The readings - Day 17 - Genesis 48-50
The account of Jacob's last days is interesting on a number of levels.
Although Isaac and Jacob (especially Isaac) don't really occupy nearly the place of reverence and generally accepted importance that Abraham does, they still represent the completion of the trio of founding generations for the people of Israel (and, by extension, the means of blessing for the whole of humanity), so there's a strong sense of closure when Jacob is finally "gathered to his people" (one of my absolute favourite euphemisms for death, by the way).
Although Joseph's position is important, and his stature as one of the early heroes of the faith is firmly established, there's something intrinsically different about his relationship with God. There's a directness that seems to be lacking (for lack of a better term) when compared to his preceding generations.
For starters, there's not really any interaction between Joseph and God at any point. True, the same could be said about Isaac, but you'd only be partially right, considering that he was at least present for God's intervention before he was sacrificed, God named him, and he was explicitly identified, by God, as the chosen heir to Abraham's covenant.
Joseph, on the other hand, just had faith. There's no doubt about this, but it's also quite astounding. Not just because he'd been through a lot (to put it mildly), but also because so many people today try to point to the Old Testament's plethora of God-to-human dialogues, meetings and discussions (and, as counterpoint, the apparent lack of such direct interaction in more modern times) as being the major difference between the amount of faith demonstrated by OT figures and others.
None of this seems to phase anyone, though. Noticing the difference between the presence of God in the texts concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and those following the life of Joseph seems to be a distinctly hindsight-oriented activity. There's no hint of lamentation for the abandonment of Jacob by God, so calling after God for one-on-one, in-person guidance when it comes to the next covenantal successor (unlike in the previous three generations).
Instead, there's just a blind man crossing his arms and giving the blessing of inheritance to the "wrong" son of his own 11th-born, scoffing at Joseph's attempt to correct his "mistake" by just saying, essentially, "nope, it's done - this is the way it is." He doesn't even say that God wants it this way, he just consoles Joseph with an assurance that both of his kids end up awesome in the descendants category, but that Ephraim will be the next in this particular line.
Joseph seems quite at ease sticking up for his firstborn, incidentally, when he himself would normally be considered 11th in line for whatever succession was being discussed, and the succession is only being passed along to his family because his dad tricked his dad into giving it to him instead of his hairy, animal-killing brother. The whole thing seems to wallow in the bucking of any "eldest first"rules of succession, but Joseph still hangs on to it when it comes to his kids.
On that note, it occurs to me that Joseph isn't really in the picture much at all. Jacob, in fact, explicitly skips the next generation by flatly claiming Ephraim and Manasseh as his own kids. Weird.
Chapter 49 contains some of the most strained uses of the word "blessing" (at least by the modern understanding of the word) ever. Apparently, in the time of the Old Testament, having someone's blessing about something was not an assuredly positive experience, considering that "blessing" may end up being "you had the rights of the firstborn, but then you got creepy and slept with one of my wives, so now you get nothing" or "you two are violent, vengeful people with significant anger management problems, I'm not getting involved with you, and you should probably spend the rest of time apart from each other and most other people."
*Side note: I can't see any significance in the fact that Jacob was apparently also blind to the futures of Reuben and Levi as namesakes for a ridiculously delicious sandwich and a really high-quality pair of jeans, but I'm sure someone can.*
Then Jacob dies, buried in the same tomb purchased by Abraham all those years before, and Joseph dies, buried in Egypt, and the book of Genesis draws to a muted close.
It's a book that brought us from the dawn of time to the development of the Hebrew civilization/culture, showed us the heights of faith, love and relationship and a shocking dearth of moral/ethical rigour on the part of the heroes, and set the stage for everything that follows it.
And speaking of massive amounts of time passing with the turn of a page, on to Exodus...
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