And to Joseph were born two sons before the year of famine came, whom Asnath the daughter of Potipherah the priest in On bore to him.
Joseph's two sons are born at a marked moment: after his rise to power, in the years of plenty, before the famine. Commentators read that timing, and the mother — a foreign woman, daughter of a priest of On — as a picture of Christ, His people, and the trouble that comes on the world afterwards.
The verse dates the boys' arrival by what had not yet happened. One writer takes that clause as the key to the picture.
Asenath bore two sons during this time of plenty, and the text says plainly that this happened "before the year of famine came" (v. 50). The order of events fits perfectly to show that the church and the time of her fruitfulness belong to the "years of plenty" before the time of tribulation (Matt. 24:21; Rev. 3:10; Rev. 6-19).
Joseph's wife comes from outside his own family and nation, and he receives her while he is cut off from his brothers. One writer sees the church here, and lists other Old Testament women who carry the same picture.
Pharaoh did not only give Joseph a full and glorious name. He gave him a wife as well: "Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah, priest (or prince) of On." Joseph received this Gentile wife while he was separated from his brothers. She is a most beautiful and unmistakable picture of the Church, given to Christ to be His bride, during this time when He is lost to His brothers by natural birth — the Jewish nation. There are seven such pictures of the Church (if we include Rachel) in the Old Testament: Eve, Rebekah, Rachel, Asenath, Zipporah, Abigail, and Solomon's queen, the daughter of Pharaoh.
Her background sharpens the picture.
This is in great contrast with Rebekah, where Abraham had insisted that only one of his own family would be suitable as a bride for Isaac… Asenath is the Gentile, the stranger to the promises of Israel. She gives a picture of the church as the bride that has come from among the Gentile nations and not from Israel exclusively.
The sons carry a meaning of their own, and their names say what it is.
I have mentioned Joseph's two sons in passing. They stand for the people who make up the Church of God today, just as Asenath their mother represents the Church as a whole. Their names carry striking meaning. Joseph calls the firstborn Manasseh, forgetting. "For God," he said, "has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house."… The second son he names Ephraim, fruitful. "For God," he says, "has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." And though our Lord, according to the prophecies that had gone before, was as Messiah "cut off and had nothing," as far as the kingdom goes He is fruitful in the salvation of multitudes of "sinners of the Gentiles." These answer to the sons of Joseph. "Behold," says Christ, referring to these Ephraims, "I and the children God has given Me." He is, blessed be His name, bringing "many sons to glory," in this the day of His rejection.
The family was complete before the hard years began. Commentators take that order as more than a household detail.
There was a time of trouble coming; but before it arrived, the fruit of his union appeared. The children God had given him came into being before this time of trial. So will it be with the Church. All its members will be called out, the whole body will be completed and gathered to the Head in heaven, before "the great tribulation" which shall come upon all the earth.
One writer turns that word "before" on his hearers, and refuses to rest the teaching on a picture alone.
Verse 50 of our chapter says plainly that these sons were born to Joseph "before the year of famine came." Now this is solemn. If you want to be among the happy people pictured by Joseph's sons, you must be saved before the coming of the Lord… We do not base this truth on a picture, however; the picture only illustrates it. It is taught directly in the New Testament Scriptures.
Marrying the daughter of a pagan priest raises an obvious question. One writer answers it by pointing to what such marriages were meant to picture.
Many have thought that Solomon's union with the daughter of the king of Egypt was an act of unfaithfulness to the requirements of the law. Forgetting the symbolic meaning of the Word may lead to such mistakes. Would we say that Joseph was unfaithful in marrying Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On (Gen. 41:50)? that Moses was unfaithful in marrying Zipporah, daughter of the priest of Midian (Ex. 2:21)?
- Before — the verse hangs on one word: the sons arrived while the grain was still piling up, not after the famine began.
- Exaltation first — the bride and the sons come only after Joseph is raised to power.
- A stranger chosen — Asenath has no share in Israel's promises. Commentators see in her a people drawn from the nations.
- Fruitful in rejection — Joseph gains this family in the land of his affliction, while his own brothers still know nothing of him.
- Finished, then famine — the household was complete before the hard years fell. Commentators press that as a reason not to delay.
And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh -- For God has made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.
Joseph names his firstborn at the height of his power in Egypt. The pit, the slavery and the prison lie years behind him. The name he picks says who ended their hold on him: God, not time. Commentators read the name along two lines: what it says about Joseph as a picture of Christ, and what it asks of anyone who wants their past to lose its grip.
"Manasseh" is a word about memory, and Joseph puts God behind it. Both sons' names show what their father felt as God raised him high, far from his own people. One writer compares them with the names Moses gave his sons.
Manasseh means "causing to forget," as Ephraim means "fruitfulness"; and they show their father's feelings during his remarkable rise to honour outside Israel, for blessing. The names Moses gave his sons do not speak of forgetting his brothers. They speak of his sense of being a stranger, cut off from them, and counting on "God my help." Both meet in perfection in our Lord Jesus.
This is not the wiping of a memory but the loss of its pull. One writer argues that nobody forgets his background until something better has taken hold of him.
No one can truly say that he forgets "his father's house" until his heart has found a treasure in a brighter scene. Then wherever he is in body becomes the land of exile to him. Yet he has no wish to go back to the past. He forgets it... It is a wonderful freedom for a man when what he has found and now holds in heaven puts into the shade, into obscurity and forgetfulness, all the natural pride of birth and family line tied to our "father's house."
Joseph builds a family in Egypt while his brothers know nothing of his glory. One writer sees Christ here, set apart with a heavenly bride, and says His seeming forgetfulness toward Israel is no change of mind.
For His Church, His heavenly bride, He has been content to be as if He did not remember His relationship with His people of old. The thread of prophecy lies unwoven on the loom of time, as if its wheel had stopped forever. What does this attitude of forgetfulness mean, on the part of Him who never slumbers or sleeps? Surely no change. He is carrying out eternal purposes. When those purposes are complete, Israel will look on the face of Him whom they pierced, and a fountain will be opened to them also for sin and for uncleanness.
The name also looks at what the suffering produced. Joseph's toil did not vanish; it found its answer in a harvest. (Where the ESV says "hardship," older translations say "toil," the word these writers use.)
Rejected by his brothers, his path had been one of suffering and toil, but Joseph has his great reward and becomes fruitful in the land of his affliction. Nor is it otherwise with Christ... His "toil" has its glorious answer in a great harvest of souls gathered out of the world during the time of His rejection by Israel. The time when He is "forgotten" by Israel is the time when He gathers fruit among the Gentiles.
Taken by itself, forgetting achieves nothing. One writer ties the name to the runner in Philippians and refuses to let it become mere self-denial.
"Forgetfulness" is only negative when it stands alone: as a means to an end it must be tied to that end and ruled by it, to have its proper character... So "to me to live is Christ," from the man who declared himself a Manassite, "forgetting what lies behind" (Phil. 1:21; Phil. 3:13). It was not self-denial for its own sake; it was absorption: counting all things "as rubbish" to "gain Christ" (Phil. 3:8).
Manasseh never stands alone in the chapter. The order of the two names carries the lesson.
This is a picture of the truth of Christianity. It makes us forget the first creation, with its natural relationships and its irritating trials. But that is because it brought in something better: the new creation, of which Christ is the Head. The name of Joseph's second son, Ephraim, which means "fruitful," carries this... Manasseh therefore implies the negative side of the truth, Ephraim the positive.
Neither name came out of comfort. The road to this testimony ran through Joseph's worst years.
It required both the pit and the prison to develop and mature this testimony of Joseph. And is it not so with His saints now? Can there be either forgetfulness or fruitfulness, except as death does its work in us?
- Pit — suffering formed the testimony; the pit and the prison came before the naming.
- God — Joseph credits the forgetting to God, not to success or the passing of years.
- Forgetting — the name means "causing to forget." A better treasure empties the old one of its power.
- Fruit — forgetting is only the negative half. Ephraim, "fruitful," is the point it serves, and Christ gathers His harvest while Israel rejects Him.
- Return — the forgetting only looks final. When God completes His purpose, Israel will look on the One they pierced.
And the name of the second he called Ephraim -- For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.
Joseph's second son is born in Egypt, the land where he was sold as a slave and later thrown in prison. The name he gives the boy raises two questions: how can a place of suffering become a place of fruit, and what does it show us about Christ?
Joseph names both sons out of his own experience, and the two names work as a pair. One looks back at what he left behind. The other looks at what God produced.
The names of the sons are significant. Manasseh means "Forgetting," and Ephraim means "Fruitful." The elder's name was negative in what it marked. It recalled that he had been cut off from all his old family ties, and from the hard work and sorrow of his early years. The younger's name had a more positive meaning. It marked the fruitfulness that came out of his earlier afflictions.
Joseph does not say God made him fruitful after the affliction ended. The fruit came in the very land where he suffered. Commentators apply the same pattern to the Christian.
Ephraim means "fruitful," for only in new creation is there true fruitfulness for God. Even in the land of Joseph's affliction God had made him fruitful. So today, the Christian should expect affliction. But he already belongs to the new creation, and so he is fitted to bear fruit for God.
Joseph's road to this moment ran through a pit and a prison. One writer notes that neither name could exist without that road. The same principle holds for us.
It required both the pit and the prison to develop and mature this testimony of Joseph. And is it not so with His saints now? Can there be either forgetting or fruitfulness, unless death is really at work in us? Is it not as we carry the dying of Jesus in our body, and are always handed over to death for His sake, that His life is shown? … To His death we owe everything. By it He has set us free from the moral pit and prison where we were hopelessly ruined.
Commentators read Joseph as a picture of Christ. His brothers turned against him, and while he is still cut off from them he gains a family and a harvest in a foreign land.
Rejected by his brothers, his path had been one of suffering and toil, but Joseph has his great reward and becomes fruitful in the land of his affliction. Nor is it otherwise with Christ. His ancient people may despise and reject Him. They may count Him among the transgressors. But in the day of His rejection, when His soul is made an offering for sin, then "He shall see His offspring," yes, "Out of the anguish of His soul He shall see and be satisfied." … The time when He is "forgotten" by Israel is the time when He gathers fruit among the Gentiles.
If Joseph pictures Christ, the sons born to him in Egypt are more than a family detail. They stand for the people gathered to Christ while He is rejected.
Joseph's two sons clearly stand for the individuals who make up the Church of God today, just as Asenath their mother represents the Church as a whole. … The second son he names Ephraim, fruitful. … "Behold," says Christ, referring to these Ephraims, "I and the children God has given Me." He is, blessed be His name, bringing "many sons to glory," in this the day of His rejection.
Egypt gave Joseph no help for his faith. The believer's calling is the same: bear fruit where everything pulls the other way.
We are left in a world we ought to have nothing in common with, so that we may be fruitful for Christ. And we are left where there is nothing at all to help us. Everything here, even the best of it, draws us away from the only source of fruitfulness and blessing. … to be on earth like a tree turned upside down, the roots in heaven, the branches here.
- Affliction — Joseph's fruit grew in the same soil as his suffering. God made him fruitful in the land of his affliction, not after he left it.
- Death — The pit and the prison came first. Commentators tie the fruit to death at work in us, so that the life of Jesus shows.
- Christ — The pattern is His. Rejected by His own people, He gathers fruit among the Gentiles during the very time He is forgotten by Israel.
- Children — The fruit has names and faces. Joseph's sons, born in exile, picture those Christ can point to and say, "I and the children God has given me."
- Now — The land of affliction is the Christian's present address. Roots in heaven, branches here — fruitful in a place that offers no help toward it.