“Thou Art the Fruit of My Loins”: The Interrelated Symbolism and Meanings of the Names Joseph and Ephraim in Ancient Scripture,

There are 5 thoughts on ““Thou Art the Fruit of My Loins”: The Interrelated Symbolism and Meanings of the Names Joseph and Ephraim in Ancient Scripture,”.

1. Pingback: “The Messiah Will Set Himself Again”: Jacob’s Use of Isaiah 11:11 in 2 Nephi 6:14 and Jacob 6:2 | The Interpreter Foundation

2. I was curious to know if “fruit of X loins” was common in Joseph’s day or used in any particular way. I used Google’s cool ngram feature to search variations of “fruit of X loins” in 17, 18th, and 19th century literature.

   Other than in Mormon publications that were quoting from Nephi 3, I could find almost no use of the phrase except in direct reference to Acts 2:30.

   “Fruit of X loins” doesn’t show up in any other context. It wasn’t part of the parlance. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t the subject of published sermons or doctrinal theses. It was, for the most part, a mere afterthought in Biblical commentaries dealing with Acts 2:30.

   And nowhere is the “fruit of X loins” wordplay discussed.

   This means that the Book of Mormon parallels to the Hebrew wordplay cannot be explained by Joseph’s cultural context which is really cool.

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3. Consistent with Joseph being fruitful, his descendants in America “multiplied exceedingly” (Jarom 1:8; Mosiah 2:2),” which is also evidenced by the great numbers frequently referred to in the Book of Mormon.

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   • Yes, that’s a nice connection. 🙂

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4. Great comment! Thanks, Dustin! 🙂

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