… there is one last avenue if that isn’t the way. Rather than focusing on “multitude,” we can take a harder look at the Hebrew for “nations.” It’s a familiar one to us, I think. It is the popular “Goy” (s) or “Goyim” in the plural. We translate it often, Gentiles. For, any nation that is not Israel is simply a nation. The word is also translated “people” when the text demands it. And therein is a shaft of light for us. Is Genesis 48:19 one of those times when “Goyim” must be translated “people” and not “nations”?

“People” is used in translating “goy” (the singular, not the plural) in isolated passages in a few of the prophets. Once in Kings. In Joshua, 3 times the majority of the translators went this way, once in particular that is of interest to this discussion, in Joshua 5:6:

“For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the people that were men of war, which came out of Egypt, were consumed, because they obeyed not the voice of the LORD:”

Joshua is obviously not talking about a nation. It was a subset of the nation Israel, the men of war who came out of Egypt and disobeyed and died. Nation will not fit here, but “people” will, and that’s where the translators went.

So although “goy” or “goyim” usually means a foreign nation, its basic idea is a group of people (hence the NIV understanding). With that understanding of the Hebrew word, the text lines up beautifully.

Ephraim will be great. Greater than Manasseh , at least initially. Tons of tribes and clans and families will spring forth from Ephraim, and his people will dominate Israel, for better or worse.

It is perhaps important to note here the way some prophecies are temporary, and based on the circumstances of the people. Ephraim, as Abel, Isaac, Jacob, David… were not firstborn children, but were chosen of God to be His blessed anyway. Ephraim did indeed gain the ascendancy, as Jacob saw ahead of time. Per the first census of Israel, where Ephraim numbered 8,000 more than his brother Manasseh. And Ephraim did become the father of many clans in Israel.

But Ephraim fell from that grace. Not sure why. But by the end of the book of Numbers, at the second census, Ephraim had lost 8,000 souls while Manasseh gained 20,000. A greater fall was accomplished when leading Israel, via Jeroboam’s idolatry, into the pit of rejection by God altogether. To this day, no one even knows what happened to Ephraim. Let this fall teach us.