Joseph of Egypt was a marvelously visionary prophet. Though only a fragment of the patriarchal blessing given him by his father Jacob has been preserved for us in the Bible, we know from that source that Joseph was promised that he would be a “fruitful bough, even a fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall” (Genesis 49:22).
This verse, as with countless others, is as a closed book to the rest of the world, yet to Latter-day Saints its meaning is most plain. Joseph’s descendants, representing both the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, would cross the ocean and come to what we know as the Americas.
From Lehi we learn that the ancient Joseph had seen the fulfillment of this promise in vision. Lehi knew this from what was preserved in the brass plates. What is apparently the same text has been restored to us by Joseph Smith in his inspired translation of Genesis 50. Here we learn that Joseph of Egypt told his family of that branch which was to be broken off and “carried into a far country.”