Notes 74: Death and burial of Jacob (49:28 - 50:13)

On the reason for skipping passage 73, "Jacob foretells the fortunes of the Israelite tribes", see my note at the end of the comments on passage 72.

SYNOPSIS: Before dying Jacob asks his sons to bury him in the cave of Machpelah where his father and grandfather were buried. The grieving Joseph had his father's body embalmed Egyptian style, a process which took forty days, and his father was mourned for seventy days before Joseph sent word to Pharaoh to say he was taking his father back to Canaan to fulfil his last request. A large group went with them. After crossing the Jordan they held a memorial service. The local Canaanites were impressed by the solemnity of the funeral, and thinking they were Egyptians called the place thereafter Abel-Mitzraim ("Egyptian mourning"). Jacob's sons bury their father at Machpelah.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

Genesis is not very big on death scenes, but here it seems to make a bit of an exception to allow us to witness the solemn moment of the last patriarch's passing, or to use the quainter biblical phrase, his "gathering unto his people." The passage shows a dying Jacob telling his sons to bury him in the family tomb in Canaan.

Actually Jacob had already told Joseph that this was what he wanted in a more private and intimate scene (see ch. 47, end); there, indeed, he made his son swear he would do this. A note in EH suggest that this was really out of foresight on Jacob's part, because by having Joseph swear to him in his last days that he would fulfil his wish, when the time came - as it now does - Joseph would be in a stronger position when asking Pharaoh to permit him to carry it out. And sure enough, Joseph now speaks to Pharaoh in just those terms (50:5): avi hishbi‛áni lemor [etc.] w'‛atta e‛ele na... 'My father made me swear that (etc.) and now let me go...' The Pharaoh agrees (v. 6): ‛ale uq'vor et avíkha ka'asher hishbi‛èkha 'Go and bury your father as he made you swear.'

Given that Jacob had already made these arrangements with Joseph, the point of Jacob's final speech about the same question is not to make his wishes known (they already were); its literary function, at least, is surely more "atmospheric" than informative. The choice of topic, his place of burial, is of more than technical interest, it is an occasion to touch the alert audience's sensibilities at this critical moment in the story and to remind us of names and places that are emotionally charged and also of great symbolic significance: qivru oti el avotay 'Bury me with my fathers', bisde efron haxitti 'in the field of Ephron the Hittite', bisde hammakhpela 'in the field of Machpelah', ‛al p'ne mamre 'facing Mamre', b'‛éretz k'ná‛an 'in the land of Canaan', avraham 'Abraham', and then the litany of his forebears who were also buried in that tomb: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and his own wife Leah. He repeats himself, mentioning the cave and the field and Ephron and the Hittites several times as if to make sure the point is made, like a composer penning recurrent echoes of the main theme at the finale, until everybody in the audience is visualising Machpelah, the patriarchs' resting place in Canaan, and remembering and reminiscing with him, at the moment when Jacob expires (v. 33): waykhal ya‛aqov l'tzawwot et banaw waye'esof raglaw el hammiTTa wayigwa‛ wayye'ásef el ‛ammaw 'When Jacob finished his instructions to his sons, he drew his feet into the bed and, breathing his last,, he was gathered to his people.'

For source critics, on the other hand, the repetition of Jacob's instructions is naturally seen as evidence of distinct sources: in ch. 47 J was speaking, and here it is P.

Joseph has the Egyptian "physicians" (rof'im) embalm Jacob. There is a period of mourning in Egypt, and then a solemn procession including both the servants of Pharaoh and Jacob's family carry his embalmed body all the way to Canaan where, after another memorial service, he is taken the last leg of the journey to his final resting place in Hebron, where his sons bury him, fulfilling Joseph's promise, and the audience hears one last return of the refrain (50:13): 'in the cave of the field of Machpelah, the field near Mamre, which Abraham had bought for a burial site from Ephron the Hittite.'


49:28 kol élle shivTe yisra'el sh'nem asar
'All these were the tribes of Israel, twelve [in number].' This, referring to the foregoing recitation of the fortunes of Jacob's sons (or the tribes they represent), is the first unambiguous mention of the tribes of Israel and also the first explicit reference to the fact that the tribes numbered twelve.

w'zot asher dibber lahem avihem
The lahem can equally well be understood as 'to them' (= alehem) or 'concerning them'.

49:31
This is the only place where it is stated that Isaac, Rebecca and Leah were buried at Machpelah.

49:32 miqne hassade w'hamm'‛ara asher bo me'et b'ne xet
I would say that this doesn't quite make sense. It seems to say, literally: 'the livestock of the field and the cave (that is) in it from the sons of Heth (= the Hittites)', which is unintelligible and incoherent in the context, so it can't really mean that: the observation in CB that "the construction is awkward" is an understatement. It makes much better sense, both semantically and syntactically, if we read miqnat 'acquisition of' instead of miqne 'livestock of': 'the acquisition of the field and the cave (that is) in it from the Hittites.' In the absolute state the two words, 'livestock' and 'acquisition', are homonyms: miqne. Since the following word is hassade 'the field', perhaps an absent-minded copyist assumed that 'livestock of the field' was the more likely collocation; there is a difference of only one letter between the consonantal spellings of the two words. The LXX transalation assumes the meaning I propose: en ktêsei tou agrou..., while the Vulg. omits the entire verse!

49:33 wayyigwa‛
The non-hollow qal verb g-w-‛ is an alternative way of saying m-w-t 'to die`, which is usually translated as 'expire, breathe one's last, give up the ghost, pass away' or some such euphemism for death: wayyigwa‛ = wayyámot. It was used in the same form (the prefix perfect) in Genesis to describe the moments of death of Abraham (25:8, wayyigwa‛ wayyámot avraham), Ishmael (25:17, again wayyigwa‛ wayyámot) and Isaac (35:29, wayyigwa‛ yitzxaq wayyámot), followed in every case by the stock phrase wayye'asef el ‛amaw 'and was gathered to his people.' In the present verse wayyámot, the common way to say 'he died', is omitted, and the phrase wayye'esof raglaw el hammiTTa 'he drew his feet into the bed' (only here) is added. The verb g-w-‛ occurs just two other times in Genesis, both in the story of Noah and the Flood, once in the prefix imperfect, (6:17) kol asher ba'áretz yigwa‛ 'everything on earth will die', and once in the perfect, (7:21) wayyigwa‛ kol basar haromes ‛al ha'áretz 'all flesh that moves on the earth died.'

50:5 b'qivri asher karíti li
(JPS) 'In the grave which I made ready for myself.' The qal verb k-r-h 'to dig' also occurred in 26:25.

50:10 góren ha'aTad
The location has not been identified with certainty, but the meaning of góren is 'threshing floor'; here, however, it must be a place name. Acc. to EH it was probably Tell el-Ajjul, on the coast a little south of Gaza, and the note adds: "A little to the south of the town lies a Late Bronze Age cemetery, which was a burial ground for high-ranking Egyptians serving in Canaan and for Egyptianized Canaanite rulers and dignitaries."

asher b'‛éver hayyarden (and again in v. 11)
'Which is beyond the Jordan.' This geographical indiation doesn't seem coherent either with the location given for the place in EH (see above) or with the burial of Jacob in Mamre. Of course, we could be looking at variants from different sources there.

50:11 mitzráyim
Probably meaning mitzrim 'Egyptians' (people) rather than the country, 'Egypt.'

qara sh'mah
The 3s verb form (qara) sometimes, as here, acquires an impersonal meaning: not 'called' but 'was called', cf. the same thing with wayyómer (48:1 and elsewhere; see my note there). As for sh'mah, the feminine suffix no doubt implies ha‛ir 'the city.'

avel mitzráyim
['Mourning of Egypt']. Speiser doubts the veracity of the etiology, suggesting that the name is more likely to contain the word avel 'watercourse, brook', rather than ével 'mourning' (so: Egypt Brook).

Notes 72: Jacob blesses Joseph and his sons (48:1-22)

SYNOPSIS: Having been told that his father's health was failing, Joseph went to see him and took his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, with him. Jacob blesses Joseph, and adopts his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, as his own, making them his heirs. Then Jacob, who can no longer see, asks for the two young men to be brought to him. Although Joseph has placed his oldest son, Manasseh, on Jacob's right hand side, Jacob places his right hand on his younger brother Ephraim's head by crossing his arms, and so he gives them his blessing. When Joseph saw that Jacob had placed his right hand on Ephraim's head he thought he had got mixed up, so he tried to correct him. "No father," he says, "this one is the eldest." "I know, son, I know," replies Jacob, "but the younger one is going to become greater than his brother."

• Text of the passage

Genesis, the book, is drawing to a close now, but let us not lower our guard for it isn't over yet, and it continues to challenge us in this its antepenultimate chapter. The scene is a poignant one as Jacob, now a very old man nearing his end, receives a private visit from his best-loved Joseph, who appears here not in the guise of the virtual ruler of Egypt, as in the last few passages but, for one more time, as the first son of Jacob and Rachel, to receive his father's parting words and blessing, and he brings along with him his own two oldest sons, Menasseh and Ephraim, whom he begot with his Egyptian wife in Egypt before Jacob's arrival there. This makes for a fitting and moving scene prior to Jacob's final goodbye, but wait: there's more going on here than that. This is a passage that begs to be read on several levels, in fact the audience is spoilt for choice, and if it is not too overwhelming it may even attempt to read it on these different levels simultaneously. This is true whether we try to read the chapter as history (i.e. looking for facts) or as literature (attending to the storyteller's message).

And to give it even more dimensions, this chapter is full of parallels or recaps of figures and themes that have been presented previously in the course of this great book, which somehow seems longer psychologically than it actually is in words or pages, so that one gets a bit of a feeling here of Jacob's and his fathers' lives proverbially passing before our eyes, as perhaps they are before Jacob's.

For the source critics, meanwhile, there are still further problems of layering and intertwining strands to be unravelled and collated, because the text undoubtedly shows signs of a composite process of formulation. The chapter is therefore complicated on ever level and in every direction, and it is difficult to know where to begin.

The way the whole business about Jacob's apparent mix-up when blessing the grandchildren is narrated might almost be viewed as slapstick humour: old man's eyes are dimmed and his mind seems to be befuddled too, Joseph brings over his sons taking care to line them up with his father's right and left hand to conserve the proper order of precedence, father crosses his arms over (really??) and so switches their blessings. He gets their order wrong when naming them too! It's Menasseh and Ephraim, not Ephraim and Menasseh, Dad! "I know what I'm doing" responds Dad, who will not be corrected.

We might be forgiven for thinking this is the author allowing us to sneak in a smile or two before the increasingly inevitable and sad moment of Jacob's passing away, which the audience knows cannot be far off now, and at the same time probably a clever way of conveying the idea of Jacob's feeble-mindedness in his extreme old age, if it were not that we know better, for wait a minute: this is all too familiar, isn't it? If Jacob himself was not winking to us here behind Joseph's back, then the narrator certainly must be. Switched blessings, making the younger of two sons the primary heir, old blind father asking who is before him before giving his benediction: I wonder where we've heard all that before!

This may just be an optical illusion but it almost looks as if the author decided to play a joke on our latter-day documentary hypothesists too. Whether it is through haplessness and chance or through the cleverness of the narrator, there are non-sequiturs in this scene which we can choose whether to read either as seams missing a stitch in the compiler's handiwork when patching together his sources, or as a brilliant, highly realistic portrayal of a revered patriarch's senior moments. One such would be the switching of hands during the blessing of the boys, already referred to above: Jacob resists Joseph's attempt to correct him with the words, "I know, Joseph, I know", I know what I'm doing, don't tell me what I have to do! Does he really know, or is it just an old man's expression of annoyance at being called out, coupled, of course, with fate (or God) pursuing her own designs? Well actually, the story works both ways and it would be nice to think it is a little of each.

Then there is the impression of an old man's rambling which is just a little too realistic to be discounted, even if it might be possible to construct alternative explanations of why he isn't really rambling at all, what he's saying is all pertinent if you will just listen properly (I suspect a lot of old people feel the same way about their own "ramblings"; so what?). He does it more than once: have another look at vv. 3-7, and I think you can't fail to miss it if you silently read the paragraph imagining the voice of Abe Simpson. Now read verse 8.

Now there are admittedly other ways in which the audience (and we, as part of that audience) may choose to hear this. In an analysis of sources we might defend the logical integrity of Jacob's mind by arguing that it isn't his fault that subsequent editors happened to fit originally alternative accounts into one whole in just such a manner as allows this impression spuriously to arise. Apart from that approach, we can also keep Jacob sane by blaming his eyes. Joseph heard that his father's health was failing and he went to see him, taking his sons with him. He announces himself to Jacob: "I am your son Joseph, I have come to see you." It doesn't say anywhere prior to v. 8 that Joseph had told Jacob that his sons were there with him. Jacob launches into a monologue full of reminiscences which takes him from Luz (Bethel) to Bethlehem via Padan-Aram, in the middle of which he mentions Joseph's two sons Menasseh and Ephraim (or rather, as he insists on calling them, Ephraim and Manasseh): that doesn't prove that Jacob knew they were there, if he were blind and they hadn't opened their mouths yet, it could just have been a coincidence.

Even if so, would the audience have been likely to hear it that way, given the present shape of the passage and their knowledge that the grandchildren were in the room?

Perhaps we should take the position that there is more than one kind of "logic" (or coherence) in terms of which such a passage can be read and understood. There is the logic of "the facts", which may or not be historically "true" facts but which are facts assumed to be true for the sake of the story: facts such as that the boys were in the room, Jacob did or didn't know they were there, Menasseh was the firstborn, Jacob did or didn't actually know which one was the firstborn, and all the other "data" that are treated as factual (or as unknown) in the framework of the narrative. Then there is the "logic" of the story qua story as told by the narrator and as grasped by the listener or reader who is listening to or reading the story qua story. That story demands to be listened to as well, and it may also have things to say to us. There are even things that make perfect sense to us as part of a story even if they might not quite seem to fit on the level of "facts", and so there can be more than one criterion for what amounts to coherence. Playing with those borderline uncertainties is part of what literature is about, surely; and the audience's complicity, its willingness to "play the game" within such coordinates, on such a playing field, in accordance with such unspoken rules, is what reading literature is about (and listening to it, too). Back all those years ago, was Jacob's father Isaac really so perceptually and cognitively challenged that he could be fooled by Jacob as he was through the quite unsophisticated sham that Rebeccah devised? Is this a historical question or a literary one? As a literary question, the answer is yes, and the proof is that he was, in the story - so he must have been. Is that true?? Is what true?

Now put on your Abe Simpson voice again and read vv. 21-22 (at the end of the passage), doing a gradual fade-out in the course of verse 22. There are two ways to "read" this two-verse sequence: that's one. The other (which I certainly have no intention of belittling or ridiculing) is that generally adopted by scholars, who ask questions and puzzle over what Jacob meant about Shechem, and "giving" Shechem to Ephraim and Manasseh. Don't feel bad if you don't quite recall the episode concerning Jacob and Shechem (see ch. 34) as having gone quite as implied by Jacob's words here: you're right, it didn't! Unless Jacob's memory is wavering too...

This verse implies a conquest of Shechem by united Israel, and a special gift of the city to the tribe of Joseph. Verses 21, 22 are commonly given to E; as are also the statements in xxxiii.19 that Jacob came in peace to Shechem and bought land there; and portions of the story in ch. xxxiv that Simeon and Levi sacked Shechem, and that Jacob had to flee from the vengeance of the Canaanites. These traditions cannot be reconciled... (CB, p. 393)

A laconic and obscure allusion. Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that Heb. [sh'khem] may stand either for the city of Shechem or the common noun "shoulder." In the latter case, we would have here a reference to a mountain side or slope, specifically Mount Gerizim, which dominated Shechem... To be sure, we have no independent notice of a conquest of Shechem by Joseph; nor does xxxiv state that the brothers who massacred the inhabitants actually retained the city itself. But the alternative interpretation runs up against the same difficulty, inasmuch as "mountain slope" would likewise presuppose possession of Shechem. For the present, at any rate, no plausible solution is in sight. (EAS, p. 358)

It is likely... that that sh'khem here... is connected with the city of Shechem, a place closely associated with Jacob and Joseph... In that understanding, the passage refers to some tradition in the life of Jacob (other than the one in chapter 34) concerning his participation in a war against Shechem, which the Bible has not otherwise preserved. (EH p. 298)

Hebrew unclear. We do not know to what event Yaakov is referring in this entire verse. (EF, p. 207)

48:1 wayyómer l'yosef
Occasionally, as here, wayyómer l' means not 'he told him' but 'he was told.'

48:4 hin'ni mafr'kha w'hirbitíkha un'tattíkha liqhal ‛amim
'I will make you fertile and numerous, making of you an assemly of peoples.' As a matter of fact it was Jacob's father, Isaac, who gave Jacob this blessing upon sending him away to Padan-Aram (28:3): w'el shadday y'varekh ot'kha w'yafr'kha w'yarbékha w'hayíta liqhal ‛amim 'May El Shaddai bless you and make you fertile and numerous, so that you become an assembly of peoples.' 

48:7 méta ‛alay raxel
'Rachel died on me.' This English translation may jar too much stylistically to be used, probably because it belongs to too colloquial a register for the solemnity of both the present occasion and the sorrowful fact Jacob is returning; it is nonetheless the meaning of méta ‛alay, which is better rendered into Spanish as se me murió Raquel; it is also perfectly translated by Yeh. as איז מיר געשטאָרבן רחל iz mir geshtorbn rokhl. That is to say, ‛alay lit. 'on me' expresses an ethic dative with an adversative connotation, i.e. it suggests that it was something bad (for him) that happened. But that implication is backgrounded, and I am therefore not entirely convinced by translations such as JPS 'Rachel died, to my sorrow' which foreground the sentiment and make it more explicit and specific. It is a bit like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly.

48:11 r'o fanékha ló fillálti
(JPS) 'I never expected to see you again.' 'Expect' is one of the meanings of the piel of p-l-l; cf. the meaning 'to pray' of the more common hitpael. Its complement is the fronted infinitival phrase 'to see your face.' 

w'hinne her'a oti elohim gam et zar‛èkha
'And here God has let me see your children as well.' In this context her'a is perhaps best translated not as 'to show' but in the more primary causative (or rather "permissive") sense of 'to allow to see', though in fact either way works.

48:12 wayyotze... wayyishtáxu ár'tza
Note that both verbs are singular: Joseph performed both acts then, he brought the boys out from between his knees (me‛im birkaw) and he bowed down. I may be missing something but I fail to see any textual evidence for Speiser's and EH's unexplained assertion that birkaw refers to Jacob's knees; it could, but where does it say it must? Most translations say 'his', which is prudent. So also the LXX; the Vulg. however, inserts patris after de gremio rather than suo, but either choice would have implied the same default interpretation. The LXX, however, commits another mistake by rendering wayyishtáxu as prosekunêsan 'they prostrated themselves' (which would have been wayyishtaxawu).


48:14 sikkel et yadaw
The verb is a hapax legomenon, but such a meaning seems to be necessary from the context. In the perspective of tribal history the assumed meaning of this episode is that in an earlier period the Menasseh tribe dominated but later on Ephraim became the stronger tribe; this anecdote may be seen as an a posteriori rationalization of this change of course, insinuating that the rise of Ephraim was sanctioned by the will of the ancestors.To later generations, of course, that story is no longer known or pertinent, whereas the episode itself remains; henceforth it will have a different "meaning." The human intellect likes everything to have a meaning and it appears to be programmed to search for one; an orphaned signifiant bereft of its earlier signifié may drop out of circulation or it may have a new sense attached to it if one is deemed felicitous, so getting a new lease on life. It is a form of recycling. The proper question is not: "What does this mean?", it is "What does this mean... to whom?"

48:15 wayvarekh et yosef
Note that although in the following blessing the beneficiaries are the boys, it says here that Jacob blessed Joseph. However, perhaps a blessing on Joseph's sons was considered to be, by implication, a blessing on Joseph himself too. The LXX says êulogêsen autous 'he blessed them' rather than êulogêsen iôsêph.

haro‛e oti me‛odi ‛ad hayyom hazze
'My guide/shepherd all my life up until this day.' This is the first intimation in the Hebrew Bible of the figure of speech which compares the God of the patriarchs, in his relation to his people, to a shepherd; cf. the 23rd Psalm's YHWH ro‛i lo exsar 'YHWH is my shepherd, I shall not want.' The word is ro‛e, the participle of r-‛-h 'to pasture, tend, keep (flocks) etc.' The metaphor is natural enough in a pastoral community and is furthermore said to haven been widespread throughout the ancient Middle East that frequently occurs in its literature (EH, p. 296).

48:17 wayyéra‛ b'‛enaw
(JPS) 'he thought it wrong', but this verb usually means 'be displeasing' (cf. 21:11 wayyéra‛ haddavar m'od b'‛ene avraham ‛al odot b'no 'The matter was to displeasing to Abraham on account of his son' (this is about the suggestion that his son Ishmael and Hagar should sent away); God reassures him, saying (21:12): al yera‛ b'‛enékha ‛al haná‛ar etc. 'Do not be displeased (or worried) on account of the boy...' Some translations translate this as 'Abraham was distressed...'

48:19 w'zar‛o yihye m'lo haggoyim
The tradition translation of m'lo haggoyim as 'a multitude of nations' which goes back to the LXX (eis plêthos ethnôn) is questioned by Speiser who glosses the phrase as meaning 'shall suffice for nations' which he suggests is a way of saying "'shall become a quantity of (=sufficient for) nations,' i.e., sufficient in numbers to constitute nations."



NOTE ON 73: Jacob foretells the fortunes of the Israelite tribes (49:1-27)

The passage that follows this one is considered the most archaic part of Genesis, and it presents special challenges to translators and commentators. I am going to continue my policy of skipping this section for the time being and dealing first of all with the small amount of material that still remains to complete Genesis, after which I will have to come back to passage 73 and perhaps devote a special study to it. Therefore the next passage commented on in the blog will be number 74.

Notes 71: Jacob asks to be buried in Canaan (47:28-31)

SYNOPSIS: Jacob lives in Egypt for several years. As he approaches the end of his life he asks Joseph to promise him he will bury him in Canaan.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

As readers of Genesis as literature we may see this last section of the book, following the dénouement of Joseph's story in the eleventh section, as a tying of loose ends in a way relevant, not so much to that story, but to the larger picture of Genesis within the even broader narrative framework of the Pentateuch. Thus Genesis goes back briefly to being the history of the patriarchs which commenced in ch. 12 and is now drawing to its final conclusion with the death and burial of Jacob and a footnote or two about the final fate of his sons.

This tying-up process gets going without further ado in this very short passage in which Jacob calls Joseph (described simply as b'no, his son) to his bedside, states that his death is near and has him make a promise: Joseph must swear to his father that he will not bury him in Egypt, where he is now living, but in Canaan, the land from whence he came. 

The whole scene is quite reminiscent of another "promise scene" in ch. 24, where Abraham summoned his chief servant and made a similar request (24:2): wayyómer avraham el ‛avdo... sim na yad'kha táxat y'rekhi 'Abraham said to the servant...: Put your hand under my thigh'; compare (47:29): wayyiqra livno l'yosef wayyómer lo im na matzati xen b'‛enékha sim na yad'kha táxat y'rékhi 'He summoned his son Joseph and said to him: Do me this favor, place your hand under my thigh.' Placing one's hand under someone's thigh was evidently a custom accompanying a solemn promise to an elderly person. 

But the actual promises also share some common points. In ch. 24, Abraham tells his servant: w'ashbi‛akha... asher lo tiqqax issha livni mibb'not hakk'na‛ani asher anokhi yoshev b'qirbo ki el artzi w'el moladti telekh w'laqaxta issha livni l'yitzxaq 'I will make you swear... that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but will go to the land of my birth and get a wife for my son Isaac', and in the present passage, Jacob says to Joseph: al na tiqb'réni b'mitzráyim w'shakhavti ‛im avotay un'satáni mimmitzráyim uq'vartáni biqvuratam 'Please do not bury me in Egypt; when I lie down with my fathers, take me up from Egypt and bury me in their burial-place.' 

Both patriarchs ask for something tying them to their respective lands of origin. Abraham through his son, Jacob through his final resting place. Abraham looks back to Haran, Jacob to Canaan. Abraham does not want his son to marry a Canaanite; Jacob does not wish to be buried in Egypt. 

Do we all have to abandon our point of departure in order somehow to return to it?

Notes 70: Joseph governs (47:13-27)

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)

This is a difficult text to comment on without a great deal more knowledge of history, especially economic and social history, than I certainly possess, so I can only refer readers to the text itself and, for what they are worth, the following quotes from commentaries:

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.
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)

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. 

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.

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.

Notes 68: Arrival (46:28-34)

SYNOPSIS: Jacob sends a messenger ahead to tell Joseph that he is coming to Goshen, and Joseph meets him there. They hug, weep, and Jacob says: "Now I can die because I have seen you and I know you are alive." Joseph explains to his family that he is going to arrange for them to meet Pharaoh, and when he asks them about their occupation they are to tell him that they are animal herders. That way they can stay in Goshen, because Egyptians don't like to mix with animal herders.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

The narrative of Jacob's journey to and arrival in Egypt is resumed here, after the passenger list (vv. 8-27) which we have just finished reading. No doubt the story would have run more smoothly without that interruption. What is more, the genealogical information it contains is merely a summary of names that can be gleaned from other places either in Genesis or in other parts of the Torah (Numbers ch. 26).

Why is the story interrupted in this way? Speiser's suggestion is (EAS, p. 346): "A record of Jacob's family was deemed necessary on the eve of the sojourn in Egypt, and this seemed to be the best place to give it." And another rationale in terms of narrative technique comes to mind: this may be a very old example of the device still practised in Hollywood today of using a temporary insertion of argumentally "extraneous" material to suggest the passage of time to the audience.

That should mean that if we wish to skip the boring bit (vv. 8-27) we could read as far as v. 7 (...hevi itto mitxráy'ma '[all these] he brought with him to Egypt') and then pick up again at v. 28 (w'et y'huda shalax l'fanaw el yosef... 'He sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph...') and just keep going. The emotional meeting between Joseph and Jacob takes place. Jacob utters his memorable line (v. 30): amúta happá‛am axare r'oti et panékha ki ‛odkha xay. This much has taken all of three verses to narrate.

Then (v. 31) Joseph says to the arrivees something that may have been meant to sound like "just go through customs", but comes out as perhaps not quite so routine a procedure: "I'll go and let Pharaoh know," he says - okay... - "and tell him that my family from Canaan have come to join me." And he goes on to give them a useful tip: "When Pharaoh calls you in for an interview and asks you about your occupation, tell him you are sheep herders and that's what you've always done in your family." Why? "That way," Joseph explains to them (and us), "you'll be able to stay in the Goshen region, because Egyptians don't like mixing with shepherds."

The interview goes fine and Pharaoh will be happy enough to let them stay in Goshen. But as a reader, was there just a weird moment there or wasn't there? Had not Pharaoh himself sent carts (or wagons?) to help Jacob and his people bring all their things to Egypt to settle? Yet at the beginning of the next passage (47:1), wayyavo yosef wayyagged l'far‛o wayyómer avi w'axay... bá'u me'éretz k'ná‛an w'hinnam b'éretz góshen 'Joseph came and reported to Pharaoh saying: "My father and my brothers.. have come from the land of Canaan and are now in the region of Goshen"' as if that was all news to Pharaoh.

The source critics offer a solution: different sources. Not only did the genealogical section originate from a different place than the narrative sections, they suggest, but the narrative sections themselves are no doubt composite in origin, merging two similar but not identical accounts of Jacob's migration.

Speiser proposes that all of vv. 2-27 of this chapter represent insertions from not one but two sources into a narrative from a third source (J, the "Primitive Document"), which would thus have been interrupted after v. 1 and resumed now at v. 28. The insert that starts at v. 2 tells of God's appearance to Jacob at Beersheba. This is followed by the family embarking on their onward journey to Egypt (with Pharaoh's carts or wagons), and then the listing of the sons and grandsons of Jacob. If we skip over all of that then what we are left with is Jacob, at the end of ch. 45, deciding that they will go to Egypt so that he can see Joseph before he dies (45:28), going to Beersheba to offer sacrifices (46:1) and sending Judah ahead to Joseph (46:28, omitting all the other stuff just mentioned), whereupon Joseph comes out to meet them at Goshen, and then arranges for them to be interviewed by Pharaoh. Judah is thus the messenger who mediates with Joseph to arrange for a smooth arrival and reception in Egypt - and Joseph now starts negotiating with Pharaoh and instructing the brothers on what to say.

The way the source critics fit this all together is by assuming that the preceding passage in which, before going back to Canaan, the brothers are told to bring Jacob to Egypt is also a composite section where two accounts of this episode have been combined: in one, Pharaoh invites the brothers to bring Jacob and settle in Egypt (and even sends them wagons!), while in the other, Joseph does so. Therefore there is now, in the present passage, a version where Joseph awaits their arrival but the matter will still need to be broached with Pharaoh, since in this parallel universe he doesn't know yet.

That's one way to look at it. Another is that perhaps Pharaoh had already invited them to Egypt but it was Joseph's idea that they should stay in Goshen specifically, and so he coaches his brothers to give the right answers in the upcoming interview which, according to his caluclations, will prompt Pharaoh to decide to settle them in Goshen.

46:28 l'horot l'fanaw gósh'na
This text is obscure and presumed to be corrupt.   

Notes 67: Jacob and his sons set out for Egypt (46:1-27)

SYNOPSIS: Jacob/Israel stops along the way to make sacrifices to the God of his father at Beersheba. God, appearing to Jacob in a vision, tells him not to worry, because God will accompany him to Egypt and make his descendants a great people. "I will be there with you, I will bring you home when you die, and Joseph's hand will close your eyes." And so they all came to Egypt: seventy people in all (they are listed), with all their livestock and belongings.

• Text of the passage (in Nawat)

This passage actually has two parts. The first tells of the journey of Jacob and his sons from their home in Canaan to Egypt. The second part lists all the people (or at least the menfolk) who made the move, and who, together with Joseph and his sons, constitute Jacob's family: altogether, seventy souls. This part of the passage reads like a brief genealogy, without listing wives and daughters, and without any mention of anyone's age so that, unlike the standard tol'dot passages, no conclusions can be drawn about absolute chronology. An exception concerning the mention of wives is that Jacob's progeny is organised into four sections according to whether their mother was Leah, Zilpah, Rachel or Bilhah.

The first part of the passage, which tells how Jacob undertakes the journey to Egypt, is a last look back in the direction of the patriarchal era which is now effectively coming to a close. The business of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Canaan is now done. Abraham and Isaac are in their graves at Machpelah, where Jacob too will be brought back and buried one day, but for now he must bid farewell to them and to his home (presumably around Hebron). One last stop in Canaan is made at the southern sanctuary of Beersheba, once frequented by his father Isaac. There, God appears to Jacob in a night vision one more time and speaks to him, as in days gone by, repeating familiar words of reassurance: I am the God of your father; don't be afraid; I will make a great nation out of you. And God adds two new promises: I will accompany you to Egypt, and when your time comes to die I will make sure your body is returned to Canaan and your son Joseph is there to put you to rest.

46:1 wayyissa‛ yisra'el
We can't know for certain where Jacob set out from, but we may like to think that he had been living at Hebron, which is where the family had mostly resided since Abraham established his home in Mamre. This is also the last place where it is mentioned that he was dwelling (37:14): wayyómer lo lekh na r'e et sh'lom axékha w'et sh'lom hattzon wahashivéni davar wayyishlaxéhu me‛émeq xevron wayyavo sh'khéma.

wayyavo b'éra sháva‛ wayyizbax z'vaxim
Beersheba was a fitting place for Jacob's last farewell in life to the land of his birth. Located on the southbound road from Canaan in the direction of Egypt, some 25 miles south of Hebron, it had figured prominently in the comings and goings of all three patriarchs.

46:3 anokhi ha'el elohe avíkha
This must be read as an apposition: ha'el, elohe avíkha '(the) El, your father's God' or rather 'your father's God, El.' Treating el and elohim as if it were the same word creates an unnecessary conundrum for translators here; clearly they are not! This is not the only place where El takes the definite article: see 31:13 anokhi ha'el bet el and my note on it.

al tira
'Do not be afraid.' We often find these words spoken by God when he appears to the story's characters. God often makes such appearances in times of distress, in which case al tira can be construed to mean "don't worry, it's going to be alright", but the same words also occur when there is not such a context, so we should consider the idea that perhaps they refer to the commotion caused to characters by the simple fact of having God appear to them. In 15:1 he told Abram: al tira avram anokhi magen lakh etc. and in 26:24 he told Isaac: al tira ki itt'kha anokhi uverakhtíkha etc. But in the present instance God specifies what it is that Jacob should not be afraid of: al tira mer'da mitzráyma 'Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt.' The refrain "I am God, don't be afraid" seems to have been so firmly established that it shows up perhaps in the Christian gospels of Luke (ch. 1), where God's angel announces himself to Zacharias with the words μη φοβου, and later in the chapter says the same thing to Mary.

46:8 w'élle sh'mot b'ne yisra'el
'Israel's (i.e. Jacob's) sons/children' or 'the children of Israel, the Israelites'? The collocation b'ne yisra'el has already occurred prior to this in the latter sense in 32:33 (‛al ken lo yokh'lu v'ne yisra'el et gid hannashe), and in the former in 42:5 (wayyavo'u b'ne yisra'el lishbor b'tokh habba'im) and most recently in 45:21 (wayya‛asu khen b'ne yisra'el wayyitten lahem yosef ‛agalot). Except for Dinah and Serah (v. 17), only males are listed.

46:12 wayyámot ‛er w'onan b'éretz k'ná‛an
'Er and Onan had died in the land of Canaan' in accordance with the story of Tamar (ch. 38).

46:23 uv'ne dan xushim
'Dan's sons were: Hushim.' Sic!