Jacob said to Yue Se, "Almighty God appeared to me in Lu Si, the land of Canaan, and blessed me and said to me,' I will make you numerous and become a people, and I will give this land to your descendants for an inheritance forever.' Ephraim and Manasseh, who were born to you in Egypt before I came to see you in Egypt, are mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine. What you give birth to after them is yours, and they can be named after their brothers to inherit. As for me, when I came from Bataan, Rachel died in front of my eyes. On the road in the land of Canaan, there was still a long way to go from Ephrathah, so I buried her on the road to Ephrathah. Ephratha is Bethlehem.
Then, I remembered that a friend once told me that he cared about his son because he cared about his wife and loved her very much. He said that if he didn't love his wife, he wouldn't care about the son they gave birth to, because he said that their son would grow up and one day need to leave his parents to live his own life.
In fact, in the record of this chapter, when Jacob blessed his two grandchildren, he saw that Jacob also cared about the birthright of the eldest son and the second son, which was still on his deathbed:
Israel stretched out his right hand and put it on Ephraim's head, and Ephraim was the second son; And he cut his left hand and laid it on Manasseh's head, for Manasseh was the firstborn. He blessed Yue Se, saying, "May the God whom my father Abraham and my father Isaac served, the God who has fed me all my life to this day, and the messenger who saved me from all my troubles, bless these two boys. Let them be named after me and my father Abraham and my father Isaac, and let them be fruitful and multiply in the world. "
when Yue Se saw that his father had laid his right hand on Ephraim's head, he was displeased, so he took his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's. Yue Se said to his father, "No, my father, this is the eldest son. Please put your right hand on his head."
his father refused and said, "I know! My son, I know! He will also become a family and become great, but his brother will be greater than him, and his brother's descendants will become many families. " On the same day, he blessed them and said, "Israel will bless you and say,' May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.' So he set Ephraim above Manasseh.