Bible TribesManasseh
United States
Territories
American Samoa
Northern Mariana Islands
United States Virgin Islands
Manasseh means Forget, just what Manasseh would do
The name Manasseh means forget, as his father Joseph was forgetting his trouble in Egypt at the birth of this son. Americans, unlike nearly every other nation on earth, have no memory of their own history. This is why.
Background
At the birth of Manasseh his father named him to mark the fact that the joy of having a son was causing him to forget his troubles in Egypt.
1 Genesis 41:51
51And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.
The expression house when used in the personal sense means litterally family. Joseph was missing his family and the birth of this son was comforting him. In a national sense the word house implies nation. Americans are particularly inept at remembering their roots in other countries. Some families take special care to maintain contacts with family members in the "old country" but for most the focus is simply on the present state of the country.
There was a widespread attempt to disconnect families from roots in other countries. This happened even with the changes in the spelling of names and because of the great distances back to home nations across the oceans.
When I first share this material with groups I often get the objection that the nation has no history before the 1770s and cannot be a people group that is any older. This objection is yet another reflection of this false American belief about not having any roots anywhere earlier in history. God is in the business of raising the dead and he did so with this very ancient tribe, as old as any of the others recorded in the Bible.
Forehead: The place of forgetting.
The name "Forget" which is what Manasseh means has several specific uses that matter to tracking references to Manasseh in scripture. The best is an important reference that warns that when wealth accumulates we as people will forget what God has done.
5 Deuteronomy 6:6-12
6And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
7And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
8And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.
9And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
10And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,
11And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;
12Then beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
