Is Joseph exploitative with the Egyptians? (Gen 47:13-31)

Our reading continues the story of God’s provision that focused earlier on Jacob’s family and hinted at God’s larger concern for His entire world. However, Joseph’s measures to provide sustenance for the Egyptians may seem rather harsh and exploitative to us. As the money runs out for buying grain, the people exchange their livestock for food and eventually must sell their land and their own person into slavery (Gen 47:15-19). Is this not the kind of abuse that our modern world condemns? There are many interpreters today, who follow this line of thought and present Joseph as essentially a negative character. But this runs against the grain of the biblical narrative that presents Joseph as wise and godly. Moreover, the Egyptians in the episode hail him as their saviour (Gen 47:25). What are we to make of all this?

Reading Scripture as a cross-cultural experience

Learning to read literature from another place and time is like a cross-cultural experience. Travellers often judge another culture based on what they consider the ‘norm’, which are the convictions and customs of their culture of origin. Thus, a Hungarian friend coming from a more direct society concluded rather harshly that the politeness of Brits was hypocritical – surely, they cannot mean all that ‘thank-you’, ‘please’ and ‘lovely’! I remember my own surprise when I met a student from Japan who was invited to various social events and always said yes, but never turned up. Evidently, he felt that saying no was offensive to the host and not humiliating her with public rejection was more important than the truth. These examples highlight in a small way how our sensitivities and what we consider a priority are not necessarily normative in every culture. It is helpful to be aware, therefore, of our cultural biases and pay attention to clues about how people involved in events respond or evaluate what is happening to them.

Slavery and freedom in the ancient world

Thus, we are uncomfortable with our passage because, as modern Western readers, we prize freedom of the individual as one of the highest values (if not the highest) and are particularly sensitive to modern-day slavery and exploitation. The people in our reading, however, suggest slavery themselves as a solution and see Joseph as their deliverer (Gen 47:19, 25). It is worth noting that in the ancient world, even legally free people were constrained by a host of social obligations with little to no choice in where they lived, what profession they followed, whom they married, whether they married, if they had children and so on. Thus, slavery would have been far less daunting for them, and it was at least a mechanism to escape utter destitution. Further, the slave became the responsibility of the master and if the latter was benevolent, it provided social security. In practice, Egyptian enslavement meant that the people still continued to work the land but paid a twenty percent tax on the produce at harvest (Gen 47:23-24).[1]  

God’s provision and the challenge of a comfortable life

Our reading, then, highlights God’s provision for the wider world, but even more so for Jacob’s family who not only survive but prosper, grow in number, and even acquire property, i.e. land (Gen 47:27). Under His ‘common grace’, God cares for His whole creation, but has a special concern for those who are His.[2] Most noteworthy is Jacob’s determination, however, to be buried in the land of promise (Gen 47:29-31). Despite the ease of life in Egypt, he has not forgotten God’s plan and looks beyond the present to the future in Canaan. This snippet challenges us to ask, when things go well, do we settle into the comforts of the present and lose sight of God’s intentions? May the Lord fill our hearts with the desire for Him and for fulfilling His plan for us.

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[1] This, of course, does not mean that there are no moral absolutes or that slavery is not such a bad thing, after all. Later Israelite legislation highlights the direction the story is going in that Hebrew debt slavery was not meant to be permanent (slaves had to be freed after six years of service – Deut 15:12). Israelites are reminded to treat slaves well because they were once slaves and God saved them from an oppressive master (Deut 15:13-15). Thus, slavery is never presented as ideal, and the trajectory is pointing away from it. Nevertheless, in the ancient world it was a stopgap measure and the fact that some preferred to make their enslavement permanent (Deut 15:16-17) suggests that freedom was not their highest priority.

[2] This does not necessarily mean material prosperity, nor is it an exemption from suffering (witness Israel’s later enslavement under later Pharaohs).

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