SYNOPSIS: Both Egypt and Canaan are hit hard by famine. Selling the stores of grain to the population, Joseph collects all the country's money and brings it to Pharaoh. When there was no money left people started clamouring for food, for they had nothing. Joseph accepts their livestock as payment, and distributes food to help people get through the year. The next year comes round and people no longer have animals left to barter for food, so they start to sell all they have: their own labour and their land. In this way Joseph concentrated ownership of all the land in Pharaoh's hands. He institutes an economic system in which people will be provided with seed to sow and must give a fifth of their product to Pharaoh in payment; the rest is theirs to consume or plant. An exception is made for the priests because their land has already been ceded to them by Pharaoh. The children of Israel remained in Egypt and were fruitful and multiplied.
- Text of the passage (in Nawat)
The events of this section are not attested historically in Egyptian records. Perhaps they have been included here to confirm Yosef's stature as Rescuer, not only of his family but of all Egypt as well... The description of Yosef's power is now complete; just as the brothers were ready to "become my lord's servants" (44:9), so now are the Egyptians (47:25). (EF, p. 201)
According to the theory of many eastern States, e.g. ancient Persia, both the land and the inhabitants were the property of the sovereign. After the Norman Conquest the land of England was in theory the property of the king. No doubt, our author in this passage gives a fairly accurate account of the tenure of land in Egypt in his time. We learn from the monuments that a very large proportion of the land in Egypt was held either by the king of by the priests; but there does not seem as yet to be any conclusive confirmation of the whole of the statements in this chapter as to tenure of land. The monuments do not confirm the statement that this tenure originated with Joseph. (CB, p. 388)
More than one modern writer has found in this report of the enslavement of the Egyptian peasant shocking proof of Joseph's inhumanity. But, as has been stressed repeatedly by more objective students, such censorious comments show little understanding of either history or literature. The Egyptian concept of state, whereby the king was viewed as a god, made the pharaoh an absolute ruler from the start, and hence the owner of all he surveyed, at least in theory... In practice, private ownership of land appears to have been sanctioned in the Middle Kingdom. But the pharaohs would seem to have reasserted their titular rights with the beginning of the New Kingdom, following the expulsion of the Hyksos. The need for a stronger government, which the Hyksos experience was bound to accentuate, may have brought with it corresponding curtailment of individual privileges.I shall allow myself a last word, however. In our preoccupation with how to interpret historically the statements in this passage let us not forget that what we are reading is neither an economic tract nor a historical thesis but a story. Not only is it quite unnecessary to assume that everything in this passage is completely true in terms of historical and political economy, it is not even required that it should all make sense, and according to most commentators, at least some of it doesn't.
To that extent, therefore, the agrarian changes that are here described may reflect actual socio-economic developments... That they should be credited in this narrative to Joseph is part and parcel of his idealized historical image. (EAS, p.353)
If the real object of emergency measures to store food and seed and control its distribution is to stop the country from starving to death then you do not charge the population all their money (or silver) for the supplies and then take that money out of circulation, you plough it back into the economy one way or another so that the population can buy more next year.
The text also begs other questions: why does Joseph both sell seed to the commoners and move the people from the land to the cities. What good was that supposed to do? If we follow the argument to the extent that Joseph had correctly predicted seven years of famine (which was not such an unlikely event given the ecology of the area, as we have seen), then we must assume that the government of Egypt were all aware of the forecast and were making plans for it: did the plans include turning the entire population into landless serfs who would not be able to sow seed (when the famine ended) and pay taxes, and so would now have to be provided for by a state which has just deprived itself of its source of income?
Verse 17 says that the starving people paid in horses for food, but it would seem that actually horses had not been introduced into Egypt yet at this time: obviously we will take this anachronism with a pinch of salt. Why, then, shouldn't we take with another pinch of salt the details of Joseph's economic policy described in the same text?
Speiser (pp. 351-2) points out another mystery: "The question may be raised at this point [i.e. v. 17, ARK] why it was necessary for the Egyptians to exchange their livestock for bread when it would have been simpler, and more provident, to kill off their animals gradually as a means of feeding themselves." After noting that "no plausible answer is immediately apparent" he goes on to suggest a couple of reasons, the last of which I find the most convincing: "the exigencies of storytelling."
END OF SECTION 11
The last verse of this passage (and hence of the eleventh parasha of Genesis) reads (47:27): wayyéshev yisra'el b'éretz mitzráyim b'éretz góshen wayye'axazu vah wayyifru wayyirbu m'od 'Thus Israel settled in the country of Egypt, in the region of Goshen; they acquired holdings in it, and were fertile and increased greatly.'
This is often considered to form part not of the preceding passage, which is basically about the Egyptian economy, but of the next one, which tells of the end of Jacob's life. Thematically, I think it could go either way. In narrative terms, it has the effect of a transition from the excursus about Joseph's agrarian policies, the subject matter of the present passage, back to the story's main concern which is the fate of Jacob's family and offspring. As such, it might be considered equally at home as a rounding off of this passage or an introduction to the next.
I have forced myself to place this line where tradition puts it, here at the end of the parashah wayyiggash, through my decision throughout this study to follow the divisions into parashot, so here it is. It isn't a bad place: it does set the stage for the further talk about Israel settling down in Egypt, which is where Genesis will leave things, which will occupy the last parashah to which we now come, wayxi.
We could also think of this sentence as having another function. For this is the end of the real Joseph story. Not of Genesis, nor of Joseph's life in the chronology of Genesis (indeed, even Joseph's father is still alive and kicking); but of the novel Joseph, yes. The drama has run its course, its three acts fully played out. What more do we want to happen in the story? Joseph gets taken to Egypt, makes good, gets in trouble, makes good, gets out of trouble, makes very good, Joseph's bad brothers come to Egypt, they meet, that situation is milked for every drop it has, fear, reconciliation, tears, forgiveness, Joseph's father comes to complete the family portrait, they stay and are given everything they need to have a good life, Joseph goes on making good. What else would we like to hear to be satisfied with a story well told? Only one thing: and they all lived happily ever after. But this is what 47:27 effectively says. Look again: 'Thus Israel settled in the country of Egypt, in the region of Goshen; they acquired holdings in it, and were fertile and increased greatly.' That, my friends, is as happily ever after as anyone gets to live in Genesis.
The only good stories that don't finish where they end are commercially highly successful Hollywood productions, and some stories like this one in the Bible. Occasionally the second part is also decent (I can think of Terminator II, and Exodus is pretty rivetting), more often the sequel is, well, a sequel (Acts of the Apostles comes to mind). Third parts... well, who actually stays up the whole night to find out all the measurements for the ark of the covenant? The thing about Genesis and the Joseph narrative is that there is a timeline (in the pre-Facebook sense, if anybody remembers it) that carries on from where the story ends. And the continuation of that timeline will be the parashah wayxi.
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