Category: Bible

Genesis 47, Jacob and Pharaoh, Israel settles in Goshen, Joseph enslaves the Egyptians.

Jacob is at this time 130 years old. “My years have been few” is an understatement” but Jacob compares it to the pilgrimage of his grandfather Abraham.

Joseph had been granted absolute power to rule over Egypt. Pharaoh continued to reign over Egypt, so Joseph started to do Pharaoh’s bidding.

But, as we see, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Through taxes on grain produced during the good years, Joseph had amassed all the grain supply for the government. He is now selling it back at a far higher price than he bought the excess harvests over and above the taxed harvests during the good years.

These are the steps to gain total control over the people.

  1.  Establish government monopoly over the food supply.

2. Collect all the money and other valuables in exchange for some of the food.

3. Take control over the livestock and other ways of sustenance.

4. Take over the land in exchange for some of the food.

5. Reduce people to servitude and slavery in exchange for some of the food.

6. Once the famine is over, keep the people as sharecroppers to keep the system stable.

 

Genesis 46, Jacob goes to Egypt, total sixty-six, not counting wives, daughter and grand daughters.

The discrepancy between sixty-six and three score and fifteen is that 9 wives were not counted, nor any of Jacob’s grand daughters, Two of his son’s wives had obviously already passed away.

Genesis 41, Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph’s interpretation and rise to power.

Here let me interject a story from my childhood. In Sweden at that time we had Christianity as a subject first thing in the morning every day in the lower grades. My younger brother was in first grade, the teacher always started with Genesis, and had come to this passage in the Bible. I was in middle school in town, and his elementary school was local. Anyhow, upon hearing the story he exclaimed “It is the same with my big brother, he eats and eats and is never getting any fatter” The story spread from our village to town, and I got yet another nickname.

It was an early dream of Climate change.

Climate Change is “best” solved by taxation of the abundance, but unlike today that abundance was not to be spent immediately, but be put in storage for the lean, dry years.

The famine is recorded in hieroglyphs, like in the tablet below.