Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 48-50.

My first thought was to find Jacob’s blessing of Manasseh and Ephraim in chapter 48 verses 15 and 16 interesting.  It seems almost Trinitarian.  Jacob  calls on God to bless them.  In particular the fact that he calls out God three times before asking Him to bless the boys.  First, he says “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,” then he says, “the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,” finally, he says, “the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys;”  I’m not sure I would have noticed the way he seems to be referring to God as three persons in that blessing if he had not used the word “angel”, which means messenger, in the last of the three.  It is clear from the context that the angel in that third phrase is also God.  What made the connection for me was that we often think of the Holy Spirit as the aspect of the Trinity who brings God’s message to us.  Once I had made that connection, it occurred to me that the second mention of God is as a shepherd.  Which is one of the ways in which the Bible refers to Jesus, who is God the Son.  That brings me finally to the first of them, who Jacob refers to as the “God before whom my fathers…walked.”  Which ties the first mention to God the Father.  I know that this is a bit of a stretch, but I am also convinced that Jacob mentioned God in three different ways because he was aware of His three-fold presence.  Jacob really seems to see three aspects to God, aspects which were more than just different expressions of His Essence, and yet were not separate from each other.  He saw God as One before whom we walk, and as One who shepherds us, and as One who brings us messages.  Three in One, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.