Genesis Chapters 47-49

God’s message to me: The last shall be first and the first shall be last. This theme keeps playing through the bible as God chooses the youngest child to lead in place of the oldest. (Tradition holding that the oldest holds the birthright to get the chief inheritance and have family leadership passed to him.) God uses these things to show us that the least of us will be brought to power and prosperity through him. No matter how low you go and how bad things get, God can bring you to the top.

Promises: God will give us all we need and more. No matter how low our position at the start we can be brought to the highest point by Him.

Commands: BLESS YOUR CHILDREN. This isn’t the first example or the last. Look at the most successful people in our country and you will see a lot of Jews. Why? Because the children of Israel understood from the beginning the importance of blessing their children. Each generation from Abraham down has received spoken blessings from their fathers and this is something Jewish fathers understand as being spiritually important to this day.

Gentile comedians make endless jokes of the curses we give our children. the classic example is “The mothers curse” which says “I hope you grow up and have children that behave just like you”. Strangely enough we usually do. In turn our mothers get a lot more gray hair worrying about their grandkids than they did worrying about their kids. Jewish families pray blessings over their children instead and are careful not to place such curses. I it any wonder they prosper? God honors the prayers of parents for their children. The proof starts in the first book of the Old Testament and continues to Steven Spielberg and beyond.

Timeless principles: I can’t reiterate this enough. BLESS YOUR CHILDREN. Isaac Asimov, Gertrude Stein, Neil Simon, Herman Wouk, JD Salinger, Carl Sagan, Judy Blume, Steven Spielberg, Leonard Nimoy, the list goes on into hundreds and thousands. check here for more. Even if you don’t like them you can’t deny their success and do you really think so many successful Jews is an accident. Follow the ages of the people on this list and you will see that many of them became successful before they had a country with land. They were the scattered children living in foreign lands.

more to learn for in-depth study: The blessings of the sons of Jacob are also prophetic in showing what will become of these tribes in the future. The tribe of kings, the lineage of Christ, the wars and strife arising from their activities will all play out as we read.

It’s also worth noticing who is buried in the grave of the patriarchs. Jacob had 4 wives but was buried with the first, Leah. He had intended to marry Rebecca and was tricked into his first marriage. He loved Rebecca from the moment he saw her and never gave much attention to Leah except as the mother of some of his children. Rebecca died first of his wives. She was buried near what would become Bethlehem. Leah received the honor of being buried with her husband.

Fun Fact: Rameses was Pharaoh when Joseph was prime minister. There were several Rameses on the throne of Egypt over the years but this gives us a clue to timing. So does the fact that Jacob was 130 years old when he met Pharaoh, God gave prophecy that the people of Israel would be in Egypt for 400 years, and the family line. 2 of Jacob’s grandsons died before going to Egypt, 66 members of the family and their wives came to Egypt and Joseph sent for his father to come to Egypt 2 years after the famine began.

Before the famine, 1/5th or 20% of the produce was taken to the storehouses to provide for the future. Under Joseph’s leadership this provided enough to feed all of Egypt and Canaan for the 7 years of famine and made Egypt the richest nation at the time. As the Famine came to a close this savings became the law. This created an effective 20% income tax as the way to keep Egypt intact. That remained the tax for hundreds of years afterward and was sufficient to maintain one of the richest and most culturally developed empires of the time even with the great projects they created. The Great Lighthouse, the Pyramids, The Sphinx, and many other wonders were created on just 20% taxation across the board.