Kejadian 41:41

41:41 “See here,” Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I place ¹  you in authority over all the land of Egypt.” ² 

Kejadian 41:48-49

41:48 Joseph ³  collected all the excess food ⁴  in the land of Egypt during the seven years and stored it in the cities. ⁵  In every city he put the food gathered from the fields around it. 41:49 Joseph stored up a vast amount of grain, like the sand of the sea, ⁶  until he stopped measuring it because it was impossible to measure.

Kejadian 41:55-56

41:55 When all the land of Egypt experienced the famine, the people cried out to Pharaoh for food. Pharaoh said to all the people of Egypt, ⁷  “Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you.”

41:56 While the famine was over all the earth, ⁸  Joseph opened the storehouses ⁹  and sold grain to the Egyptians. The famine was severe throughout the land of Egypt.

Kejadian 42:6-7

42:6 Now Joseph was the ruler of the country, the one who sold grain to all the people of the country. ¹⁰  Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down ¹¹  before him with ¹²  their faces to the ground. 42:7 When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, but he pretended to be a stranger ¹³  to them and spoke to them harshly. He asked, “Where do you come from?” They answered, ¹⁴  “From the land of Canaan, to buy grain for food.” ¹⁵ 

[41:41]  ¹ tn The translation assumes that the perfect verbal form is descriptive of a present action. Another option is to understand it as rhetorical, in which case Pharaoh describes a still future action as if it had already occurred in order to emphasize its certainty. In this case one could translate “I have placed” or “I will place.” The verb נָתַן (natan) is translated here as “to place in authority [over].”

[41:41]  ² sn Joseph became the grand vizier of the land of Egypt. See W. A. Ward, “The Egyptian Office of Joseph,” JSS 5 (1960): 144-50; and R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 129-31.

[41:48]  ³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[41:48]  ⁴ tn Heb “all the food.”

[41:48]  ⁵ tn Heb “of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt and placed food in the cities.”

[41:49]  ⁶ tn Heb “and Joseph gathered grain like the sand of the sea, multiplying much.” To emphasize the vast amount of grain he stored up, the Hebrew text modifies the verb “gathered” with an infinitive absolute and an adverb.

[41:55]  ⁷ tn Heb “to all Egypt.” The name of the country is used by metonymy for the inhabitants.

[41:56]  ⁸ tn Or “over the entire land”; Heb “over all the face of the earth.” The disjunctive clause is circumstantial-temporal to the next clause.

[41:56]  ⁹ tc The MT reads “he opened all that was in [or “among”] them.” The translation follows the reading of the LXX and Syriac versions.

[42:6]  ¹⁰ tn The disjunctive clause either introduces a new episode in the unfolding drama or provides the reader with supplemental information necessary to understanding the story.

[42:6]  ¹¹ sn Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down before him. Here is the beginning of the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams (see Gen 37). But it is not the complete fulfillment, since all his brothers and his parents must come. The point of the dream, of course, was not simply to get the family to bow to Joseph, but that Joseph would be placed in a position of rule and authority to save the family and the world (41:57).

[42:6]  ¹² tn The word “faces” is an adverbial accusative, so the preposition has been supplied in the translation.

[42:7]  ¹³ sn But pretended to be a stranger. Joseph intends to test his brothers to see if they have changed and have the integrity to be patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. He will do this by putting them in the same situations that they and he were in before. The first test will be to awaken their conscience.

[42:7]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “said.”

[42:7]  ¹⁵ tn The verb is denominative, meaning “to buy grain”; the word “food” could simply be the direct object, but may also be an adverbial accusative.