become even greater. And his descendants will become a multitude of nations.”

²⁰So Jacob blessed the boys that day with this blessing: “The people of Israel will use your names when they give a blessing. They will say, ‘May God make you as prosperous as Ephraim and Manasseh.’” In this way, Jacob put Ephraim ahead of Manasseh.

²¹Then Jacob said to Joseph, “Look, I am about to die, but God will be with you and will take you back to Canaan, the land of your ancestors.

²²And beyond what I have given your brothers, I am giving you an extra portion of the land that I took from the Amorites with my sword and bow.”

¹Then Jacob called together all his sons and said, “Gather around me, and I will tell you what will happen to each of you in the days to come.

²“Come and listen, you sons of Jacob; listen to Israel, your father.

³“Reuben, you are my firstborn, my strength, the child of my vigorous youth. You are first in rank and first in power.

⁴But you are as unruly as a flood, and you will be first no longer. For you went to bed with my wife; you defiled my marriage couch.

⁵“Simeon and Levi are two of a kind; their weapons are instruments of violence.

⁶May I never join in their meetings; may I never be a party to their plans. For in their anger they murdered men, and they crippled oxen just for sport.

⁷A curse on their anger, for it is fierce; a curse on their wrath, for it is cruel. I will scatter them among the descendants of Jacob; I will disperse them throughout Israel.

⁸“Judah, your brothers will praise you. You will grasp your enemies by the neck. All your relatives will bow before you.

⁹Judah, my son, is a young lion that has finished eating its prey. Like a lion he crouches and lies down; like a lioness — who dares to rouse him?

¹⁰The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from his descendants, until the coming of the one to whom it belongs, the one whom all nations will honor.

¹¹He ties his foal to a grapevine, the colt of his donkey to a choice vine. He washes his clothes in wine, his robes in the blood of grapes.

¹²His eyes are darker than wine, and his teeth are whiter than milk.

¹³“Zebulun will settle by the seashore and will be a harbor for ships; his borders will extend to Sidon.

¹⁴“Issachar is a sturdy donkey, resting between two saddlepacks.

¹⁵When he sees how good the countryside is and how pleasant the land, he will bend his shoulder to the load and submit himself to hard labor.

¹⁶“Dan will govern his people, like any other tribe in Israel.

¹⁷Dan will be a snake beside the road, a poisonous viper along the path that bites the horse’s hooves so its rider is thrown off.

¹⁸I trust in you for salvation, O LORD!

¹⁹“Gad will be attacked by marauding bands, but he will attack them when they retreat.

²⁰“Asher will dine on rich foods and produce food fit for kings.

²¹“Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful fawns.

²²“Joseph is the foal of a wild donkey, the foal of a wild donkey at a spring — one of the wild donkeys on the ridge.

²³Archers attacked him savagely; they shot at him and harassed him.

²⁴But his bow remained taut, and his arms were strengthened by the hands of the Mighty One of Jacob, by the Shepherd, the Rock of Israel.

²⁵May the God of your father help you; may the Almighty bless you with the blessings of the heavens above, and blessings of the watery depths below, and blessings of the breasts and womb.

²⁶May my fatherly blessings on you surpass the blessings of my ancestors, reaching to the heights of the eternal hills. May these blessings rest on the head of Joseph, who is a prince among his brothers.

²⁷“Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, devouring his enemies in the morning and dividing his plunder in the evening.”

²⁸These are the twelve tribes of Israel, and this is what their father said as he told his sons good-bye. He blessed each one with an appropriate message.

²⁹Then Jacob instructed them, “Soon I will die and join my ancestors. Bury me with my father and grandfather in the cave in the field of Ephron the Hittite.

³⁰This is the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre in Canaan, that Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a permanent burial site.

³¹There Abraham and his wife Sarah are buried. There Isaac and his wife, Rebekah, are buried. And there I buried Leah.

³²It is the plot of land and the cave that my grandfather Abraham bought from the Hittites.”

³³When Jacob had finished this charge to his sons, he drew his feet into the bed, breathed his last, and joined his ancestors in death.

¹Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him.

²Then Joseph told the physicians who served him to embalm his father’s body; so Jacob was embalmed.

³The embalming process took the usual forty days. And the Egyptians mourned his death for seventy days.

⁴When the period of mourning was over, Joseph approached Pharaoh’s advisers and said, “Please do me this favor and speak to Pharaoh on my behalf.

⁵Tell him that my father made me swear an oath. He said to me, ‘Listen, I am about to die. Take my body back to the land of Canaan, and bury me in the tomb I prepared for myself.’ So please allow me to go and bury my father. After his burial, I will return without delay.”

⁶Pharaoh agreed to Joseph’s request. “Go and bury your father, as he made you promise,” he said.

⁷So Joseph went up to bury his father. He was accompanied by all of Pharaoh’s officials, all the senior members of Pharaoh’s household, and all the senior officers of Egypt.

⁸Joseph also took his entire household and his brothers and their households. But they left their little children and flocks and herds in the land of Goshen.

⁹A great number of chariots and charioteers accompanied Joseph.

¹⁰When they arrived at the threshing floor of Atad, near the Jordan River, they held a very great and solemn memorial service, with a seven-day period of mourning for Joseph’s father.

¹¹The local residents, the Canaanites, watched them mourning at the threshing floor of Atad. Then they renamed that place (which is near the Jordan) Abel-mizraim, for they said, “This is a place of deep mourning for these Egyptians.”

¹²So Jacob’s sons did as he had commanded them.

¹³They carried his body to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave in the field of Machpelah, near Mamre. This is the cave that Abraham had bought as a permanent burial site from Ephron the Hittite.

¹⁴After burying Jacob, Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his father’s burial.

¹⁵But now that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers became fearful. “Now Joseph will show his anger and pay us back for all the wrong we did to him,” they said.

¹⁶So they sent this message to Joseph: “Before your father died, he instructed us

¹⁷to say to you: ‘Please forgive your brothers for the great wrong they did to you — for their sin in treating you so cruelly.’ So we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive our sin.” When Joseph received the message, he broke down and wept.

¹⁸Then his brothers came and threw themselves down before Joseph. “Look, we are your slaves!” they said.

¹⁹But Joseph replied, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, that I can punish you?

²⁰You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.

²¹No, don’t be afraid. I will continue to take care of you and your children.” So he reassured them by speaking kindly to them.

²²So Joseph and his brothers and their families continued to live in Egypt. Joseph lived to the age of 110.

²³He lived to see three generations of descendants of his son Ephraim, and he lived to see the birth of the children of Manasseh’s son Makir, whom he claimed as his own.

²⁴“Soon I will die,” Joseph told his brothers, “but God will surely come to help you and lead you out of this land of Egypt. He will bring you back to the land he solemnly promised to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

²⁵Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath, and he said, “When God comes to help you and lead you back, you must take my bones with you.”

²⁶So Joseph died at the age of 110. The Egyptians embalmed him, and his body was placed in a coffin in Egypt.