XI. JOSEPH AND PHARAOH

Before we dismiss this question of the Corn in Egypt, we may remark another trifling instance or two of consistency without design, declaring themselves in this part of the narrative, and tending to strengthen our belief in it. Joseph, it seems [Gen. 41:34.] , advised Pharaoh before the famine began, to appoint officers over the land, that should “take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years.” After this we have several chapters occupied with the details of the history of Jacob and his sons—the journey of the latter to Egypt—their return to their father—the repetition of their journey—the discovery of Joseph—the migration of the Patriarch with all his family, of whom the individuals are named after their respective heads—the introduction of Jacob to Pharaoh, and his final settlement in the land of Goshen. Then the affair of the famine is again touched upon in a few verses, and a permanent regulation of property in Egypt is recorded as the accidental result of that famine. For the people who had sold both themselves and their lands to Pharaoh for corn to preserve life, are now permitted to redeem both on the payment of a fifth of the produce to the King for ever. “And Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part.” [Gen. 47:26.] Now this was, as we had been told in a former chapter, precisely the proportion which Joseph had “taken up” before the famine began. It was then an arrangement entered into with the proprietors of the soil prospectively, as likely to ensure the subsistence of the people; the experiment was found to answer, and the opportunity of perpetuating it having occurred, the arrangement was now made lasting and compulsory. Magazines of corn were henceforth to be established, which should at all times be ready to meet an accidental failure of the harvest. Can anything be more natural than this? anything more common than for great civil and political changes to spring out of provisions which chanced to be made to meet some temporary emergency? Has not our own constitution, and have not the constitutions of most other countries, ancient and modern, grown out of occasion—out of the impulse of the day?

Further still. Though Joseph possessed himself on his royal master’s account of all the land of Egypt besides, and disposed of the people throughout the country just as he pleased [Gen. 47:22.] , “he did not buy the land of the priests, 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.” The priests then, we see, were greatly favoured in the arrangements made at this period of national distress. Now does not this accord with what we had been told on a former occasion,—that Pharaoh being desirous to do Joseph honour, causing him to ride in the second chariot that he had, and crying before him, Bow the knee, and making him ruler over all the land of Egypt [Gen. 41:43.] , added yet this as the final proof of his high regard, that “he gave him to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, Priest of On?” [Gen. 41:45.] When, therefore, the priests were thus held in esteem by Pharaoh, and when the minister of Pharaoh, under whose immediate directions all the regulations of the polity of Egypt were at that time conducted, had the daughter of one of them for his wife, is it not the most natural thing in the world to have happened, that their lands should be spared?