Ephraim, Israel, Jacob, What's In A Name?

Friday of the Third Week in Lent 2026

One of the wisest things my sophomore Scripture teacher ever advised me was to read the OT, and to do so constantly. When we do this, we are confronted with the Bible authors’ use of different names to describe the same person or group of people. Hosea, in our first reading today urges Israel to return to the Lord “your God.” He testifies “We shall say no more ‘our god’ to the work of our hands.” And he exclaims, “Ephraim! What more has he to do with idols? I have humbled him, but I will prosper him.”

That’s all beautiful, and hopeful, but it confuses us until we realize that Ephraim was the second son of the patriarch Joseph, that being the Joseph who was enslaved in Egypt but whose cleverness attracted Pharaoh. Pharaoh actually made him the number two man in his kingdom. He worked through the seven years of plenty, and stored up enough grain to take care of the whole area during the seven years of drought.

Joseph’s father, whose name was either Israel or Jacob, came down with the whole family to Egypt, where the family exploded in numbers but were enslaved by the native Egyptians until Moses led them out, back to the land of promise.

So we use the word Israel and Jacob and Ephraim almost interchangeably for the people who settled in the north of Palestine and who were alienated from the Temple at Jerusalem, and prone to fall into worship of false gods. Hosea is telling them that God would free them from that heresy, and enable them to bear fruits of justice.

Our psalmist approaches this reality from an historical perspective and takes us back to the wanderings in the desert, after YHWH-God freed them from Egyptian slavery because they called to him in their distress and He rescued them. We heard recently the words Meribah and Massah, places when Israel was tempted to doubt God, but where He showed His power by giving them water and food for their journey. And we heard in that psalm the admonition to have “no strange god among them, nor worship an alien god.” YHWH-God was not only the only true creator and redeemer but was also the elected God and ruler of Israel.

Jesus was then challenged by a scribe to pick out from Torah the first of the commandments. Now there are over six hundred commandments, but the first and most impressive is one we all memorized with our Catechism: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” Jesus also shares the second commandment, the final seven from the tablet of Deuteronomy: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Nothing is more important. Now, knowing this, we are challenged to enter the final three weeks of our Lenten journey, to bring ourselves closer to the Kingdom of God through penance, almsgiving and fasting.