Genesis 41:51

Gen 41:51 And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, [said he], hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.

Ver. 51. Manasseh: For God, said he, hath, &c.] He writes God’s mercies to himself upon the names of his two children; that might be as so many monitors to thankfulness and obedience. The stork is said to leave one of her young ones where she hatches, as it were, out of some instinct of gratitude. Doves, at every grain they pick, look upward, as giving thanks.

And all my father’s house.] Even that toil and those indignities that were offered me in my father’s house, so Jnnius; the grief whereof his preferment allayed and mitigated.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Gen_41:51-52

Manasseh: for God, said he, hath made me forget

Memorial names

I.

GODS KINDNESS TO JOSEPH.

1. A blessed oblivion.

2. A rich fruitfulness (Gen_41:52).

II. JOSEPHS GRATEFUL MEMORIAL OF GODS KINDNESS. (J. Willcox.)

The names of Josephs children

His attitude towards God and his own family was disclosed in the names which he gave to his children. In giving names which had a meaning at all, and not merely a taking sound, he showed that he understood, as well he might, that every human life has a significance and expresses some principle or fact. And in giving names which recorded his acknowledgment of Gods goodness, he showed that prosperity had as little influence as adversity to move him from His allegiance to the God of his fathers. His first son he called Manasseh, Making to forget, for God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil and all my fathers house--not as if he were now so abundantly satisfied in Egypt that the thought of his fathers house was blotted from his mind, but only that in this child the keen longings he had felt for kindred and home were somewhat alleviated. He again found an object for his strong family affection. The void in his heart he had so long felt was filled by the little babe. A new home was begun around him. But this new affection would not weaken, though it would alter the character of his love for his father and brethren. The birth of this child would really be a new tie to the land from which he had been stolen. For, however ready men are to spend their own life in foreign service, you see them wishing that their children should spend their days among the scenes with which their own childhood was familiar. In the naming of his second son Ephraim he recognizes that God hag made him fruitful in the most unlikely way. He does not leave it to us to interpret his life, but records what he himself saw in it. It has been said: To get at the truth of any history is good; but a mans own history--when he reads that truly,. . . and knows what he is about and has beenabout, it is a Bible to him. And now that Joseph, from the height he had reached, could look back on the way by which he had been led to it, he cordially approved of all that God had done. There was no resentment, no murmuring. He would often find himself looking back and thinking, Had I found my brothers where I thought they were, had the pit not been on the caravan-road, had the merchants not come up so opportunely, had I not been sold at all or to some other master, had I not been imprisoned, or had I been put in another ward--had any one of the many slender links in the chain of my career been absent, how different might my present state have been. How plainly I now see that all those sad mishaps that crushed my hopes and tortured my spirit were steps in the only conceivable path to my present position. Many a man has added his signature to this acknowledgment of Josephs, and confessed a Providence guiding his life and working out good for him through injuries and sorrows, as well as through honours, marriages, births. As in the heat of summer it is difficult to recall the sensation of winters bitter cold, so the fruitless and barren periods of a mans life are sometimes quite obliterated from his memory. God has it in His power to raise a man higher above the level of ordinary happiness than ever he has sunk below it; and as winter and springtime, when the seed is sown, are stormy and bleak and gusty, so in human life seed-time is not bright as summer nor cheerful as autumn; and yet it is then, when all the earth lies bare and will yield us nothing, that the precious seed is sown; and when we confidently commit our labour or patience of to-day to God, the land of our affliction, now bare and desolate, will certainly wave for us, as it has waved for others, with rich produce whitened to the harvest. There is no doubt, then, that Joseph had learned to recognize the providence of God as a most important factor in his life. And the man who does so gains for his character all the strength and resolution that come with a capacity for waiting. He saw most legibly written oh his own life that God is never in a hurry. And for the resolute adherence to his seven years policy such a belief was most necessary. (M. Dods, D. D.)

Josephs recognition of God in all things

We too commonly look no farther than the instruments employed by Providence in conferring upon us the benefits which we enjoy, or in inflicting the evils we suffer. But Joseph saw that all his adversities and all his prosperity came from God. He was grateful to Pharaoh, but he was grateful chiefly to God, for the happy change in his condition. God hath made me to forget all my toil, and all my fathers house. It was God that brought him into Egypt. It was by Divine permission that he was for many years confined within the walls of a prison. It was God that brought him out of it, and advanced him to the dignity and power which he now possessed. All things are of God. If we do not refer the happy changes in our condition to His good providence, we lose the benefit and pleasure of them, and cannot be sensible to the duties which our Benefactor requires to testify our gratitude. (G. Lawson, D. D.)

Misery banished

Joseph called his first-born son Manasseh, because God had made him to forget all his toil. He did not mean that the remembrance of his toil was obliterated from his mind. His mention of it when he gave a name to his son was a proof that in one sense he still remembered it. It was his duty to remember it. How could he have retained just impressions of the Divine goodness if he had forgotten the evils from which he was delivered I If we must forget none of Gods benefits, we must forget none of those evils from which we have been relieved by His gracious providence. But Joseph, in another sense, forgot his misery. He remembered it as waters that pass away, and leave no trace behind. There is a bitter remembrance of our affliction and misery, and of the wormwood and the gall of our affliction. This is banished by Divine providence when it saves us from all distresses; but it gives place to pleasant remembrance of them, in a contrast to that happiness by which they are succeeded. (G. Lawson, D. D.)

Josephs faithfulness

He had formerly been like the heath in the desert, but now he was like a tree planted by the rivers of water, which brings forth abundance of fruit, and whose leaf does not wither. This happy change he ascribes to the Divine goodness. When changes and war are against us, we must be dumb, not opening our mouth, for it is God that does it. When changes are in our favour, our mouths ought to be opened to the praises of Him who turns the shadow of death into the morning, and makes the desert to rejoice and blossom as the rose. Joseph was fruitful in comfort, in good works, in children. He had, indeed, at this time only two children, but might expect that a troop was coming; and although that hope was uncertain, he was thankful for what God had already given him. Perhaps it was by a Divine suggestion that the name Ephraim was given to Josephs second son, rather than his first. Joseph, as far as we know, had no more children of his own body: but he was fruitful in his remote progeny, especially by Ephraim. Joseph was a fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well, whose branches run over the wall. Manasseh was great, but truly Ephraim was greater than he; for the horns of Joseph were like the horns of an unicorn, and they were the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they were the thousands of Manasseh. Where was it that Joseph became fruitful? Not in the land of his nativity, but in the land of his affliction. And all his afflictions wrought together under the all-wise providence of God to bring about his exaltation. (G. Lawson, D. D.)

Significance of the names Joseph gave his children

Two sons were born to Joseph during the seven years of plenty. Manasseh: God made him forget his toil and his fathers house. Neither absolutely. He remembered his toils in the very utterance of this sentence. And he tenderly and intensely remembered his fathers house. But he is grateful to God, who builds him a home, with all its soothing joys, even in the land of his exile. His heart again responds to long untasted joys. Fruitful in the land of my affliction. It is still, we perceive, the land of his affliction. By why does no message go from Joseph to his mourning father? For many reasons. First, he does not know the state of things at home. Secondly, he may not wish to open up the dark and bloody treachery of his brothers to his aged parent. But, thirdly, he bears in mind those early dreams of his childhood. All his subsequent experience has confirmed him in the belief that they will one day be fulfilled. But that fulfilment implies the submission, not only of his brothers, but of his father. This is too delicate a matter for him to interfere in. He will leave it entirely to the all-wise providence of his God to bring about that strange issue. Joseph, therefore, is true to his life-long character. He leaves all in the hand of God, and awaits in anxious, but silent hope the days when he will see his father and his brethren. (Prof. J. G. Murphy.)

Use of troubles

"When in Amsterdam, Holland, last summer, says a traveller, I was much interested in a visit we made to a place then famous for polishing diamonds. We saw the men engaged in the work. When a diamond is found it is rough and dark like a common pebble. It takes a long time to polish it, and it is very hard work. It is held by means of a piece of metal close to the surface of a large wheel, which is kept going round. Fine diamond dust is put on this wheel, nothing else being hard enough to polish the diamond. And this work is kept on for months and sometimes several years before it is finished. And if a diamond is intended for a king, then the greater time and trouble are spent upon it. Jesus calls His people His jewels. To fit them for beautifying His crown, they must be polished like diamonds, and He makes use of the troubles He sends to polish His jewels. (Old Testament Anecdotes.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Notwithstanding that his father’s house was the true Church of God: yet the company of the wicked and prosperity caused him to forget it.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

(51) Manasseh.—That is, causing to forget. Joseph has been blamed for forgetting “his father’s house,” but the phrase means that now that he was married and had a child, he ceased to suffer from home sickness, and became contented with his lot. He pined no longer for the open downs of Canaan as he had done in the prison; but his love for his father was as warm as ever.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

50–52 (E). Joseph’s Sons

51. Manasseh] That is, Making to forget. There is to be no thought of return to his father’s house. The name makes us ask the question why Joseph, when supreme in Egypt, sent no message to his father, who was living in a region distant only a few days’ journey. That there were continual communications between Egypt and Canaan is conclusively shewn by the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and by the subsequent events in the present narrative.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the famine was over all the face of the earth,.... Not over the whole world, but the land of Egypt; all the inhabitants of it were pinched with it, rich and poor; it reached all parts and all sorts of men:

and Joseph opened all the storehouses; in the several cities throughout the land where he had laid up corn:

and sold unto the Egyptians; for, as he had bought it with Pharaoh's money, it was no injustice to sell it; and as it could be sold at a moderate price, and yet Pharaoh get enough by it, being bought cheap in a time of plenty, no doubt but Joseph, who was a kind and benevolent man, sold it at such a price:

and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt; there being no overflow of the Nile year after year, and nothing left of the old stock but what was in the storehouses.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Manasses. That is, oblivion, or forgetting. (Challoner) --- Father’s house, or the injuries received from my brethren. (Haydock)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

i.e. Hath expelled all sorrowful remembrance of it by my present comfort and glory.

All my toil, and all my father’s house, i.e. the toil of my father’s house, or the toil and misery which for many years I have endured by means of my father’s family, and my own brethren, who sold me hither; a figure called hendyadis.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

51. Manasseh — We must not construe this name and its signification so as to imply that Joseph allowed himself to forget, or desired to forget, his father’s house. He now came more and more to see how God had a hand in his exile, and was making all his labour and sorrow work for good. This was causing him to forget, that is, to overlook the dark side of his exile. But we should also note, that in giving Ephraim his name (Gen_41:52) he calls Egypt “the land of my affliction,” as if he still felt that Egypt was not his proper home, and his interests were in the land of promise. Ephraim and Manasseh, though born of an Egyptian mother, became the heads of very prominent tribes in Israel.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

כי נשני, G’d granted me so much wealth and power that He enabled me to forget את כל עמלי, all the problems and setbacks I had experienced, and He has even made me forget all the members of my father’s household. [not including his father, of course. Ed.]

נשני, the vowel patach under the letter נ substitutes for the vowel chirik which we would normally expect in the transitive conjugation from the root נשה, as then it would have been nishani as in tzivani from the root צוה, “to command.” Some commentators do not accept that this vowel is a variant but claim that it is justified as the root of the word nashani in our verse is נשש. [compare Rash’bam’s comment. Ed.]

Radak on the Tanakh — English translations: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “Eliyahu Munk, HaChut Hameshulash” (CC BY 4.0); “Rabbi Mike Feuer, Jerusalem Anthology” (CC BY 4.0); and “R. David Kimhi on the first book of Psalms, Translated by R.G. Finch, London, 1919” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.