House of Ephraim

“ That is, he is yet among the peoples the Gentiles; they have not repented, they are not accustomed to the yoke, (the Jewish laws.) See Hos. viii. 12: “I have written unto him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.” Ephraim is a type, then, of the state of the Gentiles, when Christ came, and called in the believers among the Gentiles, immersed them into one body both Jew and Gentile, and they became one in his hand, that is, one kingdom, and both together constituted the whole house of Israel; that is, the seed of Christ, the companions of the spiritual Joseph. ”

“ Jacob having crossed hands, and given Ephraim the preference, looking as far forward as the kingdom of the ten tribes, which Ephraim was the head of, after the revolt from the house of David, that tribe, not content with that honour in the promise, was displeased if Manasseh had any honour done it in the mean time. It is a pity that kindred or relationship, which should be an inducement to love and peace, should be ever an occasion (as it often proves) of strife and discord. A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and contentions among brethren are as the bars of a castle. ”

“ That, from year to year, the daughters of Israel assemble together, and lament the daughter of Jephte the Galaadite, for four days.
Judges Chapter 12
The Ephraimites quarrel with Jephte: forty-two thousand of them are slain: Abeson, Ahialon, and Abdon, are judges.
12:1. But behold there arose a sedition in Ephraim. And passing towards the north, they said to Jephte: When thou wentest to fight against the children of Ammon, why wouldst thou not call us, that we might go with thee? Therefore we will burn thy house. ”

“ Said he, "Let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac;" Gen. 48. 16. For this reason, these two sons of Joseph, each, had a name as the head of tribes in Israel, "and he set Ephraim before Manasseh;" Gen. 48. 20.
The Lord further declared through his prophet Jeremiah, "I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn;" 31. 9.
By virtue of this adoption of Ephraim, as the head of the house of Israel, and Joseph Smith, Sen., being the oldest son of Ephraim, holding the Priesthood in this dispensation, he is Patriarch of the whole church, by right. ”

“ Should he do so, an old age free from care lay before him; but, if he joined the prince and his plan succeeded, how high he might rise! Terribly momentous was the choice confronting him, the father of many children, and beads of perspiration stood on his brow as, incapable of any coherent thought, he led Ephraim to Kasana's tent, and then hastened to his master. ”

“ I am confounded and ashamed, because I have borne the reproach of my youth.
20 Surely Ephraim is an honourable son to me, surely he is a tender child: for since I spoke of him, I will still remember him. Therefore are my bowels troubled for him: pitying I will pity him, saith the Lord.
21 Set thee up a watchtower, make to thee bitterness: direct thy heart into the right way, wherein thou hast walked: return, O virgin of Israel, return to these thy cities. ”

“ They make the king glad with their wickedness, and the princes with their lies. They are all hot as an oven, and devour their judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me. Ephraim, he mixeth himself among the peoples; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, and he knoweth it not. And the pride of Israel doth testify to his face: yet they have not returned unto the Lord their God, nor sought him for all this. ”

“ A pure soul shone through Ephraim’s open countenance, and showed his father that his real meaning had not been grasped.
“Never mind,” he shouted loudly, waving his arms in the air, “what is to come no man can stop. Give me something to drink, Ephraim.”
“Father,” the latter faltered, “don’t you think it will harm you?”
“Don’t be a fool, Ephraim!” cried Ascher, “you don’t know my constitution. ”

“ He marvelled at the reply and acknowledged the woman’s wisdom; and left the spot saying to himself, “If the women of this city are so wise, how much more exceedingly wise must its men be!”
Other authorities (including Ephraim’s contemporary, Gregory of Nyssa, who professes to collect the facts of his Encomium exclusively from Ephraim’s own written remains) give a somewhat different turn to this story. According to them, Ephraim approached the city, praying and expecting to meet at his first entrance there some holy and wise man by whose converse he might profit. ”

“ Viola was seated on her brother’s knee, her arms round his neck, whilst Ephraim with the gentle love of a brother for a younger sister, was stroking her hair, and whispering in her ear sweet words of solace.
The bird-cage was empty. ... That evening Ephraim sat up till midnight. Outside in the Ghetto reigned the stillness of night.
All at once Ephraim rose from his chair, walked to the old bureau which stood near the door, opened it, and took from it a bulky volume, which he laid upon the table in front of him. But he did not seem at all bent upon reading. ”

“ Tidings of the cruel fate of his son and grandson had reached him through the freed slaves he had left in Tanis; and the old man had torn his garments, strewed ashes on his head, donned mourning robes, and grieved bitterly for his beloved, noble, only son and promising grandson.
Now Ephraim was standing before him; and after Nun had laid his hand on his shoulders, and kissed him again and again, he asked if his son was still alive and remembered him and his people. ”

“ All his great powers, both mental and physical, he continued to devote to the people; but his nephew Ephraim, as a powerful prince of his tribe, who well deserved the high honors he enjoyed in after years, founded a home of his own, where old Nun watched the growth of great-grand-children, who promised a long perpetuation of his noble race. ”

“ The chief sources of information about his doctrine are the 56 rhyming discourses of Ephraem [Ephraim] against the heretics. Living at the court and enjoying the favour of the king of Edessa, he never attacked in his sermons the doctrinal system of the church, but spread his Gnostic views built upon a Valentinian basis in lofty hymns of which, besides numerous fragments in Ephraem [Ephraim] , some are preserved in the apocryphal Acta Thomae (§ 32, 6) . Among his voluminous writings there was a controversial treatise against the Marcionites (see § 27, 11) . ”

“ The prediction in Isa 7:8, that in sixty-five years more Ephraim was to be destroyed, so that it would be no longer a people, even if it referred to the transplantation of the heathen colonists to Samaria by Esarhaddon, as Usher, Hengstenberg, and others suppose, would by no means necessitate the carrying away of the last remnant of the Israelites by this king, but simply the occupation of the land by heathen settlers, with whom the last remains of the Ephraimites intermingled, so that Ephraim ceased to be a people. ”

“ When I hear him ask for Ephraim I know that mighty schemes are afoot, and, straining my eyes to the far distant green, I wonder that even old Ephraim should ever be called upon to make such efforts. But Ephraim has a way with him that makes for success. He is not to be used often, and then when he is he does his job well. ”

“ Prudence commanded him to curb his impatience and, as he glanced around, his eyes rested on the chamberlain's tent from which the old slave had just emerged to look for his master, who was still waiting in the prince's tent for his lord's return.
The old man had treated Ephraim kindly, and now asked him with good-natured urgency to come in and rest; for the youth needed sleep. ”

“ For Julian died in 363, and before that year Ephraim had not migrated from Nisibis to Edessa.
It is no doubt possible that Ephraim may have visited Egypt, [12] as the Life affirms, before proceeding to Cæsarea: as an anchorite he would naturally be drawn to the land where the anchorite life had its origin and its greatest development. Yet it is hardly probable that, eager as he was to see Basil at Cæsarea, he would, when setting out on his travels, have directed his course to Egypt first,—a country so distant, and lying in a direction so different, from Cappadocia. ”

“ Regarded as a tribe, it lay to the north of Benjamin, which traditionally belongs to it; but whether the young “brother” (see Benjamin) sprang from it, or grew up separately, is uncertain. Northwards, Ephraim lost itself in Manasseh, even if it did not actually include it (Judg. i. 27; 1 Chron. vii. 29) ; the boundaries between them can hardly be recovered. Ephraim’s strength lay in the possession of famous sites: Shechem, with the tomb of the tribal ancestor, also one of the capitals ”

“ Thou, whom they call Jehovah, mighty God of my fathers, hear me, Ephraim, a young inexperienced lad, of whom, in his insignificance, Thou hast probably never thought. I ask nothing for myself. But the people, whom Thou dost call Thine, are in sore peril. They have left durable houses and good pastures because Thou didst promise them a better and more beautiful land, and they trusted in Thee and Thy promises. But now the army of Pharaoh is approaching, so great a host that our people will never be able to resist it. ”

“ There are drunkards of Jerusalem, as well as drunkards of Ephraim; and therefore the mercy of God is to be so much the more admired that he has not blasted the glory of Judah as he has done that of Ephraim. Sparing mercy lays us under peculiar obligations when it is thus distinguishing. Ephraim's sins are found in Judah, and yet not Ephraim's ruins. They have erred through wine. Their drinking to excess is itself a practical error; they think to raise their fancy by it, but they ruin their judgment, and so put a cheat upon themselves ”

“ This is the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Ephraim by their families.
9 And the separate cities for the children of Ephraim were among the inheritance of the children of Manasseh, all the cities with their villages.
10 And they drave not out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer: but the Canaanites dwell among the Ephraimites unto this day, and serve under tribute. ”

“ Of Ephraim he tells us only that he raised his voice against Julian and his persecutions, and remained in Nisibis until its surrender, and then retired to a place called Beth-Garbaia, [3] where he had been baptized at the age of eighteen and had received his first instruction in the Scriptures and in psalmody. Persecution having arisen there against the Church, he fled to Amid, where he spent a year; and thence proceeded to Edessa (now Urfa) , which city, as soon as he came in sight of it, he fixed on as his permanent and final abode. ”

“ He first heard a faint scraping and, by the light of the fire which the guards kept on the hill-top as a protection against wild beasts, he saw Ephraim’s empty couch.
He uttered a sigh of relief; for the youth must have entered the ravine. ”

“ What had seemed to him grand, lofty, and worthy of the exertion of all his strength on that night when he sat before the tent where lay the delirious Ephraim, to-day lay far behind him as idle and worthless.
He no longer cared for the honors, dignities and riches which the will of the whimsical, weak king of a foreign people could bestow upon him. What to him was the well-ordered and disciplined army, among whose leaders be had numbered himself with such joyous pride? ”

“ The tribe of Ephraim - forty thousand and five hundred - Ephraim, as he was blessed beyond his eldest brother Manasseh, [38] , so here he is increased by thousands more than Manasseh, and more than the whole tribe of Benjamin, and his blessing continued above his brother, [39] . And thus the prophecy, [40] , was fulfilled: His younger brother (Ephraim) shall be greater than he, (Manasseh) . No word of God can possibly fall to the ground: he alone sees the end from the beginning ”

“ The head city of Ephraim has long been Samaria, and the head man in Samaria is now Pekah the son of Remaliah. These shall be made to know their own, their bounds are fixed, and they shall not pass them, to make themselves masters of the cities of Judah, much less to make Jerusalem their prey. Note, As God has appointed men the bounds of their habitation (Acts xvii. 26) , so he has appointed princes the bounds of their dominion, within which they ought to confine themselves, and not encroach upon their neighbours' rights. ”

“ His posterity multiplied in Egypt to the number of forty thousand five hundred men capable of bearing arms. In the land of promise, Joshua, who was of this tribe, gave them their portion between the Mediterranean west, and the river Jordan east. The ark and tabernacle remained long in this tribe at Shiloh; 346and after the separation of the ten tribes, the seat of the kingdom was in Ephraim, and hence Ephraim is frequently used to denote the whole kingdom. The district belonging to this tribe is called Ephratah, Psalm cxxxii, 6. ”

“ Ephraim felt compelled to ask himself... “how different our poor mother looked!”
With a violent effort he repressed the feelings which swelled his bosom. “Dear father,” he said, with tears in his eyes, “make yourself quite comfortable; you haven’t closed your eyes the whole night, you must be worn out. You are at home, remember...father!”
“It’s all right,” said Ascher, with a deprecating gesture, “WE fellows know other ways of spending the night.”
“WE FELLOWS!” The words cut Ephraim to the heart. ”