Genesis 46-50: the Twelve Tribes of Israel and more family trouble brewing?

So, with Joseph having duly loaded up his brothers with food to see them through a journey in famine-stricken territory, Jacob decides that he wants to see the son he thought was dead.
The entire family decamps to Egypt, which gives an opportunity to list all of Jacob's sons and grandsons, which include the wonderfully named Huppim and Muppim, two of the many sons of Benjamin. They all settle in a land called Goshen, the whereabouts of which seem to be a bit hazy but is somewhere in the Nile Delta.
The famine, however, continues, and with his distinctly profit-oriented mind Joseph manages to get the desperate population of Egypt to swap first their cattle and horses and then all their land for bread, effectively reducing them all to sharecroppers:

"The Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.
And it shall come to pass in the increase, that ye shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones."
(Ch 47 v23-24)

Meanwhile, the dying Jacob calls Joseph to his bed and gives his blessing to Joseph's younger son Ephraim, instead of to the older Manasseh. You'd think, after the trouble that this kind of thing caused with first Ishmael and Isaac and then Esau and Jacob himself that people in this family would leave off giving complicated blessings, but apparently not.
Jacob also calls all of his other sons to him and decides to enumerate their failings and virtues, including Reuben's 'instability' (for sleeping with one of his father's concubines) abd Simeon and Levi's 'cruelty' (at last these two are getting some come-uppance for going around stabbing people left right and centre.) Judah, Zebelun and Issachar are apparently all ok, while the rest of the sons - Dan, Gad, Naphthali and Benjamin - all get rather ambivalent reviews, including:

"Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward."
(Ch 49 v17)

and:

"Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil."
(Ch 49 v27)

And so are listed the Twelve Tribes of Israel, setting a framework for many of the political and religious developments of the rest of the Old Testament.
Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's own first wife Leah, Jacob himself is buried at the tomb in Hebron built on land bought by Abraham. This is also described as being near Mamre, an intriguing site which is mentioned at a number of points in Genesis and seems connected with Sarah and Rebekah. The archaeological record suggests that it was an ancient cult site from bronze age times, prior to the eras associated with Biblical figures insofar as Old Testament characters can be identified with pre/historic periods, and which continued as a religious shrine under Jewish, Roman, Muslim and Crusader Christian rule. Christian pilgrims seem to have managed to destroy the last remains of the ancient


tree which was associated with the site. There is a nice little discussion of whether the trees actually associated with the site were oaks or terebinths here. Terebinths, by the way, may sound grand but are also the source material for turpentine, which is less swanky sounding.
As so, with a grand act of final forgiveness of his conniving brothers by Joseph, the Book of Genesis ends.