The expression “fullness of the Gentiles” (Hebrew melo’ haggoyim) appears four times in the scriptures. Let’s follow its thread and see where it leads. The first instance occurs in Jacob’s patriarchal blessing of Ephraim, the younger son of Joseph. There, Jacob identifies Ephraim’s end-time descendants as “the fulness of the Gentiles”:
“The Angel who redeemed me from all evil bless the lads, and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. And he held up his father’s hand, to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. And Joseph said to his father, Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head. And his father refused and said, I know it, my son, I know it. He also will become a people, and he also will be great, but truly his younger brother will be greater than him, and his offspring will be the fulness of the Gentiles” (Genesis 48:16–19).
A second instance appears in Paul’s interpretation of the allegory of the olive tree. There, he predicts that the Jews’ rejecting Jesus because of spiritual blindness opened the way for the Gentiles to come into God’s covenant. That condition, however, lasts only until the Jews are grafted back into their olive tree, which happens when “the fulness of the Gentiles”—Ephraim’s end-time descendants—have fully gathered:
“If some of the branches [the Jews] were broken off, and you [the Gentiles], being a wild olive tree, was grafted in among them and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. For if you boast, you aren’t sustaining the root but the root you. You will say then, The branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. Well, because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Don’t be high-minded but fear. For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not you. Behold, then, the goodness and severity of God on those who fell, but toward you, goodness—if you continue in his goodness, otherwise you too will be cut off.
“And they also [the Jews], should they no longer abide in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you [the Gentiles] were cut out of the olive tree that is wild by nature, and was grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more will these, who are the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery lest you should be wise in your own conceit, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:17–27).
A third instance shows that the natural lineages of the house of Israel will be grafted back into their olive tree through “the fulness of the Gentiles” or end-time descendants of Ephraim: “Now, the thing which our father meaneth concerning the grafting in of the natural branches through the fulness of the Gentiles, is, that in the latter days, when our seed shall have dwindled in unbelief, yea, for the space of many years, and many generations after the Messiah shall be manifested in body unto the children of men, then shall the fulness of the gospel of the Messiah come unto the Gentiles, and from the Gentiles unto the remnant of our seed. . . .
“Yea; they shall be remembered again among the house of Israel; they shall be grafted in, being a natural branch of the olive-tree, into the true olive-tree. And this is what our father meaneth; and he meaneth that it will not come to pass until after they are scattered by the Gentiles; and he meaneth that it shall come by way of the Gentiles, that the Lord may show his power unto the Gentiles, for the very cause that he shall be rejected of the Jews, or of the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 15:13–17).
In a fourth instance, Jesus, too, predicts the house of Israel’s restoration through “the fulness of the Gentiles” or end-time descendants of Ephraim. That is the time when the prophecies of Isaiah are fulfilled:
“I command you that ye shall write these sayings after I am gone, that if it so be that my people at Jerusalem, they who have seen me and been with me in my ministry, do not ask the Father in my name, that they may receive a knowledge of you by the Holy Ghost, and also of the other tribes whom they know not of, that these sayings which ye shall write shall be kept and shall be manifested unto the Gentiles, that through the fulness of the Gentiles, the remnant of their seed, who shall be scattered forth upon the face of the earth because of their unbelief, may be brought in, or may be brought to a knowledge of me, their Redeemer. And then will I gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfil the covenant which the Father hath made unto all the people of the house of Israel.
“And then the words of the prophet Isaiah shall be fulfilled, which say: Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion. Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem; for the Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of God” (3 Nephi 16:4–5, 17–20; cf. Isaiah 52:8–10).
