Genesis chapter 47

After reading chapter 47:

*So, Joseph tells Pharoah his brothers are shepherds and they will be staying in Goshen. Pharoah repeats this like it is his idea. Joseph presents his father to the Pharoah who asks how old he is. Jacob says he is 130 short and difficult years old. (Since Joseph would have been about 39, Jacob was 91 when he was born. ) Then Jacob blesses Pharoah and leaves. Joseph gives his family property in the best part of the land, plus all the food they need. The property was said to be in the "district of Rameses" which is an anachronism. No Rameses had been Pharoah yet, and would not be for a few hundred years. This would have been approximately 1767 B.C.E., if we follow biblical chronology.

*Here I have to say a word about chronology. I have departed from Bishop Ussher since Abraham was born and am doing my own calculations based solely on the information given in the text of Genesis. While researching, I found that many adjustments to the chronology were made based on traditions and other books of the bible, even from the New Testament. There was an assumption that this is the chronology of the lineage of the messiah, and that all the scriptures must not contradict each other. I make no such assumptions.

*The famine raged on. People from all over Egypt and Canaan gave their money to Joseph for food, til there was no money left. They begged for food, so Joseph began to take livestock in payment until there was no livestock left. They begged for food again, so Joseph began to take land in payment, until Pharoah owned all the land in Egypt. Joseph reduced the people to servitude. (Nice guy.) The priests were the only ones left with land because they received an allotment of food from Pharoah and did not need to sell their land.

*After Pharoah owned all the land, Joseph gave the people seed and said from whatever they harvested, one-fifth would belong to Pharoah and four-fifths to them. This became a permanent law. You may have heard the phrase " the king's fifth." The priests were exempt. Apparently, so were the Israelites. They had plenty to eat, acquired property, and increased in numbers.

*When Jacob was 147, he called Joseph to him to swear that he would not be buried in Egypt when he died. Joseph swore as his father asked with his hand under Jacob's "thigh." (Read: genitals. )