Last Will and Testament

I worked at one point in a law office, and the attorneys in the office specialized mostly in estate planning. My job as receptionist included a requirement to be a notary, so I was often called into conferences to witness signatures and to notarize estate documents. The stacks and stacks and stacks of papers, binders, and accordion folders was mind-boggling for every case. I am fifteen years out of that job, and I do hope there has been some movement toward digitalizing the process; I think the law profession is possibly responsible for at least a few deforestations.

One thing that struck me about the document signings was the amount of responsibility conferred to the inheritors. When my husband and I planned our own "estate" documents (barely an estate), we did so because we knew that if we did not provide estate documents, should we both die before those documents were put into place, any assets we'd managed to gain over the course of our lives would pass to the state and out of the hands of our children--who, at the time, were non-existent. 

Since we're not bopping into a law office every week to update our estate documents (which would be insanely expensive as lawyers aren't generally cheap), we took on the responsibility of planning for the future as far ahead as we could. In our estate documents, we inserted legal jargon to pass on any assets we had or might ever have to any possible children we might ever have, and we divided the inheritance evenly.

In Genesis 48, we return, once again, to a Biblical account of "estate planning," a shadow of an earlier "estate planning" event we've already read about. Years before this account, Jacob steals his brother's inheritance blessing from his twin brother Esau, and Isaac essentially hands the rights and the inheritance of the firstborn son to his second-born son Jacob as he speaks a blessing over him. The speaking of the word over Jacob is the equivalent of my notary seal I'd press into the rich paper of estate documents. It's official. There's no changing it.

Now at the end of Jacob's life, he prepares to speak his own "estate planning" speech. Instead of conferring the primogeniture blessing over Reuben, here, this scene instead illustrates a special blessing set apart from the larger blessing I'll discuss tomorrow that's spoken over all of Jacob's sons. This one is the one where Jacob adopts Joseph's sons as his own, making them equal to Judah, Simeon, and company, and declaring that any sons of Joseph born after Manasseh and Ephraim, will be reckoned among Joseph's heirs. But Manasseh and Ephraim will have an inheritance among Jacob's original twelve.

I did a little outside reading on the twelve tribes of Israel from various Biblical commentaries. Mentions of Jacob's twelve tribes are listed throughout the Bible in various places and for various purposes, but rarely do any of them list the twelve tribes in the same order, and often one son or another is replaced or omitted for various reasons. The reasons for this seems to be related to topic: whether the author is discussing land rights, or covenant promises, or the Remnant of 144,000 (Revelation 7), etc.

Anyway, what happens in Genesis 49 is that Jacob once again throws a wrench into the birth order. When he asks Joseph to bring his two sons to him to sit on his knees so he can bless them, Joseph arranges his sons according to their ages: Manasseh on Jacob's right, since as the oldest, he holds primogeniture, and Ephraim on Jacob's left, as the younger (and lesser) inheritor.

Jacob, who is nearly blind, sees with the eyes of his heart instead of his physical eyes, and he crosses his hands and places his right hand on Ephraim-the-younger's head and his left hand on Manasseh-the-older's head. 

Joseph, horrified that his father is making such a mistake, jumps forward. "No, my father, this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head" (Genesis 49:18).

But, like Isaac has said, nearly verbatim, so many years ago, Jacob repeats here: "I know, my son, I know. [Manasseh] too will become a people, and he too will become great. Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations."

Jacob the younger, who has walked with the covenant promise of God nearly his entire life, passes on the "greater" inheritance, the "greater" blessing to Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph, who, during the divided monarchy between the years of 930 to 722 B.C., was the most powerful tribe of the north. Often the tribe of Ephraim was used to refer to the entire northern kingdom.

The laying on of hands in the Old Testament was often used to confer blessing, especially the blessing of inheritance, and was a fantastic metaphor for the way God reached out to His people, time and time again, with mercy and forgiveness (pretty much the entire book of Exodus). In the New Testament, the laying on of hands conferred healing (Luke 4:40) or a passing on of commission: a sort of get-up-and-go blessing (Acts 6:6). 

In Acts 8, we find the story of Simon the Sorcerer, who has been watching the apostles with envy. He sees the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and in 8:18, he approaches Peter. "When Simon [the Sorcerer] saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money and said, 'Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit."

In verse 20, "Peter answered, 'May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy the gift of God with money! You have no part or share in this ministry, because your heart is not right before God!"

The work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts cannot be bought, only inherited through closeness, through relationship to the One who purveys the inheritance. When God gives His Holy Spirit, there is intimacy in the act, closeness. John 20:22 describes Jesus' transferring the Holy Spirit to His disciples: "And with that, He breathed on them [He's close to them, His breath covers them] and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'"

Nowhere in our estate planning documents, did we make room for outside purchase of our inheritance we passed on to our children. Nowhere in any document I ever notarized was there legal jargon that stated anything like: "In the event an interested party desires purchase of these lands and holdings, said party may present a just offer of purchase to inheritor..." 

We are God's inheritors, and the only purchase was through the blood of Christ, paid on the cross. Something to note: we didn't pay for that inheritance. It was a one-time event, and promised for all time. Jesus was the original estate planner. 

We are the inheritors of that estate. Not for any price can we purchase it; we freely inherit what cannot be earned.