The promise was made to the Seed of Abraham, not seeds.
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah …” (Genesis 49:10).
But the birthright was Joseph’s” (1 Chronicles 5:2).
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“And Israel strengthened himself, and sat upon the bed.
And Jacob said unto Joseph, God Almighty appeared unto me
at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me, And said unto me,
Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will
make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy
seed after thee for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 48:2-4).
“And now 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; as Reuben and Simeon, they shall be mine”
The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads;
and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers
Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the
midst of the earth” (verses 14-16).
“Joseph is a fruitful bough,even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches
[margin, daughters] run over the wall” (verse 22).
“[T]he Almighty … shall bless thee with blessings of heaven above, blessings
of the deep that lieth under, blessings of the breasts, and of the womb:
The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors
unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills: they shall be on the head of Joseph,
and on the crown of the head of him that was separate from his brethren”(v 25-26).
In Genesis 48 Jacob first passed the birthright on to the two sons of Joseph jointly,
speaking of them both together. Then he spoke of them separately—Manasseh
was to become the single great nation; Ephraim, the company of nations.
The promise of a future great nation and a company of nations, together great for
multitude, rich in national material prosperity,fruits of the ground, possessing the
“gates” of the Earth’s other nations,spread north south east and west , applies to
these lads and the two tribes which sprang from them.
Nothing at all about the septer promise of [the one seed] or grace,
but only physical nations and multitudes in the midst of earth