Jacob begins the action by reciting to Joseph the divine grant of the land of Canaan. This was a setting forth of the family estate, the property which he had to leave among his children. He then _adopts_ the sons of Joseph; for this was needed to the investing of them with the rights of children, inasmuch, as, in a great legal sense, they were strangers to Abraham. Their mother was an Egyptian. They were a seed, therefore, whom the law would, in its day, have put away. Ezra x. 3. But Jacob adopts them. He takes them into the family. "And now," says he to Joseph, "thy two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, which were born unto thee in the land of Egypt before I came unto thee into Egypt, are mine." They are constituted of the seed of Abraham, and made children of Jacob; and this being done, Jacob at once sets them in the place of the firstborn; for he adds immediately, "As Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine." This was a solemn act of investiture, by which the rights of the eldest, the double portion which attached to the birthright, passed over to Joseph in the persons of his two sons. See 1 Chron. v.; Ezek. xlvii. 13.²⁴ ²⁴ The title now bestowed was afterwards realized, when the family estate, the land of Canaan, came to be divided between the tribes; for Joseph then gets two portions in his two sons, who are treated as though they had been two distinct sons of Jacob. But we have still to ask, Why was Joseph thus preferred? The forfeited right had reverted to Jacob, and from his hand it had to be disposed of afresh. But why was it given to Joseph? Was this merely grace? I could not say so. Grace, I know, on this great occasion, takes its way; and were we duly emptied, we should delight in the way of grace, even though we ourselves might get, in its distributions, only a left-hand or Manasseh blessing. But while all this is so, I still question whether it were _merely_ grace which thus conferred the rights of the eldest son upon Joseph. I rather judge that Joseph _earned_ it. If Jacob aforetime bought it, Joseph, I believe, had now earned it. We have already, in the history, tracked his path to the inheritance. It was the path, like that of his divine Master, whose shadow in the distance he was, of sorrow and rejection and separation, and yet of righteousness and testimony. And this path had ended with praise and honour and glory in the kingdom or inheritance; and the birthright is kindred with the inheritance.