For Teaching

Genesis 47: What the Passage Says

99 claims across 31 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Genesis 47 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Joseph tells Pharaoh that his family has arrived from Canaan, presents five of his brothers and then his father Jacob to Pharaoh, and settles them in the best part of the land as Pharaoh directed. As the famine continues, the Egyptians hand over their money, then their livestock, then their land and themselves in exchange for food, and Joseph sets a law that Pharaoh receives a fifth of the harvest, with the priests' land excepted. Israel settles in Goshen and grows in number, and near the end of Jacob's seventeen years in Egypt he has Joseph swear to carry him out of Egypt and bury him with his fathers.

Claim by Claim

47:1
- Joseph came and told Pharaoh.
- Joseph said that his father and his brothers had come out of the land of Canaan.
- Joseph said that their flocks and their herds and all that they have had come out of the land of Canaan.
- Joseph said they were in the land of Goshen.
47:2
- Joseph took five men from among his brothers.
- Joseph presented the five men before Pharaoh.
47:3
- Pharaoh asked Joseph's brothers what their occupation was.
- The brothers told Pharaoh that his servants were shepherds of flocks.
- The brothers said that they and their fathers alike were shepherds.
47:4
- The brothers said to Pharaoh that they had come to sojourn in the land.
- The brothers said there was no pasture for the flocks belonging to Pharaoh's servants.
- The brothers said the famine was severe in the land of Canaan.
- The brothers asked that Pharaoh's servants be allowed to dwell in the land of Goshen.
47:5
- Pharaoh spoke to Joseph.
- Pharaoh said that Joseph's father and brothers had come to him.
47:6
- Pharaoh said the land of Egypt was before Joseph.
- Pharaoh told Joseph to settle his father and his brothers in the best of the land.
- Pharaoh said they were to dwell in the land of Goshen.
- Pharaoh said that if Joseph knew of capable men among them, he should make them overseers of Pharaoh's livestock.
47:7
- Joseph brought in Jacob his father.
- Joseph set Jacob before Pharaoh.
- Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
47:8
- Pharaoh asked Jacob how many the days of the years of his life were.
47:9
- Jacob said to Pharaoh that the days of the years of his sojourning were a hundred and thirty years.
- Jacob said the days of the years of his life had been few and evil.
- Jacob said his years had not reached the days of the years of the life of his fathers in the days of their sojourning.
47:10
- Jacob blessed Pharaoh.
- Jacob went out from before Pharaoh.
47:11
- Joseph settled his father and his brothers.
- Joseph gave them a holding in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses.
- Joseph did this as Pharaoh had commanded.
47:12
- Joseph provided his father, his brothers, and all his father's household with bread.
- The provision was according to the number of their little ones.
47:13
- There was no bread in all the land.
- The famine was very severe.
- The land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine.
47:14
- Joseph gathered all the money found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan.
- The money was gathered in exchange for the grain the people were buying.
- Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh's house.
47:15
- The money from the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan was used up.
- All the Egyptians came to Joseph.
- They asked Joseph to give them bread.
- They asked why they should die in his presence.
- They said the money was gone.
47:16
- Joseph told them to bring their livestock.
- Joseph said he would give them food in exchange for their livestock, since the money was gone.
47:17
- They brought their livestock to Joseph.
- Joseph gave them bread in exchange for the horses, the flocks, the herds of cattle, and the donkeys.
- Joseph sustained them with bread in exchange for all their livestock that year.
47:18
- That year ended.
- They came to Joseph in the second year.
- They said they would not hide from their lord that the money was spent.
- They said the herds of livestock now belonged to their lord.
- They said nothing was left before their lord except their bodies and their land.
47:19
- They asked why they should die before Joseph's eyes, both they and their land.
- They asked Joseph to buy them and their land for bread.
- They said they and their land would be servants to Pharaoh.
- They asked for seed.
- They said this was so they might live and not die.
- They said this was so the land would not become desolate.
47:20
- Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh.
- The Egyptians each sold his field.
- They sold because the famine prevailed over them.
- The land became Pharaoh's.
47:21
- Joseph removed the people to the cities, from one end of the border of Egypt to the other end.
47:22
- Joseph did not buy the land of the priests.
- The priests had an allotted portion from Pharaoh.
- The priests ate the portion Pharaoh gave them.
- For that reason the priests did not sell their land.
47:23
- Joseph said to the people that he had that day bought them and their land for Pharaoh.
- Joseph gave them seed.
- Joseph told them to sow the land.
47:24
- Joseph said that at the harvest they were to give a fifth to Pharaoh.
- Joseph said four parts would be theirs.
- The four parts were for seed of the field, for their food, for those in their households, and for food for their little ones.
47:25
- They said Joseph had kept them alive.
- They asked to find favor in the eyes of their lord.
- They said they would be Pharaoh's servants.
47:26
- Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt, in force to this day.
- The statute is that Pharaoh receives a fifth.
- Only the land of the priests did not become Pharaoh's.
47:27
- Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen.
- They acquired holdings in it.
- They were fruitful and multiplied greatly.
47:28
- Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years.
- The days of Jacob, the years of his life, were a hundred and forty-seven years.
47:29
- The days drew near for Israel to die.
- Israel called his son Joseph.
- Israel said to Joseph, if he had found favor in his sight.
- Israel asked Joseph to put his hand under his thigh.
- Israel asked Joseph to deal with him in kindness and truth.
- Israel asked Joseph not to bury him in Egypt.
47:30
- Israel said he would lie with his fathers.
- Israel told Joseph to carry him out of Egypt.
- Israel told Joseph to bury him in their burying place.
- Joseph said he would do as Israel had said.
47:31
- Israel said, Swear to me.
- Joseph swore to him.
- Israel bowed himself at the head of the bed.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

47:1: Goshen was a district in the eastern Nile delta, good grazing country on the edge of Egypt rather than in its populated heartland. Canaan is the land later called Israel/Palestine, several weeks' travel to the north-east.
47:3: "What is your occupation?" was a practical question for a ruler deciding where to settle newcomers. Herding was a low-status trade in Egyptian eyes (the previous chapter says shepherds were offensive to Egyptians) and settlement in Goshen kept the family at the edge of the country, on land suited to flocks.
47:4: "Sojourn" is a legal term, not a vague one: a sojourner was a resident foreigner, allowed to live and work in a country but holding no ancestral land there and depending on the goodwill of its ruler. The brothers are asking for that status, not for citizenship.
47:6: Putting foreigners in charge of the royal herds was a real practice; Egyptian records show non-Egyptians rising to senior administrative posts. Pharaoh is offering the family employment as well as pasture.
47:7: To "bless" a person in this setting was a formal act of greeting and leave-taking as much as a religious one: the older or honored party pronounced words of favor, long life and prosperity over the other. Jacob does it on arrival (verse 7) and again on departure (verse 10).
47:9: "Pilgrimage" here does not mean a religious journey to a shrine. The Hebrew word is from the same root as "sojourner" in verse 4: Jacob is describing his whole life as time spent living as a resident foreigner in lands not his own.
47:11: Rameses was a district in the eastern delta, the same general area as Goshen. The name comes from pharaohs of a much later period than the events described, so this is the narrator naming the place by the name his own readers would recognize.
47:12: The Hebrew phrase behind "according to their families" is literally "according to the little ones," meaning food was issued by household size, counting the children. It describes rationing, not favoritism.
47:13: "Fainted" in 1611 English means collapsed or was drained of strength. The subject is the land and its whole population, not one person passing out.
47:14: "Corn" in 1611 English meant grain of any kind, here wheat and barley. It does not mean maize, which was unknown outside the Americas at this date.
47:16: "Cattle" in the King James Version means livestock in general (horses, sheep, goats, oxen and donkeys), not only cows. Verse 17 lists what was actually handed over.
47:17: Handing over livestock is a far bigger loss than it sounds. Oxen and donkeys were the plow teams and the transport; horses were the prestige animals of the elite. Selling them buys one year of food at the cost of the tools you need to farm the next year, which is exactly why the people are back with nothing to offer but themselves in the following verse.
47:18: The Egyptians address Joseph in the third person, "my lord" rather than "you", which was the normal polite way of speaking to a superior, not a sign that they are talking about someone else.
47:19: The Hebrew word translated "servants" covers a wide range, from a hired dependant to a slave. What is being described is a permanent change of status: the people become Pharaoh's property along with their fields, working land they no longer own.
47:21: This verse is genuinely uncertain. The traditional Hebrew text reads that Joseph moved the people into the cities; two ancient versions (the Samaritan Hebrew and the Greek) read that he made them into slaves. The two readings differ by a single consonant in Hebrew, and translations divide between them.
47:22: Egyptian temples held land and received fixed allowances of food and goods from the crown. Because the priests were already fed at Pharaoh's expense, they had no need to sell, and the land was in effect the state's endowment of the temples, not private property Joseph could buy.
47:24: A fifth is twenty per cent of the harvest, paid annually as rent to the crown. "Four parts" means the remaining four-fifths, which had to cover both next year's seed and the household's food.
47:25: "Find grace in the sight of" is King James English for "be looked on with favor by." It is the standard way of asking a superior for goodwill, not a religious phrase.
47:26: "Unto this day" is the narrator speaking to his own readers, telling them that the arrangement he has just described was still the law of Egypt in their time.
47:27: "Israel" here means the family group, Jacob's descendants collectively, rather than Jacob the man. The same name is used both ways in this chapter; in verse 29 it means Jacob himself.
47:29: Placing a hand under the thigh was a formal oath gesture. "Thigh" is a polite substitute for the genitals, the source of a man's descendants, so the oath was sworn on the family line itself and bound the one who swore in the most solemn way available.
47:30: "Lie with my fathers" is an idiom meaning to die and be buried with one's ancestors. The burial place is the cave at Machpelah near Hebron, bought by Abraham, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah and Leah were already buried.
47:31: The last clause is ambiguous in the original. Written Hebrew of this period recorded consonants only, and the same three letters can be read as "bed" or as "staff." The traditional Hebrew text reads that Jacob bowed at the head of the bed; the ancient Greek version reads that he bowed over the top of his staff, which is the form quoted in Hebrews 11:21. The bow itself is a gesture of thanks or reverence.

Read Genesis 47