With all the money and animal stocks consigned to my lord, nothing is left at my lord’s disposal save our persons and our farmland. Let us not perish before your eyes, both we, and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for the bread and we, and our land, will be serfs to Pharaoh… “You have saved our lives! We are grateful to my lord, and we shall be serfs to Pharaoh.
(Breysheet / Genesis 47:18-19, 25)
More than one modern writer has found in this report of the enslavement of the Egyptian peasant shocking proof of Joseph’s inhumanity. But, as has been stressed repeatedly by more objective students, such censorious comments show little understanding of either history or literature. The Egyptian concept of state, whereby the king was viewed as a god, made the pharaoh an absolute ruler from the start, and hence the owner of all he surveyed. The agrarian changes that are here described may reflect actual socio-economic developments. That they should be credited in this narrative to Joseph is part and parcel of his idealized historical image. (E. A. Speiser,1 Anchor Bible Commentary)
Speiser’s comment highlights several essential elements of this often-overlooked portion of the Joseph narrative cycle. Speiser notes that Joseph’s economic measures reflect his idealized image in biblical literature and reflects an Ancient Near-Eastern perspective which would view Joseph as a shrewd and exceptional administrator. Simultaneously, Speiser observes that Joseph’s actions are based on an idolatrous totalitarian political system with a god-king at its center.
Following the exodus from Egypt centuries later, the Torah will set forth rules for establishing an Israelite society which rejects this model in its entirety by limiting the status and authority of the king, placing significant limitations on indentured service, and most notably, establishing strong societal responsibility for the provision of basic necessities to those in need and the mechanisms by which those with resources are directed to share them.
Shabbat Shalom –
Rabbi David M. Eligberg
1 Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (January 24, 1902 – June 15, 1965) was born in Skalat, Galicia, now Ukraine. At the age of 18, he emigrated to the United States, becoming a US citizen in 1926. Academically, he was an Assyrologist who in 1927, while in northern Iraq, discovered the Tepe Gawra (or “Great Mound”), one of the earliest known examples of civilization. Speiser supervised its excavation between 1931 and 1938.
During World War II, Speiser left academia to become chief of the Office of Strategic Services’ Near East Section of the Research and Analysis Branch in Washington, D.C. which earned him a Certificate of Merit.
Following the war Speiser returned to his academic career as professor of Semitics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1955, Speiser joined the Jewish Publication Society of America’s Bible translation project that produced an English version of the Torah.
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