Genesis 47

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "some of his brethren" (KJV) / "from among his brothers" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 40

   מִקְצֵה is "from the edge," the home gloss of קָצֶה held, as in v. 21, "from the edge of the border of Egypt and to its edge." The KJV and RSV read the phrase as a partitive, "some of," which it can be (19:4 "all the people from the edge," that is, every one of them). The rabbis read the edge as the end of the line, and disagree over which end. b. Bava Qamma 92a takes it as the weakest, whom Pharaoh would not draft as soldiers (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Issachar and Benjamin, after Moses' blessing, which names five brothers twice); another view in Genesis Rabbah (95:4) takes the strongest. No stranger sense is attested beyond "edge," so the home gloss is printed and the readings are given here (40).

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 6

   The predicate is singular, רֹעֵה צֹאן "a shepherd of flock," with a plural subject: the brothers name a trade, not a count of men. Joseph had used the plural, "shepherds of flock" (46:32). The brothers answer with the word Joseph told them to avoid: he told them to say "men of livestock" (46:34), and they say "shepherds."

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 53, 74

   The LXX sets vv. 5–6 in a different order and adds a sentence. After Pharaoh's first words it has "Let them dwell in the land of Gesem, and if you know that there are capable men among them, appoint them rulers of my livestock," then adds "And Jacob and his sons came into Egypt to Joseph, and Pharaoh king of Egypt heard," and only then gives "Your father and your brothers have come to you; look, the land of Egypt is before you." The Masoretic order is printed.

4. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "make thy father and brethren to dwell" (KJV) / "settle your father and your brothers" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 20

   הוֹשֵׁב is the hiphil of יָשַׁב "dwell," the causative, and so at v. 11 (וַיּוֹשֶׁב). The home gloss is kept with "make": "make… dwell," as the KJV does. "Settle" is the gloss of נוּחַ (H3240) and is not used. The hiphil as "make dwell," a split by stem, is ruled (136).

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 35

   וְאִם יָדַעְתָּ וְיֶשׁ בָּם "and if you know, and there are among them": the second clause is the thing to be known, joined by "and," and it is set off with dashes so that the conjunction stays. "Then" opens the apodosis (35). חַיִל is "strength" (34:29), the "woman of strength" of Ruth 3:11 and Prov 31:10; the KJV has "men of activity," the RSV "able men." The brothers become keepers of the king's own livestock, the trade Egypt abhors (46:34).

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 122, 128

   וַיַּעֲמִדֵהוּ is the hiphil of עָמַד "stand," which ruling 122(d) left to be fixed when reached. "Make stand" is the hiphil of קוּם (the covenant, 6:18; 9:9), and the two are kept apart. English "stand" is also transitive ("she stood him in the doorway"), so the hiphil keeps the home gloss, transitive, as the hiphil of שׁוּב keeps "return" (128b): "stood him before the face of Pharaoh." The KJV and RSV have "set him before Pharaoh." This is ruled (136).

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 74

   Jacob "blessed" Pharaoh at his coming in and again at his going out (v. 10). בָּרַךְ can be the greeting of an audience (2 Sam 19:40; 1 Kgs 8:66), and Rashi takes v. 7 so, "the asking of peace, as is done when appearing before kings." At v. 10 he says Jacob blessed Pharaoh that the Nile would rise to meet him, and so it did, which ended the hunger. Heb 7:7 states the principle: "the lesser is blessed by the greater." Here a shepherd, an old man and a sojourner, blesses the king of Egypt, as Abram's seed was to be a blessing to the families of the ground (12:3).

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 95, 118, 122

   מְגוּרִים is "sojournings," the noun of גּוּר "sojourn" (v. 4), as in "the land of your sojournings" (17:8; 28:4; 36:7; 37:1). Jacob answers Pharaoh's "years of your life" with "years of my sojournings," as if his life and his sojourning were the same span. "Little and bad" keeps מְעַט "little" and the core "bad" (KJV "few and evil"). His fathers lived longer, Abraham a hundred and seventy-five years (25:7) and Isaac a hundred and eighty (35:28), and the hundred and thirty years "have not overtaken" theirs. David says the same of himself before Adonai: "for I am a sojourner with you, a resident like all my fathers" (Ps 39:13; 1 Chr 29:15), and Heb 11:13 gathers the patriarchs as those who "confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the land."

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   רַעְמְסֵס is "Rameses," the land given to Jacob's house, and the store-city that Israel will later build as slaves (Exod 1:11, spelled רַעַמְסֵס, "Raamses") and the place from which they set out (Exod 12:37; Num 33:3, 5). The name is that of the Delta capital of Ramesses II, Pi-Ramesse, in the thirteenth century BCE; the narrator uses the name the place bore later. The LXX has Ραμεσση. The chapter gives Israel land in the place where it will be made to build.

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "according to their families" (KJV) / "according to the number of their dependents" (RSV)

    Rulings 39, 2

    לְפִי is "according to the mouth of," the measure that a mouth sets (Exod 12:4, "each according to the mouth of his eating"; 16:16, 18, 21). The concrete word is kept (39): the bread is measured by the mouths of the little ones, the youngest and most numerous eaters. The KJV's "families" and the RSV's "number" turn the mouth into an abstraction. Rashi: as much as all their household needed.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    לָקַט is "glean," to pick up one by one (31:46; Ruth 2), and is kept: Joseph picks up the silver of two lands piece by piece, as the hungry glean a field. The KJV has "gathered up," which is אָסַף's word.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "which they bought" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 135

    שֹׁבְרִים is the qal of שָׁבַר, "buy rations" (135s), with its own noun שֶׁבֶר "rations" already standing in the clause. Printing the gloss whole would say "rations" twice, so the verb is printed "buying" and the noun carries the rations; the tag keeps the verb.

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "all the Egyptians came" (KJV, RSV), and at v. 20 "the Egyptians sold"

    Rulings 18, 134, 135

    The source tags מִצְרַיִם here and at v. 20 as H4713, the gentilic "Egyptian," because the word means the people, with plural verbs. The word is the name of the land, and the house prints it "Egypt," with the tag kept and the departure logged, as at 41:55–56, 45:2 and 46:34 (134l, 135o). The land that comes and sells is its people.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 128

    הָבָה with an object is "give" (128c), as the starving say it in v. 15 and Joseph answers it in v. 16. Before a cohortative the same word is "up" (11:3–4, 7).

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "fed them with bread" (KJV) / "supplied them with food" (RSV)

    Ruling 2

    נָהַל in the piel is "guide," the shepherd's verb: "by waters of rest he guides me" (Ps 23:2), "he will guide the nursing ewes" (Isa 40:11); "you guided them in your strength to your holy pasture" (Exod 15:13). The home gloss is kept, and the brothers who said "your servants are shepherds" (v. 3) have a brother who shepherds Egypt through the year with bread. Onkelos and the KJV have "fed."

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 19

    כִּי אִם after a negated verb of speech is "that": "we will not conceal from my lord that the silver is spent." The two particles are one connective here, introducing what is not concealed, and neither "for" nor "if" is a separate word in English. The second negation, "there is not left," is the Hebrew's impersonal לֹא נִשְׁאַר, kept with its "except" (בִּלְתִּי אִם, 135q).

17. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "our bodies" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 33, 57

    גְּוִיָּה is the body, and in most of its uses a dead body: Saul's on the wall of Beth-shan (1 Sam 31:10, 12), the lion's carcass (Judg 14:8–9), the slain (Nah 3:3; Ps 110:6). Of the living it is the body in its outward frame: the creatures' bodies covered by their wings (Ezek 1:11, 23), the man in linen's (Dan 10:6), and "they rule over our bodies and our livestock" (Neh 9:37), which echoes this verse. "Body" is the home gloss of בֶּטֶן (126c), and "corpse" would make the speakers dead before they ask to live (57). "Frame," the body as a whole and as a structure, is printed. The report raises the gloss.

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 34

    עֶבֶד splits by ruling 34. The brothers call themselves "your servants" before Pharaoh (46:34; vv. 3–4), the deferential word. The Egyptians offer themselves and their ground for bread, to be acquired as property, and so they are "slaves" (vv. 19, 25). The Hebrew word is the same throughout, and so is the house of slaves (Exod 13:3) that Egypt will become for Israel.

19. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "he removed them to cities" (KJV) / "he made slaves of them" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 40, 46, 54

    The Masoretic text reads הֶעֱבִיר אֹתוֹ לֶעָרִים, "he made them pass to the cities," the hiphil of עָבַר. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads הֶעֱבִיד אֹתוֹ לַעֲבָדִים, "he made them slaves," with ד for ר, and the LXX agrees (κατεδουλώσατο αὐτῷ εἰς παῖδας). The RSV follows them; the KJV, Onkelos and Rashi follow the MT, and Rashi explains the move: Joseph shifted the people from city to city so that no one could claim the land as his own, and so that his brothers would not be called exiles. Both readings fit the chapter, the slaves of vv. 19 and 25 and the cities where the corn was stored (41:48). The MT is printed (40). "From the edge of the border of Egypt and to its edge" keeps the range of ruling 103 with its "and."

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 25, 74

    חֹק, from the root of "inscribe, prescribe," is a thing fixed or allotted: a ration of food (Prov 30:8, "the bread of my allotment"; 31:15; Ezek 16:27), a limit set (Job 14:5; Prov 8:29), and a statute or decree (Exod 15:25; Ps 2:7). "Statute" is the gloss of חֻקָּה. Here the word runs as a chain: the priests' allotment from Pharaoh (v. 22, twice), and the fifth that Joseph sets as an allotment over the ground (v. 26), so one gloss holds the three. The priests eat their allotment and keep their land; everyone else gives a fifth and keeps four hands of it.

21. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "lo, here is seed for you" (KJV) / "Now here is seed for you" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 88, 95

    הֵא is a presentative particle, "look," found only here and at Ezek 16:43 (and in Aramaic, Dan 2:43 הָא). It does the work of הֵן and הִנֵּה, which open the same verse, and is printed with their gloss. Sharing "look" with them as one particle in three spellings (88) is ruled (136).

22. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "four parts" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 39, 2

    יָד is "hand," and the plural is a share, a hand's portion: "Benjamin's portion was five hands more than theirs" (43:34); "we have ten hands in the king" (2 Sam 19:44). The concrete word is kept (39). The fifth and the four hands add to five, each harvest counted out by hand.

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 134, 95

    חֹמֶשׁ is the noun "fifth," the share, of the root of חֲמִישִׁי "fifth" (v. 24) and the verb חָמַשׁ "fifth" (41:34), which ruling 134(j) declared one root. The fifth that Joseph advised taking in the seven years of plenty (41:34) is made permanent here. Sharing "fifth" with them is ruled (136). The ground of the priests "alone" (לְבַדָּם) is the exception.

24. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 36, 79, 74

    In the Masoretic text the reading Vayechi ("And he lived") begins at v. 28 with no space between it and v. 27, the only weekly reading of the Torah not set off by a section break. Genesis Rabbah 96:1, followed by Rashi, explains it: when Jacob died the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed by the slavery that began; or, Jacob wished to reveal the end of days to his sons, and it was closed from him (49:1). The sum "seven years and forty and a hundred years" keeps the Hebrew order (91), 147 in the WPRB. Seventeen years in Egypt answers the seventeen years Joseph lived with Jacob before he was sold (37:2).

25. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 125, 39

    "Put your hand under my thigh" is the oath of 24:2, 9, where Abraham made his slave swear not to take Isaac a wife from Canaan; here Jacob makes Joseph swear not to bury him in Egypt. The thigh is the seat of offspring (46:26; Exod 1:5). "Loyalty and truth," חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת, is the pair of 24:27, 49 and 32:11 (125k), with עָשָׂה "do," the verb loyalty always takes. Rashi calls loyalty to the dead "loyalty of truth," since it looks for no return.

26. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    שָׁכַב עִם אֲבֹתַי "I will lie with my fathers" is the idiom of dying (Deut 31:16; 1 Kgs 2:10, "David lay with his fathers"), kept apart from the sexual sense of the same verb with a woman (19:32–35; 30:15–16); the WPRB has "lie down," not "sleep with." Rashi joins the clause to the oath at the head of the verse and reads "lie" as dying, not as being laid in the grave, since the burial follows ("bury me in their burial"): "I am to lie with my fathers, and you shall carry me." The Hebrew's "and" is kept.

27. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "bowed himself upon the bed's head" (KJV) / "bowed himself upon the head of his bed" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 40, 46, 4

    The consonants מטה can be read מִטָּה "bed" or מַטֶּה "staff" (38:18, 25, Judah's staff). The Masoretic vowels give "bed," and so do Onkelos and the Vulgate (adoravit Israhel Deum conversus ad lectuli caput). The LXX reads "staff," προσεκύνησεν Ισραηλ ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου αὐτοῦ, "Israel prostrated himself on the top of his staff," with the Peshitta, and Heb 11:21 quotes the Greek of Jacob's faith: "he prostrated himself on the top of his staff." The bed returns at 48:2 ("Israel strengthened himself and sat on the bed") and 49:33, which favours the vowels here; David prostrates himself on his bed in 1 Kgs 1:47. The MT is printed (40), and the NT keeps its own staff (4). The text does not say to whom Israel bowed. The Vulgate and Rashi say to Elohim, whose Presence, Rashi says, rests above the head of the sick (b. Shabbat 12b); b. Megillah 16b reads it as to Joseph, the dream of the sun bowing (37:9–10) fulfilled ("when the fox has its hour, bow down to it"). Rashi also hears thanks that his bed was whole, none of his sons wicked.