Ephraim: Joseph's younger son, and the tribe, hill country and northern kingdom that carry his name.
Genesis explains the name by its sound. Joseph calls his second son Ephraim, he says, because "God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction" (Genesis 41:52), playing on the Hebrew verb "to be fruitful" (פָּרָה). Most scholars read that as the Bible's own play on the sound of the name rather than its actual origin. The ending matches the endings on other Hebrew place names, including the names for Egypt and Jerusalem, and the word most likely began as a label for a fertile stretch of hill country that was only later imagined as a man.
From there the name travels a long way:
- a man, Joseph's younger son, whom Jacob adopts and deliberately blesses ahead of his older brother Manasseh (מְנַשֶּׁה)
- the tribe descended from him, which takes a rich central allotment and grows into the strongest of the northern tribes
- the hill country it settles, which the storytellers use ever after as a plain address, the way we might say "the highlands"
- the whole northern kingdom, in the mouths of the prophets, one tribe's name standing in for ten
- a few ordinary places named from it: a gate in Jerusalem's wall, a forest, a small town
The prophets are where the name does its real work. Hosea reaches for it in almost every chapter and keeps turning it against itself: a people whose name sounds like "fruitful" has gone barren, corrupt and ripe for exile. Isaiah uses it for the north through the war years of the eighth century, most memorably in his cry against "the drunkards of Ephraim" (Isaiah 28:1). Jeremiah and Ezekiel then soften it into hope. Ephraim becomes the firstborn son God cannot bring himself to give up (Jeremiah 31:9, 31:20), and the stick of Ephraim is joined to the stick of Judah (יְהוּדָה) in one hand (Ezekiel 37:16 to 19).
One historical detail is worth knowing. Assyrian records never call the northern kingdom Ephraim; they call it "the house of Omri" and "Samerina." Even the book of Kings usually says "Israel" (יִשְׂרָאֵל). Naming the whole north "Ephraim" is largely an inside way of speaking, at home above all in the prophets.