and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples and will give this land to your offspring after you for an everlasting possession.’
Old and nearly blind in Egypt, Jacob calls Joseph to his bedside and begins with what God said to him at Luz, decades earlier. The words he repeats promise descendants and a land he no longer lives in, and a dying man stakes everything on them.
Back to the beginning
Jacob's memory skips everything in between. It lands on the one moment when God made him a promise with no conditions.
Hamilton SmithHis natural strength is failing and his sight is dim. Everything on earth is slipping fast from his grasp. Yet he rises above the loss of all earthly joys, and finds in God his only trust and unfailing resource. So his mind travels back to that great moment at the start of his pilgrim path. God Almighty appeared to him at Luz in the land of Canaan. There He blessed him, and gave the land to his descendants for an everlasting possession, on the ground of unconditional promise.
What he leaves out of the story is as telling as what he puts in.
An Outline of Sound WordsHe is not now concerned with his failures, with the deceiving of his father and with having to flee from the anger of his outraged brother. These were very sorrowful and solemn matters. But he felt the presence of God in his soul, and all that this brought him pushed into the background all that he was in himself.
The name that guarantees it
Jacob does not just say that God appeared. He names Him as God Almighty — a title that runs through the whole family history.
An Outline of Sound WordsThe Name of the Almighty assured Abraham that God would certainly do all He had promised. Isaac blessed Jacob in the Name of the Almighty (Gen. 28:3). When God changed Jacob's name to Israel, He said, "I am God Almighty… The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you" (Gen. 35:9–12). Jacob uses the Name of the Almighty in Genesis 43:14; 48:3 and 49:25, because he knew the almighty power of Him who had blessed him despite all his failures.
"This land" — while he sits in Egypt
Jacob has spent his last years in Egypt, yet the only land he names is the one he left.
L. M. GrantJacob speaks to Joseph of God's first recorded appearance to him at Luz, or Bethel, in Canaan (Gen. 28:11-15). God blessed him there, and promised to multiply him into a multitude of people and to give that land to his descendants for an everlasting possession (vv. 3-4). Jacob was therefore not interested in any other land on earth. Though he would himself be in heaven and have no part of the earthly inheritance, he cared deeply about the welfare of his descendants.
The weight of "everlasting"
Israel did hold Canaan for a time and then lost it. Commentators say this cannot be what "everlasting" means.
T. B. BainesGod gave the land to the descendants of Abraham "forever," or as it is put elsewhere, "for an everlasting possession." That this was not the case with Israel's possession of Canaan is certain. But has the Lord forgotten His promise? Or are we to assume that the promise was not meant for Israel? So far from it. He says also: "Then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and I will remember My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land." The conditional and temporary possession enjoyed by Israel is not, therefore, the fulfilment of the covenant with the fathers.
"A company of peoples"
The phrase here differs from the one Jacob uses later over Ephraim.
William KellyIt is well to note the peculiarity of the phrase in verse 19 — not "a multitude of peoples" but "a fulness of nations." The old Greek translation is loose in verse 4, where it gives "congregations of nations" instead of "an assembly of peoples." In contrast with Judah and Benjamin, who had a distinct place, all the rest of the tribes fell under Ephraim as Israel.
The ground for adopting the boys
The promise is not nostalgia. It is the ground for what Jacob does next with Joseph's two sons.
Hamilton SmithBut if there is blessing on the ground of promise secured to Jacob's seed, then Jacob can claim a blessing for Joseph's sons. Jacob can say, "they shall be mine." He claims them as his seed and therefore as the heirs to the inheritance.
Summary
- Promise first. Jacob rests on what God promised at Luz with no conditions attached — not on anything he did later.
- Promise unstained. His failures are real, but they drop into the background; the promise he repeats is untouched by them.
- Promise guaranteed. He names the Almighty — the title that assured this family that God would do all He said.
- Promise unspent. Israel's short hold on Canaan never fulfilled the words "everlasting possession." The covenant still stands.
- Promise applied. The promise secures the inheritance to Jacob's descendants, so he can take Joseph's two sons as his own and give them a share in it.