Notes 69: The children of Israel in Egypt (47:1-12)

SYNOPSIS: A delegation of the family goes to speak to Pharaoh and the interview is held. It goes well and they are granted the right to take up residence in Goshen. Jacob also has an audience with Pharaoh. Joseph looks after everyone and they weather the period of famine.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

The passage consists of five short parts: (1) Joseph goes to have a word with Pharaoh about his father and brothers (vv. 1-2); (2) Pharaoh speaks with a delegation from Joseph's brothers (vv. 3-4); (3) Pharaoh tells Joseph to settle his relatives in Goshen (vv. 5-6); (4) Pharaoh meets Jacob (vv. 7-10); (5) Joseph settles his family in the Rameses region (thought to be synonymous with Goshen) and looks after them (vv. 11-12).

There is no obvious reason why all these things could not have occurred in the sequence given, but source critics think the text is composite. Speiser's suggestion is that vv. 7-12 originate from a different source than vv. 1-6. The first six verses are, they think, the continuation of the end of the preceding passage, where it will be recalled that Joseph instructed his brothers about what to say when they went to see Pharaoh, from which the scenes described here follow very naturally and "end" with Pharaoh giving Joseph the go-ahead to settle his family in Goshen. What verses 7-12 describe is an audience between Jacob and Pharaoh in which little of substance is said (Jacob blesses Pharaoh, Pharaoh asks Jacob how old he is, Jacob answers, then blesses Pharaoh again... the usual sort of stuff you expect in an audience between a patriarch and a pharaoh) and a report that Joseph set his father and brothers up with some land and made sure they were doing alright. However many sources this originated from, to the audience it is all much the same story.

47:2 umiqtze exaw laqax
Lit. 'he took from the extreme of his brothers,' which is understood to have meant 'he selected the best of...'

47:6 anshe xayil
'Capable' or 'qualified men.'

sare miqne asher ‛al asher li
(JPS) 'put them in charge of my livestock', but see EH's note: "The literal meaning of the phrase sarei mikneh is 'officers of cattle," referring to superintendents of the royal cattle, an office mentioned frquently in Egyptian inscriptions. This appointment makes some of Joseph's brothers officers of the crown and grants them legal protection not usually accorded aliens."

47:7 wayvárekh ya‛aqov et par‛o
Most commentators agree that b-r-k in this context has the secondary sense of 'greet' rather than 'bless.' Naturally the ceremonious greeting in such a circumstance could well have included some such expression as "long may Pharaoh life", if we want to think of that as a "blessing" of sorts. Speiser translates as 'paid respects', which is equally appropriate.

47:9 y'me sh'ne m'guray, bime m'gurehem
Twice Jacob in his reply to Pharaoh uses the root g-w-r 'reside' apparently as a synonym of x-y-h 'live', although he also uses the latter root twice, and even duplicates the exact same phrase with both in y'me sh'ne m'guray 'the days of the years of my residence' and y'me sh'ne xayyay 'the days of the years of my life', which suggests that they are perhaps just synonyms in this context. We can hardly consider the choice of g-w-r to be euphemistic when he says the same thing with x-y-h in the same breath! But there is an overall tone of self-deprecation in the whole answer, and perhaps g-w-r for 'live' was part of that: rather than admit he had lived a long time (which apparently was deemed a virtue), he says, in effect, nu, my father and grandfather (avotay) lived longer. It reminds one of: "It's a nice place you have here." - "We like it." Anything that smacked of self-aggrandizement when speaking to a pharaoh would doubtless have come across as rude. The expression y'me sh'ne 'the days of the years of [my life, etc.]' also occurs in 25:7, which says w'élle y'me sh'ne xayye avraham.

47:11 ra‛m'ses
Rameses was a later name for the region hitherto in the text referred to as Goshen. Acc. to Speiser, the new name came into use later than the period of the patriarchs, and so is strictly an anachronism, but such a substitution in the text is a very natural thing.