Tribe Of Joseph

Joseph was written out of Jacob's family in favor of his 2 sons. Yet Joseph is named in the seal date of Revelation 7. This article explains what this means.

Joseph's Promises

Joseph inherits a set of promises that have been passing down the family since Abraham. By the time of Joseph, those promises are on Jacob, who transferred them to Joseph's sons. That transfer is documented in Genesis 48.

To understand Joseph as a tribe requires knowing those promises and how they transferred to Joseph's sons.

Before Jacob's death, he met with Joseph and his sons. The details of this transfer begin with the following quote:

The 2 key promises are called the 'great nation' promise and the 'community of nations' promise. Those are the promises that Jacob is bringing to reminder.

Ephraim and Manasseh Adopted

Jacob then goes on and adopts Joseph's 2 sons as his own.

This adoption story is important in the Joseph has married a foreign wife, in this case an Egyptian wife. This would normally cause trouble for sons of that marriage.

Jacob is erasing any sort of curse by adopting those sons as his own.

Jacob then goes on and adds that should Joseph have any more sons, that they would be counted as sons of these first 2 sons. This effectively arrests any territorial promises as continuing through Joseph and his offspring. This did eventually happen, named territories, such as the US states and the UK empire are examples of what Jacob is explaining will happen with more sons.

After this interaction, these 2 sons of Joseph are now considered equal to Jacob's other sons.

General Blessing

Jacob then pronounces his general blessing over these sons.

The key idea in this blessing is that they are to be called out as part of the family of faith that began at Abraham and has passed through Jacob to these sons.

Crossed Arms

Trouble, though, is that Jacob has crossed his arms. Joseph objects. Then Jacob explains what is to happen to these sons.

The bottom line is that Manasseh was promised to become a great nation and Ephraim was to become a community of nations. This is what we look for in the modern heirs to these tribes.

For review, these are unique promises and special to these 2 tribes. These are sons of Egypt, so they will have national characteristics that follow the known patterns of Egypt. This includes patterns of trickery seen in Joseph personally going into Egypt and the plagues of Egypt when leaving.

Seal Date

So Revelation 7 lists a seal date for Joseph. To identify Joseph requires finding the tribe of Joseph signing a document on that date.

But, the tribe of Joseph does not exist. Joseph was written out of the will by Jacob. What are we to think of that seal date?

All the other dates are identifying specific tribes. Not here.

For this date the document itself is between the 2 nations that became Manasseh and Ephraim. 1 treaty will identify 2 tribes.

The actual document itself was the Lend Lease Treaty that set up the funding mechanism for World War II. It was initially signed between the United States and the United Kingdom. Others would eventually join.

This treaty transferred capital assets, primarily gold, to the USA. In return the USA supplied the consumables used to fight World War II. Primarily weapons, fuel and food.

This was wealth plundering in the classic patterns of Egypt. It created the post war prosperity of the USA. It also caused Nixon to close the gold window as the USA consumed that wealth.

Returning to the story...

Manasseh Double Seal Dates

But Manasseh already has another seal date. It was in 1776 and was pointing at the founding of the USA.

Why are there 2 dates for Manasseh?

Because Manasseh is the first born son and as such holds the double portion promise of first born sons.

A doubling pattern can be seen in Manasseh in many other aspects of the tribe, not just here in the seal dates. Alaska and the lower 48 states is an example of this.

So it should not be a surprise that Manasseh is on 2 treaties. Indeed, this should be expected.

For the purposes of website organization, the tribe specific tabs follow the seal dates in order. So the whole story for Manasseh is under the Manasseh Tab early in the list. You can go there to learn more about Manasseh if you have not already read that section.

Before going forward in chronological order, to the next tab, we need to cover the other son of Joseph, the Lost Tribe of Ephraim.

We turn to Ephraim next.