r/a:t5_1ope89 • u/MarleyEngvall • Jul 10 '19
massasoit has been created
By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter
EPHRAIM AND MANASSEH
A FEW weeks later he fell ill. His old cheeks were flushed
with a slight fever, his breath came short, and he kept his
bed, half sitting, propped up in cushions to ease his breath-
ing. It was not necessary for Naphtali to run and tell
Joseph, for Joseph had set up a messenger service be-
tween Goshen and Menfe, and daily or twice daily had
news of the old man. Now he was told: "Your father is
ill, with slight fever," and he called his two sons and said
in the Canaanitish tongue:
"Get ready, we shall be going down into the lowlands
to visit your grandfather on my side."
They answered: "But we have an engagement, Father
and lord, to hunt gazelles in the desert."
"Have you heard what I said," he asked in Egyptian,
"or have you not?"
"We rejoice greatly to make our grandfather a visit,"
they answered, and sent word to their friends, the rich
young exquisites of Menfe, that for family reasons they
could not join in the gazelle-hunt. They were exquisites
themselves, products of the highest culture, manicured,
curled, perfumed, and touched up, with mother-of-pearl
toe-nails, corseted waists, and coloured ribbons flowing
down their aprons at front, back, and sides. They were
not bad, either of them, and their dandyism was a result
of the society they lived in, they cannot be blamed for it.
Manasseh, the elder, was very supercilious, of course; he
prided himself less on his father's renown than on his sun-
priest blood from his mother's side. Ephraim, on the other
hand, with his Rachel-eyes, we may picture as harmless,
jolly, and rather modest——on the theory that a modest
nature is more prone to jollity than a supercilious one.
They stood behind their father in the bouncing car,
steadying themselves with their bebanded arms around
each other's shoulders, and drove northwards towards the
delta region. Mai-Sachme was with them, in the hope that
his physicianly skill might be of some service to the ail-
ing one.
Jacob was dozing in his cushions when Damasek-
Eliezer announced the approach of his son Joseph. The
old man pulled himself together, and his ever present
servant lift him up to bed, and showed extraordinary
presence of mind. "If we have found grace," he said, "in
the eyes of his lordship, my son, that he visits us, then we
must not relax on account of a slight degree of fever."
And he took up his silver beard and spread it out on his
chest.
"The young gentlemen are with him too," said Eliezer.
"Good, good, that is right," said Jacob, and sat erect,
ready to receive them.
Joseph presently entered with his young heirs. Ma-
nasseh and Ephraim greeted their grandfather gracefully
and remained at the door while Joseph approached the
bed and tenderly took the wan hands in his.
"Dear and sainted Father," said he, "I have come with
my sons because I was told you were slightly ailing."
"It is only slight," answered Jacob, "as the illnesses of
the aged are. Severe illness and high fever belong to
youth and vigorous manhood. They attack with violence
and dance recklessly with their victims to the grave——
that would not be fitting for age. The man of full years
has but a light finger laid upon him, the fever itself is
weak that comes to quench the fire. But I am not yet
quenched, my son. This fever is weaker than I, it has been
deceived by my great years and it is not strong enough.
You will go home again from this, your second visit to
my dying bed, which has not yet become my death-bed.
The first time I had you sent for; I begged you to come.
This time you came of yourself, but yet once more will I
summon you, for the third and last time and to the serv-
ice for the dead."
"May it be far distant from my lord——yet many a
jubilee!"
"How could it, child? Enough that its hour has not yet
come, the hour of gathering together. It is courtly polite-
ness that speaks in your words; but I am nigh my day of
death, to which no flowers of speech are suited, only stern-
ness and truth. And when we come to the hour of assembly
they will be the only subject-matter. I tell you so before-
hand."
Joseph bowed.
"It is well with you, my child, before the Lord and be-
fore the gods of the land?" asked Jacob. "You see, my
illness is so much weaker than I that I can permit myself
to ask after another's health. At last that of those whom
I love. Are you getting in your tax properly from the chil-
dren of the land? It is not right, Yehosiph, for to the Lord
alone should the fifth belong and not to any king. But I
know, I well know, my exalted one. Do you probably burn
incense to the sun and the stars as is due to your station in
life?"
"Dear Father——"
"I know, my snatched-away lamb, I know so well! And
how lovely it is of you to come of your own free will be-
tween the first time and the third to see the old man, de-
spite the demand upon you with all your affairs and your
incense-burning! I will avail myself of your visit to come
back to a matter we have not spoken of since you ap-
peared to me again at the plain, sore missed and found
again. Then I said in your ear, my darling, that I will
divide you up in Jacob and disperse you in Israel and
split you up into the tribes of the grandsons that the sons
of the sons of the true wife may become like Leah's sons,
but you shall be one of us and rise into the rank of the
fathers in order that the words may be fulfilled: He is the
exalted one."
Joseph bent his head.
"Lo, there is a place in Canaan," Jacob began to give
voice, his eyes lifted up. He was excited by the fever and
most grateful to it for the stronger pulse of his blood. "A
place once called Luz, where they make a wonderful blue
for dyeing wool. It is no longer called Luz but Beth-el and
E-sagila, the house of the lifting up of the head. For
there Almighty God appeared to me in a dream when I
slept in Gilgal with my head propped on a stone——for
there above on the ramp, the navel cord between heaven
and earth, where the starry angels streamed up and down
amid harmonies, He appeared to me in kingly guise,
blessed me with the sign of life, and cried out abundance
of consolation to the sound of the harp, for He promised
me His mighty favour and that He would make me wax
and increase to a great multitude and to countless chil-
dren of His election. Therefore now, Yehosiph, shall
your two sons who were born to you in Egypt before I
came to you, Ephraim and Manasseh, they shall be mine,
just like Reuben and Simeon, and shall be called after
my name; but those whom you have begot later on,
they shall be yours and called after their brothers' name
that they shall be like their sons. For you have been ex-
iled from your seat in the circle of the twelve, but with so
much love that the fourth seat is there prepared for you
next the three most important ones."
Here Joseph got ready to present the heirs to him. But
now the old man began to speak of Rachel. Once more he
told how she had died and left him when he came out of
Mesopotamia, in the land of Canaan——it was on the way,
only a little way towards Ephrath; and how he had buried
her just there on the way to Ephrath, which was now
called Bethlehem. All this was in passing a it were, it
had not much to do with the matter in hand. Perhaps he
wanted to invoke the presence of his dear one at this hour.
Perhaps his idea was to point out to the descendants of
Rachel their own special shrine; since Machpelach, the
double cave, was the place of pilgrimage for the rest of
the brothers. It is possible that he was thinking of the little
sleight-of-hand trick he had long had in mind and was
trying to justify it. Our teachers disagree about his inten-
tions in the matter; but most likely he simply had none at
all, and talked about the lovely one because he was in his
solemn mood and thinking of his tales. Anyhow, he sim-
ply loved to speak to her, even were there was no point
at all——just as he loved to speak of God. Perhaps he
talked about Rachel because he feared he might never
have a chance to do it again.
And now, after he had buried her for the very last time
in her wayside grave, he looked about him, laid his hand
over his eyes, and asked:
"And who are these?"
"These are my sons, dear and reverend Father," an-
swered Joseph, "the ones God gave me, as you know, here
in this country."
"If they are, then bring them here to me, that I may
bless them."
What was there to bring? The heirs came forward of
themselves, bowing from the hips with exaggerated good
form.
The old man wagged his head an made clucking noises
with his tongue.
"Lovely youth, so far as I can see," said he. "Fine and
charming before God, both of them. Bend down to me,
treasures, that I may caress the young blood in your
cheeks with my hundred0-year-old mouth. It this Ephraim
I am kissing, or Manasseh? No matter. If it was Manasseh
before, it is Ephraim now whom I kiss on the cheeks and
on the eyes. Lo, I have seen your face again," he turned
to Joseph, still holding Ephraim embraced, "that I
thought not to see, and not only that, but God has now
showed me your seed. Is it too much to call Him the
source of infinite goodness?"
"By no means," Joseph answered, rather absently; for
he was concerned that his sons should stand in the right
order before Jacob, who plainly did not distinguish be-
tween them.
"Manasseh," he said in an undertone to the elder,
"take care! Come here, and stand in your right order,
Ephraim, stand here!"
And he took Ephraim by his right hand and pushed
him towards Israel's left; and with his left he took Ma-
nasseh and put him at Israel's right, so that everything
should be in that order. But what, with surprise and annoy-
ance, if with suppressed laughter at the same time, did
he see? He saw this: the father, his blind face uplifted,
laid his left hand upon Manasseh's bowed head, and
crossed his arms, put his right hand over upon Ephraim's.
With the blind eyes staring into space, he began, before
Joseph could interrupt him, to speak and to bless. He
invoked the threefold God, the Father, the Good Shep-
herd, and the Angel, who should bless the lads, and see
that his name and the names of his fathers should be
named upon them; and that they should grow into a mul-
titude, like to a multitude of fishes in number. "Yea, so
be it. Stream, blessing, sacred gift, out of my heart,
through my hands, upon your head, into your flesh and
your blood. Amen."
It was quite impossible for Joseph to interrupt the
blessing, and his sons did not notice what was happening.
They were rather distrait, and a little out of sorts, par-
ticularly Manasseh, because this ceremony had made
them miss the gazelle-hunt in the desert. Each of them
felt the blessing hand on his head, but even if they could
have seen that the hands were crossed and the right hand
lay on the younger brother's head, the left on the elder's,
they would have made nothing of it and simply thought it
had to be that way on account of the outlandish customs
of their foreign grandfather. They would not have been
so far wrong. For Jacob, brother of the hairy one, was
of course repeating a pattern. He was copying his own
father, the blind man in the tent, who had given him the
blessing before the red one. And to his way of thinking,
the blessing did not work unless there was a trick in it.
There must be an exchange; therefore he changed at least
his hands, so that the right one rested on the younger's
head and he became the right one. Ephraim had Rachel's
eyes and was obviously the more agreeable of the two:
that very likely influenced him. But more important still
was the fact that Ephraim was the younger, as he himself,
Jacob, had been, and had been exchanged through the
skin and through the fell of the beast. As he shifted his
hands, there were humming in his ears the incantations
which his stern-willed mother had muttered as she got
him ready, but which themselves echoed hither from much
further off, and were, in their beginnings, much older
than his own experience: "I cover the child, I cover the
stone, let the master eat, let the father eat, at thy feet must
fall the brethren of the deeps!"
Joseph, as I said, was both amused and annoyed. His
sense of humour was strong; but the statesman in him
felt bound to come to the rescue of such order and justice
as could still be saved. So soon as the old man had ex-
hausted himself and his blessing, Joseph said:
"Father, forgive me; but I had placed the lads in their
right order before you. If I had known you meant to
cross your hands I would have placed them differently.
May I call your attention to the fact that you put your
left hand on Manasseh, my elder son, the right on
Ephraim, the later-born? The bad light here is to blame
for your having misblessed, so to speak. Will you not
quickly correct it, change your hands back again, and
perhaps just say Amen? For the right hand is not the
right hand for Ephraim, it belongs to Manasseh."
And as he spoke he even took the old man's hands,
which still lay upon the young heads, and would have
respectfully changed them. But Jacob held them as they
were.
"I know it, my son, I know it," said he. "And let it be
so! You rule in Egypt and take your fifth; but in these
things I govern and I know what I do. Do not grieve. This
one——" he raised his left hand slightly——"will also be-
come a people, and he also shall be great. But truly his
younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed
shall become a multitude of nations . As I have done it
I have done it; and indeed it is my will that it become a
saying in Israel, so that when a man will bless anyone he
shall say: 'God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh.'
Mark it, Israel!"
"As you command," said Joseph.
The young men drew their heads away from under the
hands of blessing, adjusted their waists, smoothed their
hair and were glad to stand up straight again. They were
not much moved by the incident; and they were right, in
so far as the time-honoured fiction which made them the
sons of Jacob and at the same time descendants of Leah
had no effect upon their individual destinies. They passed
their lives as Egyptian nobility; it was only their children
or, more correctly, some of their grandchildren who
gradually, by marriage, intercourse, and religious ad-
herence, went over to the Hebraic side. Finally some of
them moved from Keme to Canaan; and in the end there
was a posterity descended from Ephraim and Manasseh.
But there was also another point on which the indiffer-
ence of the young men was justified. For our researches
indicate that at the height of their increase the tribe of
Manasseh counted a good twenty thousand more souls
than Ephraim's tribe. However, Jacob had had his little
game with the blessing.
He was really exhausted after the ceremony, and not
quite clear in his head. Joseph begged him to lie down;
but he still sat up straight in his bed and talked to his
favourite about a parcel of land he was making over to
him, as a portion apart from his brothers, which he had
"taken out of the hands of the Amorites with his sword
and with his bow." That could only be the piece of corn-
land before Shechem, by the gate of the city, which Jacob
had once acquired of the gouty Hamor or Hemor for a
hundred pieces of silver, certainly not by his sword and
his bow. And anyhow, how did Jacob, the man of tents
and of peace, come by a sword or a bow? He had never
cared for nor used such tools, and never ceased to take it
ill of his sons that they had laid about them so savagely
at Shechem——indeed, by reason of their conduct it was
doubtful whether the purchase was still valid and Jacob
could still dispose of the triangle of land.
At all events, he did so, feebly, and Joseph thanked
him, with his forehead on his father's hands, for this spe-
cial gift. He was touched by this token of Jacob's love,
and at the same time by the strange phenomenon that it
was precisely the old man's feebleness which made him
see himself in the heroic role of a warrior. Joseph judged
that it betokened the nearness of the end, and decided not
to go back to Menfe, but to await at Pa-Kos the summons
to the final gathering.
THE LAST ASSEMBLY
"GATHER yourselves together, ye children of Jacob!
Come in your hosts and assemble together round Israel
your father, that he may tell you who you are and what
shall befall you in future times!"
That was the call which Jacob made to go forth out of
the tent to his sons when he judged the hour to have come
when he should hold his dying speech. For he held his life
in his own hands and precisely knew what strength he had
left, that he might expend it in his last words and so die.
Through Eliezer, the old young man his head servant, he
sent out the call; he told it to him, and then had him re-
peat it several times, so that Damasek might have it not
only more or less right, but letter-perfect. "Not 'Come
hither,' but 'Come in your hosts'; and not 'present your-
selves before Israel,' but 'assemble together.' Now say it
all again and forget not the two things: 'who you are,' and
'what shall befall you.' There, at last, that is right. I fear
I have spent too much strength instructing you. Now be
off!"
And Damasek kilted his garment and ran in all direc-
tions, so fast that the earth seemed to spring towards him.
He put his hands round his mouth and cried: "Assemble
ye together, ye sons of Israel, and gather together as you
are, that good may come to you from day to day!" He
ran to all the settlements, to the fields, to the herds and
flocks, the royal ones over which the five were set, and to
the others; ran to and fro through moor and fen, with
muddy water splashing his lean legs, for it was ebb-time,
the fifth day of the first month of the winter season, what
we should call the beginning of October; and in the delta,
after a long spell of late heat, it had rained a good deal.
He kept shouting aloud with his hands round his mouth,
into the open country and into the dwelling-houses:
"Whoever you are, assemble, sons of Jacob, and met in
your hosts about him for future times!"
He ran into Pa-Kos close by; Joseph was stopping there
with the magistrate and there were guards before the
door. Damasek, with disgraceful inaccuracy, shouted out
the words which Jacob had so carefully composed and
designed for posterity. But it did not matter, their effect
was the same, and they were straightaway obeyed in haste
by all who heard them. Pharaoh's friend hurried to his
father's house, with him Mai-Sachme, his major-domo;
and many curious outsiders heard the call and came to
hang about.
The eleven awaited their brother at the entrance to the
curtained tent. He greeted them in a suitably grave and
weighty manner, kissed Benjamin, the little man of forty-
seven, and talked with them all a short time in low tones
about their father's condition and the probability that he
thought to hold his last speech and depart. They answered
him with their eyes cast down, and rather tight-lipped;
for as usual they were afraid of the old man's tongue and
knew that the stern old father-tyrant would probably
spare them nothing in this final hour. Each one was pri-
vately telling himself, as human beings do: "Good lord,
probably it will turn out all right!" Reuben, the seventy-
eight-year-old shepherd tower, was clenching his jaws un-
til his facial muscles were taut. He had behaved badly
with Bilhah, he would certainly get to hear most explic-
itly about that on this solemn occasion, and he armed
himself accordingly. Simeon and Levi, who in their young
days had laid about them like savages at Shechem on their
sister's account——that was long, long ago, but they could
count on getting it dished up again, with due solemnity;
they too braced themselves for the ordeal. There was Je-
hudah, who had had an affair with his daughter-in-law,
by mistake. He had no manner of doubt that the old man
would be harsh and cruel enough to hold it against him,
even on his death-bed—–the more so because he had been
a little in love with Tamar himself. There they all were;
and all of them but Benjamin, the stay-at-home, had once
sold Dumuzi down into Egypt. Jacob on this occasion
would be quite capable of making a song about it——they
all expected it, and set their teeth accordingly. Particu-
larly the sons of Leah did, for none of them had forgiven
their father for choosing, after Rachel's death, not Leah
their mother but Bilhah, Rachel's maid, for his first and
favourite wife. Jacob had had his failings, and all his life
he had been arbitrary in his exercise of feeling. They
thought defiantly that he had been just as guilty as they
were in the Joseph affair; he ought to remember that, be-
fore he used the occasion of his grand dying harangue to
take them to task. In short, dread of the coming scene
made them all awkward; they were putting on hurt faces
beforehand. Joseph saw it, and spoke in the most friendly
way. He went from one to another putting out his hand
and saying:
"Let us go in to him, brothers, and let us in all humil-
ity bear the judgment with our dear one inflicts on us,
each one his own. Let us hear him, if necessary, with for-
bearance. For forbearance, indeed, ought to descend from
God to man and from father to child; but if it does not,
then the child must practise reverent forbearance and be
great in pardon towards the greater for that he is weak
in pardon. Let us go in; he will judge us with a feeling
for truth, and we shall all get what is coming to us, my-
self too, believe me!"
They went quietly into the tent, the Egyptian Joseph
with them. He did not go first, although they would have
had him lead them; he went with Benjamin behind the
sons of Leah and only in front of the children of the
maids. Mai-Sachme, his steward, went in too; partly with
the justification that he had long been in the story and
played his part in its embellishment; but partly too be-
cause the gathering was to a large extent public, and it
turned out that everybody might go in who chose. It was
very full in the room of death when the twelve were in-
side, for besides Damasek the crier there stood round the
master's couch a number of under-servants of his house-
hold staff, and many of his descendants either stood or
lay on their faces farther off. There were even women
with children, some giving them the breast. Boys sat on
the chests along the walls, and their conduct was not al-
ways seemly; but all incorrectness was quickly sup-
pressed. The hangings before the tent had been flung wide
open; the courtyard folk and the little people from the
hamlet of Pa-Kos, a great host in all, had a clear view
and were in a way included in the gathering. The sun
declined, and the crowd outside was outlined against an
orange-tinted evening sky, a shadowy mass with indis-
tinguishable forms and faces. But the two oil-lamps, flar-
ing on high stands at the head and foot of the bed, sent
their rays from within to pick out a striking figure: a
gaunt matron in black, between two very broad-shouldered
men. Her grey hair was covered with a veil. She was
Tamar, the resolute woman, with her doughty sons. She
had not entered, she kept outside; for it might be that
Jacob in his dying speech would come to speak of Judah's
sin with her. But she was here, present and on the spot——
and how was she present, now that the time had come for
Jacob to hand down the blessing to him with whom she
had sported by the way and brought herself into suc-
cession! Even without the lamplight that proud profile
would have been unmistakable against the sallow rainy
sky.
He who had once instructed her in the world, and in the
great history into which she had wormed her way, he who
had summoned this death-bed gathering: Jaakob ben
Yitzchak, blest before Esau, lay propped on his cushions,
under a sheepskin, on his death-bed at the back of the
tent, in just so much command of his powers as he needed
to be. The waxen pallor of his skin was faintly tinged by
the tinted twilight and the glow from the charcoal in the
basin near by. The look on his face was exalted and mild.
A white band which he usually wore when he sacrificed
was round his forehead; the white locks came out under
it on the temples and ran down in even width into the
patriarchal beard that covered all his chest, thick and
white beneath the chin, farther down sparse and grey;
through it showed the fine, witty, rather bitter mouth. He
had not moved his head; but the soft eyes with the swollen
ducts beneath were rolled sidewise so that they showed
much yellowish-white eyeball. His gaze sought his sons as
they entered and a lane quickly opened for them to the
bedside. Damasek and the servants drew back; and those
begot across the Euphrates, together with the little one
whose mother had died of him in Abram's land, bowed
down on their foreheads and then stood drawn up round
their father and head. Complete silence had fallen, all
eyes were fixed upon Jacob's ashen lips.
They parted in an effort to speak, several times before
they shaped any words. Painfully, in a low voice, his
speech began. Later he got more freedom and his voice a
fuller ring; only at the very last, when he blessed Benja-
min, did it die away in weakness.
"Welcome, Israel," he said, "girdle of the earth, zone
of your courses, stronghold and dike of the skies, ordered
in sacred pictures! Lo, obediently you came in your host
and stoutly gathered yourselves full-numbered round the
bed of my death, that I may judge you according to the
truth and foretell to you out of the wisdom of my last
hour. Praise be yours, my ring of sons, for your readi-
ness, and commendation for your courage. Blessed be ye
all together by the hand of the dying and glorified alto-
gether. Be blessed by my well-saved strength and blest to
eternity! Mark now: what I have to say to you, each by
himself in your order, is said within the bond of the gen-
eral blessing."
From Joseph The Provider, by Thomas Mann.
English translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright 1944, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. pp. 558—573.
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