And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.
In thee shall Israel bless, х yªbaareek (H1288)]. The Hebrew verb signifies to bend the knee, to pray; and when it is used to express the act of man toward his fellows, it signifies that he prayed for a blessing upon them; for a benediction in the name of God is still a prayer.
Thus, even were the words not so plain as they are, the meaning of the first clause, "In (by) thee shall Israel bless," is expanded by the second, which is to the effect that the extraordinary measure of prosperity enjoyed by the two tribes, Ephraim and Manasseh, would become a proverbial form of expressing the best wishes for others: "God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh." Even apart from the meaning of the word, man cannot 'make blessed' through man; self-evidently he cannot bless through fore-fathers long since departed. Yet the very fact that the word is explained by the addition, "saying, God make thee," etc., shows that it is no ordinary idiom, as indeed it occurs in that one place only of Scripture. From God to his creature man, to "bless" is to make "blessed" (Pusey on 'Daniel,' page 481, note.