Genesis 41

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 91, 10

   שְׁנָתַיִם יָמִים is the dual "two years" with "days" set beside it: two full years, to the day, as "two years of days" in 2 Sam 13:23 and 14:28 and Jer 28:3, 11. The count runs from Pharaoh's birthday, when the officer of the waterers went back to his post and forgot Joseph (40:20–23). The weekly Torah reading מִקֵּץ (Miqqets) takes its name from the verse's second word, "at the end of."

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "fed" (KJV) / "fed" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 57

   The verb is רָעָה, whose home gloss "shepherd (v.)" is the herdsman's work (4:2; 30:36; 37:12–16). With the beasts themselves as subject it is their grazing: "cow and bear shall pasture" (Isa 11:7), "the she-asses pasturing beside them" (Job 1:14), "lambs shall pasture" (Isa 5:17). "They shepherded" would make the cows herdsmen, a false sense in English (57), so "pastured" is printed here and in the retelling at v. 18. The verb is the one the brothers do at Shechem in 37:12–16.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 116

   שִׁבֹּלֶת is the ear of grain (Ruth 2:2), and in a homograph the flowing stream: "the שִׁבֹּלֶת has swept over me" (Ps 69:3, 16; Isa 27:12). At the fords of the Jordan the Gileadites made the Ephraimites say the word, and killed those who said "sibboleth" (Judg 12:6). The English "ear" of grain is a different word from the "ear" that hears (אֹזֶן), only spelled the same.

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 25

   קָדִים is the east, and by itself the east wind, the hot dry wind off the desert. It withers the vine (Ezek 17:10; 19:12) and Jonah's plant (Jon 4:8), breaks the ships of Tarshish (Ps 48:8), brings the locusts (Exod 10:13), and parts the sea (Exod 14:21). "Easterly," the wind named by its quarter, keeps one English word for the one Hebrew word. "East" is קֶדֶם's (2:8). שָׁדַף "scorch" is the same wind's work on grain in 2 Kgs 19:26, "grain scorched before it stands up."

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 25, 18

   חַרְטֹם is an Egyptian title in Hebrew dress, from ḥry-tp, "chief," short for the chief lector-priest, the temple scholar who read the sacred books and the spells; Papyrus Westcar tells of wonders worked by such priests. The Bible uses the word only for the experts of Egypt (here, v. 24; Exod 7:11, 22; 8:3, 14–15; 9:11) and of Babylon (Dan 1:20; 2:2). The LXX has ἐξηγητάς, "expounders," here and at v. 24, and ἐπαοιδούς, "enchanters," in Exodus. "Magicians" names what the Hebrew uses the loanword for: learned men with spells, set beside "its wise ones."

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 74

   אוֹתָם "them" is plural, though Pharaoh recounted "his dream" in the singular: the narrator counts two dreams where Joseph will say "the dream is one" (vv. 25–26). Genesis Rabbah 89:6, followed by Rashi, puts the weight on "for Pharaoh": the wise ones did interpret, "seven daughters you will father, seven daughters you will bury," but nothing they said reached Pharaoh.

7. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the chief butler" (KJV) / "the chief butler" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 10

   מַשְׁקֶה is the hiphil participle of שָׁקָה "give drink": the one who pours the king's wine and puts the cup in his palm (40:11, 13, 21; Neh 1:11). The home gloss "watering" is the watered land (13:10); of a person it is "cupbearer," as through Gen 40. "Butler" names a steward of the household, which was not his office.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 20, 2

   מַזְכִּיר is the hiphil of זָכַר "remember": to make a thing remembered, to bring it up aloud. Joseph had asked this man for the same stem, וְהִזְכַּרְתַּנִי אֶל־פַּרְעֹה, "make me remembered to Pharaoh" (40:14), and he "did not remember Joseph, and forgot him" (40:23). Two years late, the first thing he makes remembered is his own sins. חֲטָאַי is plural: the offence of 40:1 (חָטְאוּ), and, as he tells it, perhaps the forgetting too.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 8, 22

   The subject of "returned" and "hanged" is not named. It is Pharaoh, who acts in 40:21–22, and Rashi says so; but the sentence follows "as he interpreted for us," and the courtier's grammar lets the interpreter's word seem to do what the king did. b. Berakhot 55b draws from "as he interpreted for us, thus it was" that "all dreams follow the mouth." English "he" keeps both. כַּנִּי "my base" is the post of 40:13, "Pharaoh will return you to your base."

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    Egyptian men of rank went clean-shaven, and a prisoner was made fit for the court. The piel of גָּלַח is used of the head (Num 6:9; Judg 16:19) as well as the beard, and the verse does not say which. "The pit" is the prison-house of 39:20, called by the word for the dry cistern of 37:24, as Joseph called it at 40:15.

11. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace" (KJV) / "It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 40

    בִּלְעָדַי is one word, "apart from me," with no verb: Joseph refuses the credit Pharaoh has just handed him. The same word is Abram's answer to the king of Sodom, "Apart from me!" (14:24): nothing for me. The KJV and RSV supply "It is not in me," and Onkelos "Not from my wisdom, but from before the LORD the peace of Pharaoh will be answered." The LXX reads another sentence: Ἄνευ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἀποκριθήσεται τὸ σωτήριον Φαραω, "Without God the welfare of Pharaoh will not be answered," which moves "apart" onto God and supplies a negative. The exclamation keeps the denial that the Hebrew carries in one word. עָנָה with an object is to answer to a thing: Elohim will answer to Pharaoh's peace, his welfare, which the dream has shaken. Elohim has the singular verb יַעֲנֶה (9).

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 51

    Pharaoh retells the dreams (vv. 17–24), and the English varies only where the Hebrew varies (6). He stands "on the lip of the Nile" (v. 1, "by the Nile"). The fat cows are "plump of flesh and beautiful of form" (v. 2, "beautiful of sight and plump of flesh"). The lean cows are "poor and very bad of form and gaunt of flesh" (v. 3, "bad of sight and thin of flesh"), and he adds, "I have not seen the like of them in all the land of Egypt for badness." He adds what the narrator did not say: the eaten cows vanished inside them, and the eaters looked as bad as before (v. 21). The ears are "full and good" (v. 5, "plump and good"), the thin ears are also "shrivelled" (v. 23), and the swallowed ears are only "the good" (v. 24; v. 7, "the plump and the full"). He also tells Joseph that the magicians failed. Pharaoh's version is more frightened and more personal than the narrator's.

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 25

    צְנֻמוֹת occurs only here, and only in Pharaoh's telling; the narrator's v. 6 lacks it. Its sense is taken from the Aramaic and later Hebrew root צנם, "shrink, harden." The KJV and RSV have "withered."

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 123, 9

    Joseph says הָאֱלֹהִים, with the article and a singular participle, "the Elohim" (as 20:6, 17; 123c), here and in vv. 28 and 32: before the Egyptian king he names his own Elohim as the one Elohim. In v. 16 he had said Elohim without the article.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 24

    Joseph calls the ears "empty," רֵקוֹת, where both tellings had "thin" (vv. 6–7, 23–24). The word nearly repeats the cows' רַקּוֹת "gaunt" earlier in the same verse, so that the two dreams sound alike in his mouth. The two are different words, and the English keeps them apart (6). רֵק is the empty pit of 37:24. The verse also turns from "seven years are they" to "shall be seven years of hunger": the first half explains a picture, the second foretells.

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 10, 2, 97

    הִשָּׁנוֹת is the niphal infinitive of שָׁנָה "repeat, do a second time," the root of שֵׁנִי "second" and שְׁנַיִם "two." פַּעֲמַיִם is the dual of פַּעַם "turn" (97): "two turns." נָכוֹן, the niphal of כּוּן, is what stands fixed: "the mountain of the house of Adonai shall be fixed" (Isa 2:2); "until the day is fixed," full noon (Prov 4:18). Joseph's rule is that a thing shown twice is settled. His own dreams also came in a pair (37:5–9), as the officers' did (40:5).

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    יֵרֶא "let him see" is to look out and choose: "Elohim will see for himself the sheep" (22:8); "I have seen for myself a king among his sons" (1 Sam 16:1). The home gloss "see" carries the choosing.

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "appoint officers" (KJV) / "appoint overseers" (RSV)

    Rulings 20, 123, 6

    וְיַפְקֵד is the hiphil of פָּקַד, whose qal is "attend to" (21:1; 50:24–25). Ruling 123(b) gives the hiphil "appoint," a split by stem; it is the stem of 39:4–5 (וַיַּפְקִדֵהוּ), where Joseph was set over Potiphar's house. Its object here is its own noun, פְּקִדִים, the men appointed, printed "appointees" so that the doubled root shows (6). The Persian court repeats the sentence: "let the king appoint appointees" (Esth 2:3).

19. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "take up the fifth part of" (KJV) / "take the fifth part of" (RSV)

    Rulings 10, 1, 25

    חִמֵּשׁ is a verb made from חָמֵשׁ "five," and is found only here: "let him fifth the land." 47:24–26 tells how it was done, a fifth of the harvest to Pharaoh as a statute. Verbs stay verbs (10), so the English makes "fifth" a verb, as English made "tithe" from "tenth" (28:22, the piel of עָשַׂר). The passive participle of the same letters, חֲמֻשִׁים, describes Israel leaving Egypt "in battle array" (Exod 13:18; Josh 1:14; 4:12), and on that model some read the verb here as "let him put the land in order." The LXX (ἀποπεμπτωσάτωσαν) and the Vulgate (quintam partem) read the number, and the story's sequel confirms it (1).

20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the Spirit of God" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 107, 128, 38, 123

    Here אֱלֹהִים has no agreeing verb, and the speaker is a foreigner. For a foreigner, 123(c) keeps a bare אֱלֹהִים lowercase (20:11), and 128(d) raises it to a capital only where Adonai is named in the scene; Adonai is not named in Gen 41. But Joseph has named Elohim five times in the scene with singular agreement (vv. 16, 25, 28, 32 twice), and in the next verse Pharaoh himself says "Elohim has made you know," with a singular verb. So "the spirit of Elohim" in Pharaoh's mouth refers to the Elohim Joseph has named, and the capital is printed by reference within the scene, as 107 and 128(d) do. The other reading is "a spirit of gods," Pharaoh speaking as a polytheist. Nebuchadnezzar says just that of Daniel in Aramaic, "a spirit of holy gods is in him" (Dan 4:5–6, 15; 5:11, 14). Onkelos has "a spirit of prophecy from before the LORD." "Spirit" is lowercase under 31: it is the spirit that Elohim possesses.

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled" (KJV) / "all my people shall order themselves as you command" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 46, 2

    The verb is נָשַׁק "kiss," the verb of 27:26–27, 29:11 and 33:4. "At your mouth" (עַל־פִּיךָ) is the idiom of command, "at the mouth of Adonai" (Num 3:16; Deut 34:5). A kiss is homage: Samuel kisses Saul when he anoints him (1 Sam 10:1); "kiss the son" (Ps 2:12); "every mouth that has not kissed" Baal (1 Kgs 19:18). Read so, all the people will do homage at Joseph's word. Others take a second root, "be armed, be marshalled" (נֶשֶׁק "weapons"; "armed with the bow," 1 Chr 12:2; Ps 78:9): the people will be marshalled at his command. Rashi reads "be sustained," from מֶשֶׁק, the stewardship of 15:2: by your word all my people will be provided for. The LXX ὑπακούσεται and the Vulgate oboediet give the sense, "obey." "Kiss" prints the verb's own sense; "at your mouth" carries the command, and no reading is shut out (1).

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 18

    The ring is the seal-ring that stamps the king's orders (Esth 3:10; 8:2, 8), the king's authority in Joseph's hand. שֵׁשׁ "fine linen" is an Egyptian word, šs, for the royal linen. The gold necklace is the "gold of honour" that Egyptian kings hung on the officials they rewarded, a gift often shown in New Kingdom tomb paintings. The investiture is told in the court's own terms.

23. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the second chariot which he had" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 3

    מִשְׁנֶה is the second of a pair or the double of a thing: "double silver" (43:12, 15), a double portion of bread (Exod 16:5, 22), "a double of this Torah" (Deut 17:18, whence the LXX's Δευτερονόμιον). Of a man it is the one next to the king: Elkanah "the double of the king" (2 Chr 28:7), Mordecai "double to king Ahasuerus" (Esth 10:3), Jonathan to David, "I shall be to you for a double" (1 Sam 23:17). "The chariot of the double that was his" may be Pharaoh's own second chariot, or the chariot of Pharaoh's second, the man now riding in it; the English keeps both. "Second" is the home gloss of שֵׁנִי (v. 5).

24. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "Bow the knee" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 133, 25, 1, 46

    אַבְרֵךְ occurs only here, called out before Joseph's chariot. Its meaning is not recovered, so it is transliterated (133d), with the readings here. (a) Hebrew: a form of בָּרַךְ "kneel," a call to kneel, though the form fits no regular stem (the hiphil is "make kneel," 125a). So the Vulgate, clamante praecone ut omnes coram eo genu flecterent, "a herald crying that all should bend the knee before him," and the KJV and RSV. (b) Egyptian: a call such as "Attention!" or "Make way!", which the context suits, since Hebrew reproduces Egyptian words throughout this chapter. (c) Akkadian abarakku, a high steward of a royal house: a title, "Grand Steward!" (d) The rabbis read two words. In Sifre Deuteronomy 1, R. Judah takes it as אָב "father" in wisdom and רַךְ "tender" in years, and R. Yose ben Durmaskit answers that it can only mean knees. Onkelos has "This is father to the king," and Rashi cites both. The LXX has "and a herald proclaimed before him," and leaves the word itself out. The WPRB keeps the transliteration too, since every English choice would settle the crux.

25. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 18

    The new names are Egyptian. They are printed in their familiar English forms, with their forms and meanings in the names table. Zaphenath-paneah is most likely Egyptian for "the god speaks and he lives." Onkelos reads it in Hebrew as "the man to whom hidden things are revealed," and Josephus as "finder of secrets," from צָפַן "hide." The LXX has Ψονθομφανηχ. Asenath is "she belongs to Neith." Potiphera is "he whom Ra gave," the fuller form of Potiphar (37:36; 39:1). On is Heliopolis, the city of the sun (LXX Ἡλιουπόλεως), the seat of Ra. The king renames Joseph and marries him into the priesthood of the sun, and the narrator does not comment.

    See the table

26. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 91

    Joseph was seventeen at 37:2: thirteen years have passed in Potiphar's house and the pit. "Stand before the face of" a king is a servant's posture of office (1 Sam 16:21–22; 1 Kgs 1:2; 12:8). Pharaoh is called "king of Egypt" here for the first time in the chapter.

27. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 54, 74

    The Masoretic text says only "the seven years that were in the land of Egypt." The Samaritan Pentateuch and the LXX name them, "the seven years of satiety" and "the seven years in which there was the plenty." The Masoretic text is printed.

28. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18, 24

    מְנַשֶּׁה "Manasseh" is explained by נַשַּׁנִי, "he has made me oblivious," from נָשָׁה, a rarer verb of forgetting than שָׁכַח (40:23; 41:30). The name is a participle, "one who makes oblivious." English has no pun that keeps "Manasseh" and the gloss, so the pun stays in this note (17). The verse says that Elohim made Joseph oblivious of his travail and of his father's house, the house that sold him (37:27–28). The next chapter tests it: when the brothers bow before him, "Joseph remembered the dreams" (42:9).

29. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    אֶפְרַיִם "Ephraim" is explained by הִפְרַנִי, "he has made me bear fruit," the hiphil of פָּרָה, the verb of the blessing "bear fruit and be many" (1:22, 28; 35:11). The name ends like a dual, and was heard as "double fruit." English cannot carry the name and the verb together (17). "The land of my affliction" uses עֳנִי, the word of Hagar (16:11) and of Leah (29:32), and Egypt is the land where Abram's seed would be afflicted (15:13).

30. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "unto all the Egyptians" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 127, 133

    The form is מִצְרַיִם, the land's name used for its people, but the source tags it as the gentilic מִצְרִי "Egyptian" (H4713). The text is printed as written, "all Egypt" here and "Egypt" in v. 56, and the tag is kept: a logged departure from the tag's gloss, not a re-tag (127d, 133k).

31. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    "All that was in them" has no antecedent in the verse. The storehouses of the cities are meant (v. 48), and the LXX supplies "all the granaries" (σιτοβολῶνας). The Masoretic text is printed as it stands.

32. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "sold unto the Egyptians" (KJV) / "sold to the Egyptians" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    שָׁבַר II is a verb made from the noun שֶׁבֶר, grain doled out as rations (42:1–2). Its qal is the buyer's verb: "to buy rations" (v. 57; 42:2–3). Here the form is qal and the subject is Joseph, the seller; the hiphil, the seller's stem, comes at 42:6 (הַמַּשְׁבִּיר). The LXX (ἐπώλει) and the Vulgate (vendebat) read "sold." "Let Egypt buy rations" keeps the qal's gloss and gives Joseph the seller's part, without taking "sell," which is מָכַר's (37:28, 36). The verb is a homograph of שָׁבַר "break" (19:9).

33. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    "All the land" takes a plural verb, בָּאוּ: the people of every land. The verse ends on the same phrase, "in all the land," and v. 54 has "all the lands." The whole earth comes to Egypt for bread, as Abram went down for hunger in 12:10, and in 42:1–5 Jacob's sons come with them.