from their state at that
time as they could be, when Jacob, dying, and blessing his twelve children,
declared to them, that they would be proprietors of a great land, and
foretold in particular to the family of Judah, that the kings, who would one
day rule them, should be of his race; and that all his brethren should be
their subjects; and that even the Messiah, who was to be the expectation of
nations, should spring from him; and that the kingship should not be taken
away from Judah, nor the ruler and law-giver of his descendants, till the
expected Messiah should arrive in his family.

This same Jacob, disposing of this future land as though he had been its
ruler, gave a portion to Joseph more than to the others. "I give you," said
he, "one part more than to your brothers." And blessing his two children,
Ephraim and Manasseh, whom Joseph had presented to him, the elder, Manasseh,
on his right, and the young Ephraim on his left, he put his arms crosswise,
and placing his right hand on the head of Ephraim, and his left on Manasseh,
he blessed them in this manner. And, upon Joseph's representing to him that
he was preferring the younger, he replied to him with admirable resolution:
"I know it well, my son; but Ephraim will increase more than Manasseh." This
has been indeed so true in the result that, being alone almost as fruitful
as the two entire lines which composed a whole kingdom, they have been
usually called by the name of Ephraim alone.

This same Joseph, when dying, bade his children carry his bones with them
when they should go into that land to which they only came two hundred years
afterwards.

Moses, who wrote all these things so long before they happened, himself
assigned to each family portions of that land before they ent