“He crossed his hands”
But Israel stretched out his right hand and put it on the head of Ephraim, the younger; and crossing his hands, he put his left on Manasseh's head, although Manasseh was the firstborn. (Genesis 48:14 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An old man awkwardly mixing up which grandson is which.
The cultural key
In a blessing, the right hand carried the primary portion, so which head it rested on was everything. Jacob, now blind like his own father Isaac had been, deliberately crosses his arms to lay the right hand on the younger Ephraim over the firstborn Manasseh. When Joseph tries to correct him, Jacob refuses: the reversal is intentional. It is the same younger-over-elder pattern that has run through Genesis, now enacted by the man who himself, as the younger twin, once stole the blessing meant for Esau.
Recovered meaning
The crossed hands are not a blunder but a choice: the greater blessing goes, once again, to the younger. Jacob, who cheated to get the firstborn's blessing in the dark, now knowingly hands it past the firstborn, the pattern of grace over birth order completing a full circle.