Глава 47

Joseph introduces his father and five brothers to Pharaoh, with Pharaoh's permission he settles his father's family in Goshen and supplies them with all supplies. Gen.47:1. And Joseph came and told Pharaoh and said, “My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and with all that they had, have come from the land of Canaan; and behold, they were in the land of Goshen. Joseph, reporting to Pharaoh about the arrival of his father and his brothers, says: • that they stopped at Goshen (v. 1), perhaps hinting that this area would be most suitable for the settlement of his nomadic relatives, and • that the latter came with all their property, consisting of large and small livestock, therefore (according to Abarban) they are quite wealthy and cannot be particularly burdensome for the country. Gen.47:2–6. And he took five men from among his brothers and presented them to Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to his brothers, “What is your occupation?” They said to Pharaoh, “Thy servants are the shepherds of the sheep, both we and our fathers.” And they said to Pharaoh: We have come to dwell in this land, because there is no pasture for the livestock of your servants, for there is a great famine in the land of Canaan; Therefore 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; in the best place of the earth you will settle your father and your brothers; let them live in the land of Goshen; and if you know that there are capable people among them, make them overseers of my cattle. From among his brothers (from the Hebrew “from the end” - according to some sources - by choice from both sides - from the oldest and the youngest), Joseph chooses 5 people to present to Pharaoh, according to the Midrash and Talmud - Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Issachar and Benjamin (Beresch. r. Par. 140, s. 471), - as the strongest among the brothers (Talm.) or, conversely, the weakest (Midr.). Pharaoh, in his speech and orders, shows special tact and delicacy, combined with complete goodwill towards Joseph, which he transfers to his relatives. He asks Joseph's brothers, as young and able-bodied people, about their occupation (verse 3); Jacob, who apparently gave the impression of a decrepit old man, he asks about the years of his life (verse 8). Then, when Joseph’s brothers, exactly following Joseph’s advice, announced to Pharaoh their occupation and asked for permission to settle (from Hebrew - “to wander”, to live temporarily, lagur, they arrived in Egypt) in Goshen, then Pharaoh gave his permission not directly to them, but through Joseph, so that they had to thank first of all their brother. At the same time, allowing Joseph to choose for his tribe from the best lands of the country, the pharaoh, however, does not forget the interests of the latter and his own court: by settling the Jews in Goshen, on the northeastern border, the pharaoh hoped to oppose this friendly tribe to the pressure of Asian nomadic and predatory tribes; In addition, he plans to use the skill of some of Joseph's brothers, experienced cattle breeders, to improve cattle breeding in his domain. Gen.47:7–9. And Joseph brought Jacob his father, and presented him to Pharaoh; and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to Jacob: How many years of your life are you? Jacob said to Pharaoh, The days of my sojourning are one hundred and thirty years; The days of my life are small and miserable and have not reached the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their wanderings. Jacob's audience with Pharaoh is characteristic not so much of the nobility and generosity of Pharaoh, but especially of the truly patriarchal greatness, dignity and faith of Jacob: twice (at his arrival and departure) greeting Pharaoh in accordance with the etiquette at the court of eastern kings (cf. 1 Kings 1:31) and, without a doubt, with a sincere feeling of gratitude to the king of Egypt for the benefits to his family his own, however, he behaves with the true dignity of a patriarch and priest (the text does not speak of his admiration for Pharaoh). The elder has a particularly strong feeling or consciousness of the temporary, transitory significance of earthly life - this “wandering” (v. 9), - with which, naturally, Jacob’s existence and strength of faith in the afterlife are assumed (cf. Heb. 6:19). Turning his gaze to the past, Jacob calls the 130 years of his life “few and miserable days” - small compared to his father, who lived 180 years, and his grandfather Abraham, who died at 175 years old (it is possible, however, that Jacob also means the early, even antediluvian patriarchs). Jacob, who lived after this for another 17 years, apparently, like his father Isaac (Gen. 27:1-2), was occupied with the thought of death long before it occurred. Gen.47:11. And Joseph settled his father and his brothers, and gave them possession in the land of Egypt, in the best part of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh commanded. The area where, with the permission of Pharaoh, Joseph settles his father and brothers, is called here “the land of Rameses”; meanwhile, above (Gen. 45:10, 46:28, etc.) the territory intended for their settlement is called the land of Goshen, and equally below, when their actual residence in Egypt is spoken of, their place of residence appears to be Goshen (v. 27), (Gen. 50:8; Exod. 9:26, etc.) It follows that the name Raamses was either synonymous with Goshen, or designated a well-known part of the latter. In the book. Exodus (Exodus 1:11) states that the Hebrews built Pharaoh "store cities" Pithom and Rameses. Consequently, a city newly built or only fortified by Jews could receive the name of the district in which the Jews lived - Raamses. The last word from Egyptian (according to Yablonsky’s etymology) means: “people engaged in shepherding” - a name in connection with the main occupation of the Jews. Josephus identifies Raamses with Heliopolis: “Pharaoh provided Jacob and his family with Heliopolis, because there were pastures here intended for the royal shepherds” (Ancient 2:7, 6). LXX, as we saw in Gen. 46:28, brings Rameses closer to Heliopolis. Gen.47:12. And Joseph supplied his father and his brothers and all his father's house with bread, according to the needs of each family. Having settled his father and brothers in Goshen or Rameses, Joseph thoughtfully delivered bread to them and their families, taking into account the number of children (from the Hebrew “by the mouth of a child”). Joseph's activities in governing Egypt during the famine years Gen.47:14–26. Joseph collected all the silver that was in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan for the grain that they bought, and Joseph brought the silver into the house of the Pharaohs. And the silver ran out 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 our silver is gone? Joseph said: Drive in your livestock, and I will give you [bread] for your livestock, if you have run out of money. And they drove their cattle to Joseph; And Joseph gave them bread for horses, and for flocks, and for herds, and for donkeys; and he supplied them with grain that year for all their livestock. And this year passed; and they came to him the next year and said to him, “We will not hide from our lord that our lord’s money and herds of cattle are exhausted; We have nothing left before our lord except our bodies and our lands; Why should we perish in your eyes, both us and our lands? buy us and our lands for grain, and we and our lands will be slaves to Pharaoh, and you give us seeds so that we may live and not die, and so that the land will not be desolate. And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, because the Egyptians sold each of his fields, for hunger overcame them. And the land went to Pharaoh. And he made the people slaves from one end of Egypt to the other. Only [Joseph] did not buy the land of the priests, for the priests were assigned a plot from Pharaoh, and they ate from their plot, which Pharaoh gave them; That's why they didn't sell their land. And Joseph said to the people, Behold, I have now bought you and your land for Pharaoh; Here are the seeds for you, and sow the ground; When the harvest comes, give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four parts will remain for you to sow the fields, for food for you and for those in your houses, and for food for your children. They said: You saved our lives; may we find favor in the sight of our lord and may we be slaves to Pharaoh. And Joseph made it a law for the land of Egypt, even to this day, that a fifth should be given to Pharaoh, excluding only the land of the priests, which did not belong to Pharaoh. The political and economic activities of Joseph in Egypt during the famine, the consequences of which were: • accumulation of all the money of the inhabitants of the country in Pharaoh’s treasury (vv. 14–15); • the transfer of all livestock of private owners to the property of Pharaoh (vv. 16–18), finally, • the transfer of all the land into the ownership of the king, so that the inhabitants were only tenants of the pharaoh, and even, more precisely, his serf slaves (vv. 19–24) - this kind of activity often aroused severe condemnation from many interpreters of the book. Genesis. And, indeed, this activity was not reconciled with the humane spirit of the Old Testament legislation, as it appeared especially in the laws on the Sabbath and Jubilee years (Lev. 25:4-13), and even diverged to the contrary, especially since, as Josephus reports (Ant. 2:7, 7), the physical disaster of the country was accompanied by the moral corruption of its ruined inhabitants. But this reproach is significantly weakened for Joseph by the complete, apparently, impossibility of acting differently. As the manager of the treasury and grain reserves of the country and the pharaoh, Joseph was obviously extremely limited by the despotic power of the latter; as well as the right of the state to the property and even the personality of a citizen throughout antiquity. From the text (v. 25) it is also clear that the total enslavement of all the inhabitants of Egypt to the king did not seem to him as difficult and humiliating as it seems to people of modern times. In any case, Joseph did not have the authority and generally could not distribute bread to the needy natives (not to mention foreigners) for free. Even regardless of Pharaoh’s prohibition against such a free distribution of grain, such a distribution could be accompanied by a very undesirable, rapid and traceless disappearance of all supplies in the entire country. Moreover, paying a fifth for grain-producing Egypt was not a particularly heavy tribute. The writer, as always, neither praises nor condemns the activities of Joseph, but only states actual historical facts, which in significant parts are fully confirmed by extra-biblical historical evidence. From the testimony of Herodotus, Strabo and Diodorus Sicilian it is known that all lands in Egypt were the property of the crown; only the priestly caste owned the land as property, and the warrior caste at other times in Egyptian history received plots of land from the pharaohs on the basis of fief ownership; in general, all residents were only tenants in relation to the pharaoh and the state. The biblical story about Joseph's activities contains an indication of the origin of such a political-economic order in Egypt and along the way provides interesting information about the introduction in Egypt of double tithes (1/5), paid by residents from all the products of the land (vv. 24, 26), and about the concentration of the tax-paying population, by order of Joseph, in cities (vv. 21 is read differently in the Hebrew Masoretic, differently in the Samaritan copies, in the LXX, in the Vulgate, Slavs, and Russian; according to the first reading - “Joseph resettled the people into cities from the end of Egypt to the end”; according to the second - “he made the people slaves”, the Masoretes read ch. abar to GIF – translate; translators – abad in GIF: enslave; the meaning of both readings is almost identical, but the Jewish reading more specifically names Joseph’s operation itself, and the translations refer to its results). The main interest of Joseph's activities, according to the sacred writer, is that this activity, as fruitful for the state welfare of Egypt, ensured a favorable attitude of the native population in Egypt towards the immigrant Jewish population. However, in the fact that Joseph enslaved the entire country to the pharaoh, although, no doubt, for serious state reasons (some interpreters date the digging of canals and artificial field irrigation to the time of the pharaoh contemporary with Joseph, which, naturally, was caused by a long and general famine in the country and for its implementation required enormous sums, which the state could receive thanks to the tax system introduced by Joseph) and undoubtedly with the best goals and intentions - there could still be some justification for the enslavement of the Jews by the Egyptians that followed his death. Jacob swore an oath to Joseph to bury his remains in Canaan. Gen.47:27–28. And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen, and they possessed it, and were fruitful, and multiplied greatly. And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; and the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were an hundred and forty-seven years. With the settlement of the chosen tribe in Egypt, a solid foundation was laid for its formation into a whole people, which was the subject of God’s promises to all the patriarchs. Now the patriarchal period, having fulfilled the purpose given to it by God, was ending. Therefore, the sacred writer provides information about Jacob’s dying orders and actions, anticipating his actual death, as well as the subsequent reproduction of his offspring in Egypt (cf. Exodus 1:7). Gen.47:29. And the time came for Israel to die, and he called his son Joseph and said to him: if I have found favor in your sight, put your hand under my thigh and swear that you will show me mercy and truth, and will not bury me in Egypt, The rite of oath through placing a hand under the thigh of the one to whom the oath is given, twice mentioned in the book. Genesis - about the oath of Abraham's servant (Gen. 24:2) and about the oath of Joseph, has always seemed mysterious, especially since it is not found either in subsequent biblical Jewish history or in the history of other peoples. In any case, this rite was related to the offspring of Abraham (Gen. 24:2) and Jacob (in this place), since the descendants are represented as emerging from the loins of the patriarch (Gen. 46:26; Ex. 1:5), and imposed on the swearer a vow of fidelity not only in relation to the person taking the oath personally, but also in relation to his offspring. The attitude towards the cult of Phallus (Phallus?) seen here by some interpreters is completely incredible; rather, with Jewish interpreters one can see in this rite an indication of circumcision, with some Christian interpreters - of the Seed of the woman promised in the First Gospel. Gen.47:30–31. that I may lie with my fathers; You will carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their tomb. Joseph said: I will do according to your word. And he said: swear to me. And he swore to him. And Israel bowed down at the head of the bed. ******* The action of Jacob upon Joseph's swearing of an oath to him is conveyed differently in the Hebrew Masoretic text and in the Greek LXX. From Hebrew “bowed down at the head of the bed” (a similar reading is given by the Targums, Aquila, Vulgate); according to LXX (also Syriac, Slav.) “bow down on the top of the staff.” The difference is due to the confusion of Heb. words: mittah, bed, and matteh, rod. In the first case, a thought similar to that reported in 1 Kings is obtained. 1:47 about the death of David: out of fatigue he bowed down on the bed, or in powerlessness he could express a grateful feeling to God, as well as to Joseph, only by bowing to the head of the bed. In the second case (when reading LXX: ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου, cf. Heb. 11:21) the thought of Jacob’s dying weakness remains in the shadows (indeed, only in chapter 48 is it said that Jacob was chained to a mortal bed), and the idea is put forward that Jacob, having received what he asked from Joseph, surveys his entire wandering life, glances at his wandering staff (cf. Gen. 32:10) and, thanking God and Joseph, bows to the top of this staff, carrying out in relation to Joseph the worship that was once revealed to him in a dream (37; cf. blessed Theodoret, answer to the question. 111). The most important thing is that Jacob now renounces this world and people and turns his entire thought and heart to God. According to the translation of the 70: “on the top of his staff.” You might be interested in: