What Does Genesis 46:20 Mean?

And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera the priest of On, bore to him. Joseph's two sons are noted with their Egyptian-context birth: born in the land of Egypt, to Asenath daughter of an Egyptian priest. The Egyptian birth of Manasseh and Ephraim is significant: they are the first generation of the family born outside Canaan, born to an Egyptian mother, raised in the Egyptian royal household. Their inclusion in the genealogy of the sons of Israel is the assimilation of the Egypt-born sons into the covenant genealogy: they will be counted as Jacob's sons (Genesis 48), receiving tribal status equal to Jacob's own sons.

Asenath, daughter of Potiphera priest of On, is the Egyptian wife Pharaoh gave Joseph in Genesis 41:45. Her father is a priest of On (Heliopolis), a major Egyptian religious center. Joseph's wife is thus the daughter of an Egyptian religious leader: an intermarriage at the highest social level, parallel to Moses later marrying a Midianite woman and Ruth being a Moabite incorporated into the covenant line. The Egyptian-born, Egyptian-mother sons of Joseph will become two of the twelve tribes of Israel: Manasseh and Ephraim.

Ephraim specifically will become one of the most significant tribes in Israel's later history: the dominant tribe of the Northern Kingdom, such that "Ephraim" becomes a synonym for the northern tribes in the prophets. Manasseh will be divided (half-tribe east of Jordan, half-tribe west), and the whole Joseph portion of the tribal allotments will eventually Bear the double name "Joseph" or "sons of Joseph" in some texts. The two grandsons born to an Egyptian mother in Egypt become full inheritors of the Abrahamic promise: the ethnically unexpected trajectory of the covenant promise's continuation.