6438. From these things foretold by Israel regarding Joseph it may again be seen that every detail contains an inner meaning and that without that meaning scarcely anything is intelligible. The person who fixes his attention solely on the literal meaning may think that these things which were stated regarding Joseph were going to happen to his descendants from Manasseh and Ephraim, because in verse 1 Israel says that he was going to tell them what would happen to them at the end of days. But in the historical accounts concerning those descendants in the Books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, or Kings, one does not find anything of the sort happening to them. They were no more greatly blessed than any other tribe; rather, like all the others they were taken away into captivity and scattered among the nations. From all this it is evident that the real meaning is not what presents itself in the sense of the letter but something else contained in the internal sense. Furthermore without the internal sense one cannot begin to know what all the things said about Joseph imply, namely these:
The son of a fertile one is Joseph, of a fertile one beside a spring; daughters, each one of whom marches onto the wall.
They exasperate him and shoot at him and hate him, do the archers.
He will sit in the strength of his bow, and the arms of his hands will be made strong by the hands of the powerful Jacob; from there is the shepherd, the stone of Israel.
The blessings of his father will prevail over the blessings of his ancestors, even as far as the desire of the everlasting hills.
They will be on the head of Joseph and on the crown of the head of the Nazirite among his brothers.
Every single one of these statements is of such a nature that no one can ever know what it really means except from the internal sense.
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