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Gen_41:3 And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill favoured and leanfleshed; and stood by the [other] kine upon the brink of the river.
Ver. 3. Seven other kine came up out of the river.] These, by their leanness, portended drought and dearth, though they came up out of Nile also. This river, when it overflows unto twelve cubits’ height only, causeth famine; when to thirteen scarcity; when to fourteen, cheerfulness; when to fifteen, affluence; when to sixteen, abundance, as Pliny tells us. The greatest increase ever known, was of eighteen cubits, under Claudius (we read of a general famine in his days, Act_11:28, mentioned also by Suetonius and Josephus); {a} the smallest of five cubits, in the history of the Pharsalian wars. Such a thing might happen now, to cause this sore famine. Or the river, for their sins, might be dried up, as God threatens them. {Eze_29:3; Eze_29:9 Isa_19:5-6} And as it happened in the reign of Cleopatra, that prodigiously prodigal queen, the river overflowed not for two years together, saith Seneca: as at another time it overflowed not for nine years together, saith Callimachus; and after him Ovid. {b} How easy is it for God to starve us all, by denying us a few harvests! In case of famine, let us inquire the supernatural cause; as David did, {2Sa_21:1} when he knew the natural cause to be the drought.
{a} Suet., in Claudio. Joseph., Antiq., lib. xx. cap. 2. Luc., lib. v. cap. 9.
Creditur Aegyptus caruisse iuvantibus arva
Imbribus, atque annis sicca fuisse novem. - Ovid.
{b} Sen., Nat. Quaest., lib. iv. cap. 2.