Chapter Forty-Seven

Joseph presents his father and five of his brothers to Pharaoh, with Pharaoh’s permission settles his father’s family in Goshen and supplies them with all provisions

Genesis 47:1. And Joseph came and told Pharaoh and said: My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and everything they have, have come from the land of Canaan; and behold, they are in the land of Goshen. Joseph, reporting to Pharaoh about the arrival of his father and brothers, says: • that they have settled in Goshen (v. 1), perhaps hinting that this region would be most suitable for the settlement of his nomadic relatives, and • that the latter have come with all their possessions, consisting of flocks and herds, and consequently (according to Abarbanel) are sufficiently well-to-do and cannot be especially burdensome to the country.

Genesis 47:2–6. And he took five of his brothers and presented them to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to his brothers: What is your occupation? They said to Pharaoh: Your servants are shepherds of sheep, we and our fathers. And they said to Pharaoh: We have come to dwell in this land, because there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, for the famine is severe in the land of Canaan; therefore please let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen. And Pharaoh said to Joseph: Your father and your brothers have come to you; the land of Egypt is before you; settle your father and your brothers in the best of the land; let them live in the land of Goshen; and if you know that capable men are among them, put them in charge of my livestock. From among his brothers (from the Hebrew “from the end”—according to some sources—by selection from both sides—from the eldest and the youngest), Joseph selects five men for presentation to Pharaoh; according to Midrash and Talmud—Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, and Benjamin (Beresch. r. Par. 140, s. 471)—as the strongest among the brothers (Talmud) or, conversely, the weakest (Midrash). Pharaoh in his speech and arrangements displays special tact and delicacy, combined with complete goodwill toward Joseph, which he extends to his relatives. Toward Joseph’s brothers, as men of vigor and strength, he asks about their occupation (v. 3); toward Jacob, evidently making the impression of a decrepit old man, he inquires about the years of his life (v. 8). Then, when Joseph’s brothers, precisely following Joseph’s advice, told Pharaoh of their occupation and asked for permission to settle (from the Hebrew—“to sojourn”, to dwell temporarily, lagur, they came to Egypt) in Goshen, Pharaoh gives his permission not directly to them, but through Joseph, so that they must first thank their brother. Moreover, in allowing Joseph to choose for his tribe from the best lands of the country, Pharaoh, nevertheless, does not forget the interests of the latter and of his own court: by settling the Hebrews in Goshen, on the northeastern border, Pharaoh hoped to oppose this friendly tribe to the pressure of Asian nomadic and predatory peoples; besides, by the skill of some of Joseph’s brothers, experienced herders, he intended to make use of them to improve the raising of livestock in his domains.

Genesis 47:7–9. And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and presented him to Pharaoh; and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to Jacob: How many years have you lived? Jacob said to Pharaoh: The days of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning. The audience of Jacob with Pharaoh is characteristic less of the nobility and magnanimity of Pharaoh than especially of the true patriarchal dignity, worthiness, and faith of Jacob: twice (upon his coming and going) greeting Pharaoh according to the etiquette of the courts of eastern kings (cf. 1 Sam 1:31) and, without doubt, with sincere recognition to the king of Egypt for his favors to his family, he nevertheless conducted himself with the true dignity of a patriarch and priest (the text does not speak of his bowing before Pharaoh). Especially strong in the old man is the sense or consciousness of the transitory and fleeting nature of earthly life—this “sojourning” (v. 9)—and with this, naturally, is assumed the existence and strength in Jacob of faith in the life to come (cf. Heb 6:19). Turning his gaze to the past he had lived through, Jacob calls the 130 years of his life “few and evil days”—few in comparison with his father, who lived 180 years, and his grandfather Abraham, who died at 175 years (it is possible, however, that Jacob also has in mind earlier, even antediluvian patriarchs). Jacob, who lived seventeen years more after this, was clearly occupied with the thought of death long before its coming, like his father Isaac (Gen 27:1-2).

Genesis 47:11. And Joseph settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best part of the land, in the land of Ramesses, as Pharaoh had commanded. The region where Joseph, by Pharaoh’s permission, settled his father and brothers is called here the “land of Ramesses”; yet above (Gen 45:10 and following) the territory designated for their settlement is called the land of Goshen, and below, when speaking of their actual dwelling in Egypt, their place of habitation is presented as Goshen (v. 27), (Gen 50:8; Exod 9:26 and others). From this it follows that the name Ramesses either was a synonym for Goshen or designated a certain part of the latter. In the book of Exodus (Exod 1:11) it is said that the Hebrews built Pharaoh “store cities,” Pithom and Ramesses. Consequently, the city, newly built or merely strengthened by the Hebrews, could have received the name of the region in which the Hebrews lived—Ramesses. The latter word from Egyptian (according to Yablonsky’s etymology) means: “people engaged in herding”—a name standing in connection with the principal occupation of the Hebrews. Josephus identifies Ramesses with Heliopolis: “Pharaoh gave Jacob and his family Heliopolis, because here were also pastures designated for the royal herds” (Antiquities 2:7, 6). The Seventy, as we saw in Gen 46:28, bring Ramesses near to Heliopolis.

Genesis 47:12. And Joseph provided his father and his brothers and all his father’s household with bread, according to the needs of each household. Having settled his father and brothers in Goshen or Ramesses, Joseph thoughtfully supplied them with bread with their families, taking into account the number of children (from the Hebrew “according to the mouths of the children”).

Joseph’s activity in the governance of Egypt during the years of famine

Genesis 47:14–26. Joseph gathered all the money that was in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan, for the grain which they were buying, and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house. And the money failed in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan. All the Egyptians came to Joseph and said: Give us bread; why should we die before you, because the money has failed? Joseph said: Bring your livestock, and I will give you [bread] for your livestock, if your money has failed. And they brought their livestock to Joseph; and Joseph gave them bread for horses, and for the flocks of sheep, and for the herds of cattle, and for donkeys; and he supplied them with bread in that year for all their livestock. And this year passed; and they came to him in the following year and said to him: We will not hide from our lord that the money has been exhausted and the livestock of our flocks are with our lord; there is nothing left before our lord except our bodies and our lands; why should we perish before your eyes, both we and our lands? Buy us and our lands for bread, and we and our lands will be servants to Pharaoh; and give us seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate. And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine was severe upon them. And the land became Pharaoh’s. And he made the people servants from one end of Egypt to the other. Only the land of the priests he did not buy [Joseph], for the priests had a portion from Pharaoh, and they ate the portion which Pharaoh gave them; therefore they did not sell their land. And Joseph said to the people: Behold, I have now bought you and your land for Pharaoh; here is seed for you, and sow the land; when the harvest comes, you shall give a fifth part to Pharaoh, and four parts shall remain for you for sowing the fields, for your sustenance and for those in your households, and for sustenance for your children. They said: You have saved our lives; let us find favor in the sight of our lord and be servants to Pharaoh. And Joseph made it a law in the land of Egypt, even to this day: a fifth part to Pharaoh, except only the land of the priests, which did not belong to Pharaoh. The political and economic activity of Joseph in Egypt during the famine, which resulted in: • the accumulation of all the money of the inhabitants of the country in Pharaoh’s treasury (vv. 14–15); • the transfer of all the livestock of private owners into the possession of Pharaoh (vv. 16–18), and finally, • the transfer of all the land into the possession of the king, so that the inhabitants appeared merely as lessees of Pharaoh, and even, more precisely, as serfs bound to him (vv. 19–24)—such activity often provoked severe condemnation from many interpreters of the Book of Genesis. And indeed, this activity was incompatible with the humanitarian spirit of Old Testament legislation, as it appeared especially in the laws concerning the Sabbatical and Jubilee years (Lev 25:4-13), indeed conflicted with it to the opposite extreme, all the more so because, as Josephus reports (Antiquities 2:7, 7), the physical desolation of the country was accompanied by the moral corruption of its impoverished inhabitants. But this reproach is considerably weakened for Joseph by the complete, apparently, impossibility of acting otherwise. As the manager of the treasury and the grain supplies of the country and Pharaoh, Joseph was evidently extremely limited by the despotic power of the latter; equally so by the right of the state upon the property and even the person of a citizen in all antiquity. From the text (v. 25) it is also evident that the universal enslavement of all the inhabitants of Egypt to the king did not appear to him to be such a heavy and humiliating matter as it appears to people of modern times. In any case, Joseph had no authority and generally could not distribute bread to the needy natives (let alone foreigners) for nothing. Even apart from a prohibition from Pharaoh to carry out such gratuitous distribution of bread, such distribution could have been accompanied by a very undesirable, rapid, and complete disappearance of all supplies in the entire country. Besides, the payment of a fifth part for grain-bearing Egypt was not a particularly heavy tax. The sacred writer, as always, neither praises nor censures the activity of Joseph, but merely states the actual historical facts, which in their essential parts are fully confirmed by extra-biblical historical evidence. From the testimonies of Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus it is known that all the lands in Egypt were the property of the crown; only the caste of priests owned land as property, and the caste of warriors in certain periods of Egyptian history received land holdings from the Pharaohs as feudal tenure; in general, all inhabitants were merely lessees in relation to Pharaoh and the state. The Biblical account of Joseph’s activity contains an indication of the origin of such a political and economic order in Egypt and incidentally gives interesting information about the introduction in Egypt of the double tithe (1/5), paid by inhabitants on all the produce of the earth (vv. 24, 26), and about the concentration of the taxpaying population, by Joseph’s order, in cities (v. 21 is read differently in the Hebrew Masoretic, differently in the Samaritan lists, in the Seventy, in the Vulgate, in Slavonic and Russian; according to the first reading—“he removed (Joseph) the people to cities from the end of Egypt to the end”; according to the second—“he made the people servants,” the Masoretes read the root abar in the hiphil—to transfer; the translators—abad in the hiphil: to enslave; the meaning of both readings is almost identical, but the Hebrew reading more precisely names Joseph’s actual operation, while the translations name its results). The chief interest of Joseph’s activity for the sacred writer is placed in the fact that this activity, as productive for the state welfare of Egypt, secured favorable treatment of the native population in Egypt toward the immigrant Hebrews. However, in the circumstance that Joseph enslaved the entire country to Pharaoh, although, without doubt, from serious state considerations (some interpreters attribute to the time of the Pharaoh contemporary with Joseph the digging of canals and artificial irrigation, which naturally was called forth by prolonged and universal famine in the country and for its accomplishment required enormous sums, which the state could obtain thanks to the system of taxation introduced by Joseph) and undoubtedly with the very best intentions and purposes—still there could be contained some justification for the enslavement of the Hebrews by the Egyptians that followed after his death.

Jacob with an oath bequeaths Joseph to bury his remains in Canaan

Genesis 47:27–28. And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they gained possessions in it, and were fruitful, and greatly multiplied. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; so the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were a hundred and forty-seven years. With the settlement of the chosen tribe in Egypt, a firm foundation was laid for its formation into a whole people, which was the object of the covenants of God to all the patriarchs. Now the patriarchal period, having fulfilled the purpose assigned to it by God, was coming to an end. Therefore the sacred writer reports information about the pre-death arrangements and actions of Jacob, anticipating his actual death, as also the subsequent multiplication of his offspring in Egypt (cf. Exod 1:7).

Genesis 47:29. And the time drew near for Israel to die, and he called to his son Joseph and said to him: If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and swear that you will show me kindness and truth, that you will not bury me in Egypt, The rite of oath by placing the hand under the thigh of him to whom the oath is given, mentioned twice in the Book of Genesis—regarding the oath of Abraham’s servant (Gen 24:2) and the oath of Joseph—always appeared mysterious, all the more so because neither in the subsequent biblical-Hebrew history nor in the history of other peoples is it found. In any case, this rite had a relationship to the offspring of Abraham (Gen 24:2) and Jacob (in the present passage), inasmuch as the offspring are represented as coming from the loins of the patriarch (Gen 46:26; Exod 1:5), and imposed on the one swearing a vow of faithfulness not only in relation to the one personally receiving the oath, but also in relation to his offspring. The connection to the cult of Phallus sometimes seen here by some interpreters is completely improbable; rather—with Jewish interpreters one can see in this rite an indication of circumcision, with some Christian interpreters—the promised Seed of the Woman in the first gospel.

Genesis 47:30–31. so that I may lie with my fathers; take me out of Egypt and bury me in their tomb. And Joseph said: I will do as you have said. And he said: Swear to me. And he swore to him. And Israel bowed upon the head of the bed. ******* The action of Jacob upon Joseph’s swearing to him is transmitted differently in the Hebrew Masoretic text and in the Greek Seventy. From Hebrew “he bowed upon the head of the bed” (a similar reading is given by the Targums, Aquila, Vulgate); according to the Seventy (also Syrian, Slavonic) “he bowed upon the top of his staff.” The difference stems from the confusion of Hebrew words: mittah, a bed, and matteh, a staff. In the first case, the idea emerges, analogous to that reported in 1 Sam 1:47 concerning the death of David: from weariness he leaned upon the bed, or in weakness could express his grateful feeling to God, and also to Joseph, only by bowing down to the head of the bed. In the second case (with the reading of the Seventy: ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου, cf. Heb 11:21), the idea of Jacob’s pre-death weakness remains in the shade (indeed, only in chapter 48 is it said that Jacob was confined to his deathbed), while the representation is brought forward that Jacob, having received what he asked from Joseph, reviews his entire pilgrim’s life, casts a glance at his pilgrim’s staff (cf. Gen 32:10) and, thanking God and Joseph, bows upon the top of this staff, thus performing toward Joseph the worship of him that was once revealed to him in a dream (37; cf. blessed Theodoret, answer to question 111). Most importantly, Jacob now turns away from this world and from men and directs all his thought and heart toward God. * * * According to the translation of the Seventy: “upon the top of his staff.”