CHAPTER 47

(1706 B.C.)

JACOB MEETS PHARAOH

¹Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said, My father and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have, are come out of the land of Canaan; and, behold, they are in the land of Goshen.

²And he took some of his brethren, even five men, and presented them unto Pharaoh (as far as we know, no one in Egypt ever knew anything about the wickedness of the past deeds of Josephs brothers; such is true forgiveness; it not only forgives sin, but it forgets, as well).

³And Pharaoh said unto his brethren, What is your occupation? And they said unto Pharaoh, Your servants are shepherds, both we, and also our fathers (that the brothers were shepherds, which Joseph had been, as well, served as a Type of the Good Shepherd, Who would give His Life for the sheep [Jn. 10:11]).

⁴They said moreover unto Pharaoh, For to sojourn in the land are we come; for your servants have no pasture for their flocks; for the famine is sore in the land of Canaan: now therefore, we pray you, let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen.

⁵And Pharaoh spoke unto Joseph, saying, Your father and your brethren are come unto you:

⁶The land of Egypt is before you; in the best of the land make your father and brethren to dwell; in the land of Goshen let them dwell: and if you know any men of activity among them, then make them rulers over my cattle. (Joseph, raised from the pit to the throne, another Type of Christ, enriches his brothers with all the Promises which they, by their rejection of him, had forfeited, but which are now, upon the ground of Grace, restored to them. At the same time, they are given the richest province in Egypt. The Egyptians, themselves representative of all the nations of the Earth, are saved from death by Joseph. All of this is a striking picture of what is yet to come to pass. This is the subject of Romans, Chapters 9, 10, and 11, in which Chapters it is pointed out that Israel and the Gentiles will inherit the Promises, in fellowship, solely upon the ground of pure Grace.)

⁷And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set him before Pharaoh: and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. (And without contradiction, the less is blessed of the greater. The least and most faltering of Gods children is superior to the mightiest Monarch, and is conscious of such superiority Williams.)

⁸And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old are you?

⁹And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage (more than likely, there was no one in Egypt who was as old as Jacob; as well, he will not die until he is 147 years of age, some 17 years after coming into Egypt).

¹⁰And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from before Pharaoh (for the second time, the Holy Spirit proclaims the Patriarch blessing Pharaoh, again signifying that while Pharaoh may be the greatest in the eyes of men, Jacob is the greatest in the Eyes of God, Whose Eyes Alone matter).

JOSEPH

¹¹And Joseph placed his father and his brothers, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.

¹²And Joseph nourished his father, and his brothers, and all his fathers household, with bread, according to their families.

¹³And there was no bread in all the land; for the famine was very sore, so that the land of Egypt and all the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine. (We now learn just how severe this famine actually was. Had it not been for Joseph, Egypt would have seen the starvation of tens of thousands of its people. So, Joseph was the great benefactor of this land and its people, exactly as Jesus will be the Great Benefactor of the Gentiles at the Second Coming, when the world, at that time, will be in a critical state.)

THE PLAN

¹⁴And Joseph gathered up all the money that was found in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, for the corn (grain) which they bought: and Joseph brought the money into Pharaohs house.

¹⁵And when money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan (meaning that the people had no more money to buy grain), all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in your presence? for the money fails (we have no more money).

¹⁶And Joseph said, Give your cattle; and I will give you for your cattle (give you grain), if money fail.

¹⁷And they brought their cattle unto Joseph (whether sheep, goats, cattle, horses, etc.): and Joseph gave them bread in exchange for horses, and for the flocks, and for the cattle of the herds, and for the asses: and he fed them with bread for all their cattle for that year.

¹⁸When that year was ended, they came unto him the second year, and said unto him, We will not hide it from my lord, how that our money is spent; my lord also has our herds of cattle; there is not ought left in the sight of my lord, but our bodies, and our lands:

¹⁹Wherefore shall we die before your eyes, both we and our land? buy us and our land for bread, and we and our land will be servants unto Pharaoh: and give us seed, that we may live, and not die, that the land be not desolate.

²⁰And Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh; for the Egyptians sold every man his field, because the famine prevailed over them: so the land became Pharaohs.

²¹And as for the people, he removed them to cities from one end of the borders of Egypt even to the other end thereof.

THE PRIESTS

²²Only the land of the priests bought he not; for the priests had a portion assigned them of Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them: wherefore they sold not their lands. (Some have claimed that Joseph robbed the Egyptians of their liberties, and converted a free people into a horde of abject slaves. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, had it not been for Joseph, and the Divine Wisdom which he was given during this extremely trying time, as stated, hundreds of thousands of people would literally have starved to death. As it was, the people were looked after, and there is no record that anyone starved.)

TENANT LAWS

²³Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land.

²⁴And it shall come to pass in the increase, that you shall give the fifth part unto Pharaoh, and four parts shall be your own, for seed of the field, and for your food, and for them of your households, and for food for your little ones. (When Joseph levied the 20% tax, this was one of the fairest arrangements that any people had ever known. No doubt, this wisdom was given to him by the Lord. For instance, at this particular time [2003], counting state, local, and federal income taxes, the rate is approximately 50 %.)

²⁵And they said, You have saved our lives: let us find grace in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaohs servants.

²⁶And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part; except the land of the priests only, which became not Pharaohs.

JACOB

²⁷And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions therein, and grew, and multiplied exceedingly (they came in 70 strong, and would leave out, about 215 years later, upwards of over 2 million people).

²⁸And Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years: so the whole age of Jacob was an hundred forty and seven years.

²⁹And the time drew near that Israel must die (by the use of the name Israel, the Holy Spirit tells us that Jacob would die in Faith, and great Faith at that): and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, If now I have found grace in your sight, put, I pray you, your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray you, in Egypt (feeble as was his body, and imperfect as was his faith, as all faith regrettably is imperfect, yet did Jacob esteem Gods land, the land of Canaan, and the Promises connected therewith, as unspeakably superior to Egypt, with all its prosperity and glory):

³⁰But I will lie with my fathers, and you shall carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their buryingplace. And he said, I will do as you have said.

³¹And he said, Swear unto me. And he swore unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the beds head. (He makes Joseph swear that when he dies, he will put his bones where his heart was, in the land of Canaan. As a Believer, where is your heart?)