Everyone gets to Israel. Pharaoh meets the family and Jacob blesses him. They are given the land of Goshen, also called Ramases, which is supposed to be really good for farming and herding. It’s a ways away from Egypt proper though because, according to Jacob, Egyptians despise shepherds.
The cornerstone of the Egyptian way of life was the flooding of the Nile depositing delicious nutrients into their farm land every year, so Egypt would have been just about 100% agrarian at the time. It’s pretty obvious that’s the case anyway since the entire last several chapters have been about the grain supply during this drought. The fact that these farmers hate shepherds so much speaks again to the conflict Daniel Quinn outlines in his novel Ishmael which possibly influenced the Hebrew creation story.
During the rest of the drought, no one has any food, obviously, so all the Egyptians have to keep coming back to Jacob and the Pharaoh’s store houses. Once they sell everything they own for grain, Jacob buys up their livestock, then their land and finally the people themselves for food. In the end the pharaoh owns every piece of land in Egypt as well as all of the goods and people therein.
It sounds like he pretty much just turns around and gives everybody their land back insofar as they get to live their and farm it again, they’re not all waving giant palm fronds in the palace or anything, but now they have to give one fifth of their crops to the government every year because they’re technically servants farming on what is technically Pharaoh’s land.
That one fifth portion is the same tax that Pharaoh levied at the beginning of this whole thing, and all he did then was tell the people to give it to him, so it kind of sounds like Pharaoh could demand this payment whenever he wanted anyway. Also, he got the grain, which is what he used to buy everything of value in the nation, for free, so it actually seems like kind of a bastard move to turn around and sell it back to everyone depending on how you want to look at it.
Eventually Jacob dies, but first he makes Joseph promise to bury him back in Canaan with his ancestors. After that’s settled, Jacob has Joseph bring his two sons, Ephram and Menassah, to be blessed before he dies. He gives Ephram, the younger brother, a better blessing, but declares that both of them will be very prosperous and have lots of descendants. The two grandchildren inherit from Jacob just like they were sons of his.
It must have been awkward dealing with that inheritance issue where Joseph was concerned. This is the first time we see a such a self-made man as Joseph, who becomes wealthy and powerful without dad’s help. With Abraham and Isaac’s families, God favored the head of the household until God’s blessing was passed along to the next generation. God rained land and possessions on the father, then the father passed them, as well as the family God, onto his sons.
I think this is the first time we see God taking that initiative to support the family without going through the head of the household. In fact, the way God is often mentioned in Genesis, as the God of my father or the God of Abraham and of Isaac, it seems almost like they thought that God only worked with one person at a time. I’m sure Jacob was elated to hear about how Joseph had come through his ordeal with God’s help, but I’ll bet it must have also been kind of jarring to realize oh, I guess He’s not only my God after all.
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