Ephraim
Ephraim is the second son of Joseph and Asenath. The name Ephraim, then, means "fruitfulness." Asenath was an Egyptian woman whom Pharaoh gave to Joseph as a wife and the daughter of Potipherah, a priest of On. Ephraim was born in Egypt before the arrival of the children of Israel from Canaan.
Ephraim
Born: Egypt
Children: Sheerah, Shuthelah, Elead, Beker, Tahan, Ezer
Parents: Joseph, Asenath
Siblings: Manasseh
The Book of Genesis related the name "Ephraim" to a Hebrew word for "being fruitful," referring to Joseph's ability to produce children, specifically while in Egypt (termed by the Torah as the land of his affliction).
In the biblical account, Joseph's other son is Manasseh, and Joseph himself is one of the two children of Rachel and Jacob, the other being Benjamin. Biblical scholars regard it as evidence, from their geographic overlap and their treatment in older passages, that Ephraim and Manasseh were initially considered one tribe – that of Joseph. According to several biblical scholars, Benjamin was initially part of the suggested Ephraim-Manasseh single "Joseph" tribe, but the biblical account of Joseph as his Father became lost. Many biblical scholars suspect that the distinction of the Joseph tribes (including Benjamin) is that they were the only Israelites who went to Egypt and returned. In contrast, the main Israelite tribes emerged as a subculture from the Canaanites and had remained in Canaan throughout. According to this view, the story of Jacob's visit to Laban to obtain a wife originated as a metaphor for this migration, with the property and family which were gained from Laban representing the gains of the Joseph tribes by the time they returned from Egypt; according to textual scholars, the *Jahwist version of the Laban narrative only mentions the Joseph tribes, and Rachel, and does not mention the other tribal matriarchs at all. In the Torah, the eventual superiority of the Tribe of Ephraim is argued to derive from Jacob, blind and on his deathbed, blessing Ephraim before Manasseh. The text describing this blessing features a *hapax legomenon – the word which classical rabbinical literature has interpreted in obscure manners; some rabbinical sources connect the term with sekel, meaning mind/wisdom, and view it as indicating that Jacob was entirely aware of who he was blessing; other rabbinical sources connect the term with shikkel, viewing it as signifying that Jacob was despoiling (robbing) Manasseh in favor of Ephraim; yet other rabbinical sources argue that it refers to the power of Jacob to instruct and guide the holy spirit. In classical rabbinical sources, Ephraim is described as modest and not selfish. These rabbinical sources allege that it was on account of modesty and selflessness and a prophetic vision of Joshua that Jacob gave Ephraim superiority over Manasseh, the elder of the two; in these sources, Jacob is regarded as being sufficiently just that God upholds the blessing in his honor, and makes Ephraim the leading tribe.
*hapax legomenon is a transcription of Greek meaning "being said once."
*The Jahwist is so named because of its characteristic use of the term Yahweh
The Bible records that from Joshua to the formation of the first Kingdom of Israel, the Tribe of Ephraim was a part of a loose confederation of Israelite tribes. No central government existed, and in times of crisis, the people were led by ad hoc leaders known as Judges (see the Book of Judges).
With the growth of the threat from Philistine incursions, the Israelite tribes decided to form a solid centralized monarchy to meet the challenge. The Tribe of Ephraim joined the new kingdom with Saul as the first king. The widely accepted date for Saul's reign is approximately 1025–1005 BCE. Some scholars dispute this date range and place Saul later, perhaps as late as "the second half of the tenth century B.C.E."
After the death of Ishbosheth, Saul's son and successor to the throne of Israel, the Tribe of Ephraim joined the other northern Israelite tribes in making David, who was then the king of Judah, the king of a reunited Kingdom of Israel. The sequence preserved in the Bible, in which David follows Saul as king of Israel, may not be historically accurate. According to archaeologist Israel Finkelstein, there is doubt about whether the biblical ordering for the reigns of the early monarchs is reliable.
However, on the accession of Rehoboam, David's grandson, in c. 930 BCE, the northern tribes split from the House of David to form the northern Kingdom of Israel. The northern kingdom's first king was an Ephraimite, Jeroboam, who likely ruled in 931–909 BCE.
The accents of the tribes were distinctive enough even at the time of the confederacy so that when the Israelites of Gilead, under the leadership of Jephthah, fought the Tribe of Ephraim, their pronunciation of shibboleth as sibboleth was considered sufficient evidence to single out individuals from Ephraim, so that they could be subjected to immediate death by the Israelites of Gilead.
Ephraim was a member of the Northern Kingdom until Assyria conquered the kingdom in c. 723 BCE, and the population was deported. From that time, the Tribe of Ephraim has been counted as one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.
Ephraim is often seen as the tribe that embodies the entire Northern Kingdom, and the royal house resides in the tribe's territory (just as Judah is the tribe that embodies the Kingdom of Judah and provides its royal family).
Tribal territory
In the biblical account, following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite Joshua, the land was allocated among the twelve tribes. According to a well-known conservative biblical scholar, this occurred slightly after 1200 BC.
As recorded in the Book of Joshua, the territory allocated to the Tribe of Ephraim was at the center of Canaan, west of the Jordan, south of the territory of Manasseh, and north of the Tribe of Benjamin. The region later named Samaria (distinguished from Judea or Galilee) consisted mainly of Ephraim's territory. The area was mountainous, giving it protection, and highly fertile, giving prosperity.
The territory of Ephraim contained the early centers of Israelite religion; Shechem and Shiloh. Joshua 16:1-4 outlines the borders of the lands allocated to the "children of Joseph," i.e., Ephraim and Manasseh combined, and Joshua 16:5-8 defines the borders of the land allocated to the Tribe of Ephraim in more detail. These factors made Ephraim the most dominant of the tribes in the Kingdom of Israel and led to Ephraim becoming a synonym for the entire kingdom.
Joshua allocated Bethel to the Tribe of Benjamin (Joshua 18:11-28). However, even by the time of the prophetess Deborah, Bethel is described as being in the land of the Tribe of Ephraim (Judges 4:5). Ephron is believed to be the Ophrah also allocated to the Tribe of Benjamin by Joshua (Joshua 18:20-28).
Some twenty years after the breakup of the United Monarchy, Abijah, the second king of the Kingdom of Judah, defeated Jeroboam of Israel and took back the towns of Bethel, Jeshanah, and Ephron, with their surrounding villages (Chronicles 13:17-19).
The riverine gulch, na?al ?anah (Joshua 17:9), divided Ephraim's territory to the south and Manasseh's territory to the north. The modern Israeli town of Karnei Shomron is built near this gulch, which runs in an easterly-westerly direction.
The border of Ephraim extended from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west and incorporated within it the cities of Bethel (now Beitin), Atarot, Beth-?oron, and the Nether (now Bayt Ur), extending as far as Gezer (now Abu Shûsheh, formerly known as Tell el Jezer) and the Mediterranean Sea. Gezer was said to have been inhabited by Canaanites long after Joshua killed or expelled the other Canaanites. According to French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Garneau, who identified the site in 1871 and later carried out excavations there, Gezer marked the extreme western point of the territory of Ephraim and was "situated at the actual intersection of the boundaries of Ephraim, Dan, and Judah." This view, however, does not seem to be supported by the Scriptures themselves, which place the extent of Ephraim's border at sea.
Spanish-Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela wrote that the southernmost bounds of the territory of Ephraim extended in a south-westerly direction as far as the town of Ibelin or Jabney.
According to the Torah, the Tribe Ephraim consisted of descendants of Ephraim, a son of Joseph, from whom it took its name; however, some critical Biblical scholars view this also as *postdiction, an *eponymous metaphor providing an *etiology of the connectedness of the tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. In the Biblical account, Joseph is one of the two children of Rachel and Jacob, a brother to Benjamin, and a Father to both Ephraim, and his first son, Manasseh. However, Manasseh was the eldest, but Jacob foresaw that Ephraim's descendants would be greater than his brother's. Though the biblical descriptions of the geographic boundary of the House of Joseph are relatively consistent, the descriptions of the boundaries between Manasseh and Ephraim are not, and each is portrayed as having *exclaves within the territory of the other.
*postdiction - An assertion or deduction about something in the past; the act of making such an assertion or deduction.
*eponymous - relating to or being the person or thing for whom something is named.
*Etiology - a branch of knowledge concerned with causes.
*exclaves - a portion of the territory of one state surrounded by territory of another or others.
Furthermore, in the Blessing of Jacob and elsewhere ascribed by textual scholars to a similar or earlier time, Ephraim and Manasseh are treated as a single tribe, with Joseph appearing in their place. From this, it is evident that Ephraim and Manasseh were initially considered one tribe — that of Joseph. According to several biblical scholars, Benjamin was also originally part of the House of Joseph. However, the biblical account of this became lost Benjambeing differentiated by being that part of Ephraim (House of Joseph) which joined the Kingdom of Judah rather than that of Israel.
In the account of the Deuteronomic history, Ephraim is portrayed as domineering, haughty, discontented, and jealous. However, in classical rabbinical literature, the biblical founder of the tribe is described as being modest and not selfish. These rabbinical sources allege that it was on account of modesty and selflessness and a prophetic vision of Joshua that Jacob gave Ephraim precedence over Manasseh, the elder of the two; in these sources, Jacob is regarded as sufficiently just that God upholds the blessing in his honor, and makes Ephraim the leading tribe. Nevertheless, other classical rabbinical texts mock the tribe for the character it has in the Deuteronomic history, claiming that Ephraim, being headstrong, left Egypt 30 years prior to the Exodus and, on arrival in Canaan, was subjected to a disastrous battle with the Philistines; in the Midrashic Jasher this is portrayed as a rebellion of Ephraim against God, resulting in the slaying of all but 10, and the bleached bones of the slaughtered being strewn across the roads, so much so that the indirect route of the Exodus was simply an attempt by God to prevent the Israelites from having to suffer the sight of the remains.
Though from the point of view of an increasing majority of archaeologists, there were always two distinct cultures in Canaan, a strong and prosperous northern kingdom and a weaker and poorer southern one, in the Biblical account, the Israelite tribes were initially united in a single kingdom, and only later fractured into the northern and southern kingdoms; the Bible blames this fracture on the jealousy of Ephraim over the growing power of Judah. In the Book of Chronicles, Ephraim's act of splintering from Judah is denounced as forsaking God, and Ephraim is portrayed as becoming highly irreligious, particularly in their resistance to the reforms enacted by Hezekiah and Josiah.
It was not until the close of the first period of Jewish history that God 'refused the tabernacle of Joseph (Hebrew Bible) and chose not the Tribe of Ephraim, but the Tribe of Judah, the Mount Zion which he loved. (Ps 78:67,68) When the Ark was removed from Shiloh to Zion, the power of Ephraim was seized.
Destiny
As part of the Kingdom of Israel, the territory of Ephraim was conquered by the Assyrians, and the tribe was exiled; the manner of their exile led to their further history being lost. However, several modern-day groups claim descent, with varying academic and rabbinical support levels. The Samaritans claim that some of their supporters are descended from this tribe, and many Persian Jews claim to be descendants of Ephraim. Further afield, in India, the Telugu Jews claim descent from Ephraim and call themselves Bene Ephraim, relating similar traditions to those of the Mizo Jews, whom the modern state of Israel regards as descendants of Manasseh.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that a significant portion of its members are descended from or adopted into the Tribe of Ephraim, believing that they are charged with restoring the lost tribes in the latter days, as prophesied by Isaiah. Along with members of the Tribe of Judah, members of the Tribe of Ephraim are believed to be playing significant leadership roles for covenant Israel in the last days. They also believe that the main groups of the Book of Mormon (Nephites and Lamanites) were parts of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, as part of the fulfillment of the blessing of Jacob: "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall" (Genesis 49:22, interpreting the "wall" as the ocean).
Descendants of Ephraim became known as the Tribe of Ephraim, which is designated as one of the twelve tribes of Israel. They settled in central Canaan, just northwest of the Dead Sea. Manasseh bordered the tribe on the north and Dan and Benjamin on the south (Joshua 16; 19:50). Ephraim became the leading tribe of the northern kingdom (Joshua 17:15; Judges 3:27), and the capital, Samaria, was located in Ephraim's territory. Scripture sometimes refers to Israel as simply "Ephraim" due to the size of the tribe (e.g., Isaiah 11:13 and Jeremiah 31:6).
The Tribe of Ephraim was taken into captivity by the Assyrians in 722 BC when the northern kingdom of Israel was conquered. Even so, the Lord declared, "Is not Ephraim my dear son, the child in whom I delight? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore, my heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him" (Jeremiah 31:20).
Notable figures from the Tribe of Ephraim include Joshua (Joshua 19:50); Samuel (1 Samuel 1:1); and Jeroboam I, the first king of the divided kingdom in the north (1 Kings 12:25). After the Babylonian captivity, some of the descendants of Ephraim resettled in Jerusalem (1 Chronicles 9:3).
The following statements relate to the men mentioned in this article, Ephraim, Manasseh, Joseph, Jacob, etc., and particularly to the tribes of Ephraim and Manassah.
• Ephraim is the second son of Joseph and Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On.
• After his birth, Joseph named him Ephraim, saying: "It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering." Though unclear whether this references Canaan or Egypt, Joseph recognizes that God has turned his affliction into a blessing. He is ready to move forward.
• The name, Ephraim, means "fruitfulness."
• He and his older brother, Manasseh, are born before the famine.
• Sometime later, Joseph's family migrates to Egypt because of the famine.
• When Joseph hears that Jacob is ill, he goes to see him, taking along his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim.
• Jacob and his family have been in Egypt for 17 years. Joseph's sons, born before the famine, are in their late teens or early twenties.
• When they get there, Jacob sits up in bed. Initially, he blesses Joseph.
• Then Jacob makes it plain that he wants to adopt Joseph's two children formally. He makes them equal with his first two sons.
• Jacob's eyes are failing, but he sees the two young men. He asks about them.
• Joseph replies, "They are the sons God has given me here."
• Jacob asks to bless them also.
• When Joseph puts his sons on Jacob's knees, Jacob kisses and embraces them.
• He says, "I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too." This suggests there may not have been much interaction between Joseph and his family, even though they are in Egypt.
• Joseph might be their benefactor, but he does not spend time with them.
• Joseph takes his sons from his Father's lap and bows with his face to the ground, showing reverence and respect.
• Ephraim is on his right toward Jacob's left hand, and Manasseh is toward Jacob's right hand; he brings them close to him.
• But Jacob reaches out his right hand and puts it on Ephraim's head, though he is the younger son, and crossing his arms, he puts his left hand on Manasseh's head, even though Manasseh is the firstborn son.
• Joseph tries to correct him, exclaiming that "Manasseh is on your right."
• Jacob says he knows that. He says that Manasseh 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." The pronouncement is entirely consistent with what is already known about the issue of *primogeniture.
*primogeniture – 1. the state of being the firstborn of the children of the same parents; 2. an exclusive right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son
• Like so many other times, Jacob explicitly gives the blessing to Ephraim, the younger son. And then he puts his left hand on Manasseh.
• Joseph finally accepts his Father's wishes and puts Ephraim ahead of Manasseh.
• In adopting and blessing these boys, Jacob essentially gives the birthright of his firstborn, Reuben, to Joseph. Through his sons, Joseph now has a "double portion."
• Ancient rabbinical sources to explain Jacob's decision further describe Ephraim as being "modest and not selfish."
• Ephraim has at least three sons: Shuthelah, Beker, and Tahan. 1 Chronicle 7 claims two additional sons – Ezer and Elead. After they are killed, he has another son, Beriah, who is the ancestor of Joshua.
• Ephraim is the ancestor of the Tribe of Ephraim.
• Ephraim might have been "modest and not selfish," but his tribe is described differently.
• In Moses' final blessing to the tribes, he states: "In majesty, he is like a firstborn bull; his horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them, he will gore the nations, even those at the ends of the earth."
• Deuteronomic scholars describe the Tribe of Ephraim as being dominant, arrogant, envious, and filled with discontent.
• One tradition has the Tribe of Ephraim leaving Egypt early and arriving in Canaan, doing battle with the Philistines, who practically wipe them out.
• That becomes one of the reasons the Israelites take such an indirect route out of Egypt.
• When the territory is allocated, the Tribe of Ephraim is at the center of Canaan. It encompasses much of Samaria.
• The fertile mountainous area provides protection and prosperity.
• Its regions of Shechem and Shiloh have been the center of Israelite religious activity for the better part of 400 years.
• Though initially part of the Tribe of Benjamin, Bethel is part of Ephraim during the time of Judges. (Judah reclaims it after the kingdom divides.)
• In the time of David, when the Ark is officially established at Mount Zion (in Judah's territory), Ephraim's authority is diminished.
• This causes significant discontent within the Tribe of Ephraim.
• When the tribes divide following the death of Solomon, Jeroboam, from the Tribe of Ephraim, is made king.
• Perhaps because of this, "Ephraim" often stands for the Northern Kingdom, much like "Judah" stands for the Southern Kingdom.
• After the division, "Ephraim" is accused of forsaking God, and its attempts to establish another altar are considered an act of apostasy.
• The Assyrians conquer the Tribe of Ephraim in 723 BCE.
• Its population is deported.
• It is one of the ten lost tribes of Israel.
