This is the tenth post in a series from Hebrews 11. You’ll find all the posts done so far in this series listed here.
Next up in our Hebrews 11 list of the Old Testament faithful is Jacob. Here’s what we read:
By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped as he leaned on his staff. (Hebrews 11:21 NET)
You’ll find the story of Jacob’s blessing of Joseph’s sons in Genesis 48. If you read through the chapter you’ll see a couple of odd things. First of all, Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons, who were really his grandsons, as if they were his own sons.
Now, as for your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, they will be mine. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are. Any children that you father after them will be yours; they will be listed under the names of their brothers in their inheritance. (Genesis 48:5,6 NET)
And then he purposefully gives the youngest son the firstborn blessing, crossing his hands as he put them on their heads, so that Ephriam, the youngest, has Jacob’s right hand, and Manasseh, the oldest, his left. When Joseph tries to correct things, Jacob insists on doing things this way because he knows that the “younger brother will be even greater and his descendants will become a multitude of nations (Genesis 48: 19).”
This blessing by Jacob, with it’s unexpected features, shows Jacob’s acknowledgment that God fulfills his promises and works his purposes in his own way, and not necessarily according to what people think it ought to be done. And like Abraham and Isaac before him, here at the end of his life Jacob remains confident in the future fulfillment of the promises of God to him.
The writer gives us one more example of Jacob’s faith. At the end of his life, he “worshiped as he leaned on his staff.” If you go back to Genesis looking for the account of this act of worship, you might have trouble finding it. It’s there, right at the end of Genesis 47, but your translation probably says something like this: “…Israel bowed down at the head of his bed.” The quote found here in Hebrews follows the text of the Septuagint, which at this point is different than the Masoretic Hebrew text we use for our Old Testament. Remember that ancient Hebrew was written with no vowels, and those who translated it into the Greek of the Septuagint supplied a set of vowels to come up with the Hebrew word for “staff”, while the text our Old Testament is based on uses a different set of vowels to make the same set of letters read “bed”. Either way, the point is the same: Jacob worshiped God at the end of his life, right after he asked Joseph to make sure that his body was buried back in Canaan with his fathers. And that act of worship was evidence of Jacob’s faith.