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Gen_41:34-36; Gen_41:47-57; Gen_42:13-26
During the seven years of plenty, Joseph caused one fifth of all the produce of every district to be hoarded up in its towns—every town containing, in immense granaries, the redundant produce of its district. The proportion is remarkable. It might seem inadequate, seeing that this fifth part of the produce of each year was to sustain the whole population during a year of famine. But when we consider the enormous export of corn from that country, which continued even to later times, when Egypt was the granary of Italy, it may readily be apprehended, that one fifth of the produce of an extraordinary fertile year might be made to suffice for consumption during one year of famine. It is somewhat of a question how the crown acquired possession of this corn. Some think that the whole produce was taken up by the government, in order to ensure the economical use of it—and then was doled out to the people. Others understand that merely a certain calculable surplus was taken and stored up and there are those who think it probable, by the light of subsequent events, that the produce-tax of one tenth, usually paid to ancient governments, was at this time doubled, and made one fifth, which constituted the surplus treasured up for future years. As this was afterwards sold to the people, some infer, that the corn was bought up by the crown; and to account for the ability of the court to meet the outlay needful for the purchase of such countless stores of food, it is remarked, that this might be done at a comparatively small cost, in a time of abundance. This is true; and the prospect of a gainful return would encourage this outlay; besides, that thinking could not but be influenced by the desire to preserve his people. It may be hard to say what was the precise nature of the transaction. We must confess, that we have not that conviction of the freedom and generosity of the Egyptian government, which some have derived from the glowing descriptions of Diodorus Siculus. All the facts and language known to us seem to indicate a government of the most absolute character. The most despotic king the East ever yet produced could not speak a language more unreservedly despotic, than that which the Egyptian king uses in bestowing upon Joseph his high commission: “I am Pharaoh; and without thee, shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” However, looking at the course which affairs take under such exigencies, we consider the probability to be, that either the people were serfs to the crown, for which they cultivated the land—and that hence the government took, as of right, all the produce they did not require for their subsistence; or else, that the ancient, like the modern government of the country, claimed, and in this instance exercised, the right of purchasing, at its own price, as much as it required of the produce of the land, leaving sufficient for the sustenance of the producers. The mere existence of such a right is sufficiently hard; but we must judge these matters by the light of other days and of other lands than our own. The Orientals have never troubled themselves much about abstract rights. It is the harsh or mild exercise of powers, whether these powers be formally recognized or not, which they chiefly regard; and they seldom question any power a monarch thinks fit to assume, so long as its application does not press insupportably upon the individual. In the present case, it is quite probable that the extreme importance and urgency of the occasion was regarded as justifying the utmost exertion of the royal power, without greater regard for private rights—if any such rights were recognized—than we usually find among Eastern nations. The mission of Joseph was to provide for the famine; and this he was bound to do in conformity with the existing ideas and institutions of the nation—with which a residence of twenty-three years must have made him well acquainted, without embarrassing his operations, by raising new questions of government and political right.
The case may have been somewhat different when the years of famine came, and all the food of the land was in his hands—food which would, without his care, all have disappeared during the years of plenty, and the people left to remediless starvation. The nation then lay at his feet; and seeing that a man will give all that he hath for his life, he had the power of acting as seemed good in his eyes. Whether he had some regard to the advantage of the people, or to that of the crown, whose servant he was, may be a question with us. But it was probably no question with him, in whose view the advantage of the king and the people were doubtless one. Under the deep study which the principles of government and of political economy have of late years received, the conduct of Joseph, in this trying position, may be considered with advantage, and in freedom from those crude notions of unbounded state profusion which people were wont to admire, but which are now seen to form, in their results, a curse to any people.
The state had corn in abundance, and the people had no food. What was the state to do? However people might talk fifty years ago, as if it were the duty of the state to open its stores, and feed the people during all these years without cost, few thinking men would now take this to be the wisest course. It was the duty of the state to see that none should perish from want, while there was food in the land; but it was not the duty of the state—it would not have been wise or prudent—it would even have been mischievous—to have supplied corn without cost to those who had the means of paying for it, in money or in money’s worth. This is now so well understood, that during the recent famine in the sister country, the government taxed its ingenuity to find means that those who had nothing but their labor to sell, should give that labor in exchange for the food which the care of the state provided. The whole care and solicitude of the government was to avoid the appearance, and, as far as possible, the reality, of giving, of its mere bounty, the food for which it had ransacked the world. No doubt, the men who spent their days in mending, or in seeming to mend the roads, would have been better pleased had the food been given them without this cost; but the wise thought differently. And if so much danger was in this case apprehended, from the precedent of feeding a people gratuitously for a few months, how much greater would have been the danger of doing this during the seven long years of famine in Egypt! It is not too much to say, that seventy times seven years would scarcely have enabled the nation to recover from the shock which its character and its industry would, during these seven years, have sustained. Instead, therefore, of Joseph’s plan of selling, instead of giving, the corn to the people being a matter of reprehension, we ought to be astonished at a course of proceeding which anticipated the discoveries of the nineteenth century of Christ; and at the strength of mind which enabled the minister of the Egyptian crown to forego the vulgar popularity which profuse but unreasoning bounty can always obtain. We have ourselves had, at intervals, frequent occasion to examine the conduct of Joseph in this transaction very closely, and we must acknowledge, that the more we have examined it, the better we have understood it, and the more laudable, the more wise, and the more free from objection, it has appeared. And we have reached this judgment quite independently; for we are by no means bound to conclude, that all that Joseph did in this matter was right. The Scripture, as usual, records the proceedings, without passing any judgment upon them; and considering the influences by which he was surrounded, and the age and circumstances in which he lived, it would be surprising indeed to find all his proceedings conformable to modern European notions of political justice. It would be enough to find, that his measures were such as would in his own age be considered just and wise; and if, in any point, as in the one we have noticed, his ideas were in advance of his age, he is entitled to the greater credit; for we cannot rightly expect more from him than the spirit of his own age demanded.
Let us now indicate briefly the true character of the transaction, without pausing to discuss the merits of every step in the operation.
When the famine commenced, Joseph opened the stores, and began to sell the corn, not only to the Egyptians, but to such foreigners as came for it; and that foreigners did come from all the neighboring lands to Egypt to purchase corn, shows that it was not offered at an exorbitant or monopoly price to the Egyptians. The foreigners clearly came in the hope of sharing in the benefits enjoyed by the people of Egypt, by purchasing corn at the price it was sold for in that land. At first the payments for corn were made with money; but this at length became exhausted; and as, from the universal character of the visitation, there were none to give money for other property, Joseph consented, on the application of the people, to take property in exchange for corn. They began with their cattle. As they had not the means of feeding their live stock, and they must have been anxious that their horses, flocks, herds, etc., should be in hands that could preserve them from perishing with hunger; and as the number must have been greatly diminished during the previous period of famine, we need not be surprised to learn, that this resource lasted but one year, at the close of which, all the cattle in Egypt had passed into the possession of the crown. What resource then remained? These were not times for lending or borrowing—of putting the evil day far off—of any of the common resources by which men seek to avert present evil. The questions before men then, were questions of life and death. They came to Joseph, and showing that they had nothing left but their persons and their lands, they offered both as the price of their subsistence during the remainder of the famine, with seed-corn for the time when the operations of agriculture might be resumed. This offer was accepted by Joseph. He did not make the proposal. It was one that he would, perhaps, have hesitated to make; but, being offered by the people, and even pressed upon him, he yielded to their urgency, and without nicely inquiring into the extent of their meaning, accepted it in the same large terms as offered; the particular limitation being then in his hands, and the liberal translation of these terms being well calculated to bring credit to his master.
However, the offer, as made, is not to be understood under the popular acceptation of buying and selling—the application of which, to this transaction, is calculated to mislead the judgment; as Joseph’s phrase, in speaking to them, “I have bought you this day, and your lands, for Pharaoh,” tends to excite a feeling to the disadvantage of his character. It means. little more than “acquired,” just as anciently, and indeed at the present day in the East, a wife is said to be “bought,” and the money that passes between the husband and her father, is called the “price.” This is far from implying that she has become a slave. So, in the present case, although the people relinquish their lands, they do not expect to cease to occupy or cultivate them. They are indeed anxious that the land shall not be desolate; and one of their stipulations is for seed-corn, all of which would have been idle, had they become mere slaves or serfs. Had the land, under their offer, become absolutely that of the king, they had little reason to care about it. He would know how to care for his own land; and they might safely leave to him the providing of seed-corn for its culture. And so, had the condition into which they came been that of slaves, he would have been bound to care for them; and it could to them matter but little whether the land lay desolate or not. What they did expect was clearly, that they should henceforth become tenants of the crown, instead of free proprietors. This they call being “servants,”—a term which merely implies that they were under obligations short of absolute freedom. There is no word in Scripture answering to “tenant.” The tenant is called the “servant” of the proprietor; and, according to this phraseology, our own tenant-farmers would be called servants, seeing that they cultivate lands not their own, and are bound to render to the landlord a large proportion of the value of the produce as rent. Although, therefore, Joseph’s language, “I have bought you this day, you and your lands for Pharaoh,” must sound harsh to us, it is well to understand, that the true signification of what he says is this—“Having this day acquired for Pharaoh certain rights over you and your lands, I shall now proceed to inform you to what extent these rights will hereafter be enforced.” He then states, in accordance with the explanation we have given, that they are to remain in occupation of the lands of which the king had become, by their cession, the proprietor, and that they were to pay one fifth of the produce as rent to the sovereign as their landlord, in lieu of all other imposts and charges whatever. When we consider that, in all probability, a tenth at least had previously been paid to defray the expenses of government, the real additional charge is ten percent—in all twenty percent. This is certainly a heavy charge; but it is as nothing in comparison with what is paid for rent in almost any country in Europe at the present day; and still less bears comparison with the combined charges of rent and taxation, which this charge in Egypt appears to us to represent. It is somewhat remarkable, that amid the vicissitudes to which that country has been subject, the compact between the ruler and his subjects, entered into by Joseph, has always subsisted there in principle. To this day the fellah, or peasant, in Egypt, cultivates the land for his sovereign, and receives a portion of the produce for his own wants. But, amid the grasping exactions of our own age, and the harsh oppressions to which he is subject by the government and its officers, he has much reason to regret, that the moderation of Joseph does not actuate its present rulers. Mr. Lane, in his excellent book on the Modern Egyptians, declares with emphasis, that “it could scarcely be possible for them to suffer more, and live.” Note: In Burckhardt’s curious book of Arabic Proverbs, there is a calculation of the cost and produce of the culture of seventeen acres in Egypt. It may be thus summarily stated in piasters—
Total produce,
Total expense, ½
Clear produce, ½
Government taxes,
Remainder for cultivation, ½
This shows that the taxes alone levied by the modern government, amount to about seventy percent of the clear produce of the farm.
The true view of Joseph’s proceedings must be taken from the point of view of the age in which he lived. It is therefore well that we have the means of knowing, not merely how it was viewed by his contemporaries generally, but how it was regarded by the very people themselves, whose harsh treatment some writers have affected to condole. Let it be remembered that the proposal was their own; and that when Joseph had accepted their offer, under a more liberal construction than they had perhaps expected, their language was not that of complaint, but of warm and admiring gratitude—“Thou halt saved our lives!”
It deserves further to be noted that, although in accepting the offer, he uses the same broad terms in which it had been tendered; yet, when the law in which he embodied the results of this transaction is given—nothing is said about the persons, only of the lands—the edict itself, liberally and gracefully waiving the point which was most liable to abuse, which had formed part of the bargain. If it was to be enforced, or had any other significance beyond that we have ascribed to it, the law is the very place in which to seek it; but the law only says, that the fifth part of the produce was to be the king’s, without one word of personal servitude, or of persons in any way.