Yosef’s plan was for Egypt to collect the food from the good years and then dispense it in during the seven years of famine. The advice to store up food is not surprising because this would seem to be the obvious implication of Yosef’s interpretation of the dream. How was the food to be collected? It could have been collected through force (Rashbam on 41:34,35), as with taxes, or the Egyptian government could have bought the food (Ibn Ezra on 41:34). The implication of 47:24, which records that Yosef imposed a tax on the Egyptian people, is that the taxation appears to have been something new. If this is true, then Yosef’s advice was to buy the food in the seven good years and this can be understood with basic economics. During the seven good years, there would be an increase in the supply of grains (the supply curve would switch right), which would drive the price of wheat down. The government could buy the grain at the lower price knowing that the costs would be recuperated during the bad years since then the price would rise due to the shortages (the supply curve would shift left). Yosef‘s advice was then based on him having perfect information about future prices due to Pharaoh’s dream.
One potential problem with Yosef’s plan to store the food, was that the food could go bad until the seven years of famine. Can wheat be stored so long (see Ibn Ezra on 41:35 and Rashi on 41:48), or was this a miracle in the story that G-d made sure that there was enough wheat for Yosef’s plan to succeed and for Yosef to meet his brothers?
41:47-49 record how Yosef gathered up all of the produce in Egypt. This surely required a large government bureaucracy to coordinate all of the purchasing (or taking), storing and distributing the food. Interestingly, MacGregor (2012, pp. 88-95) in his discussion of the Rhind mathematical papyrus, a papyrus from Egypt from around 1550 BCE that listed 84 mathematical questions which are believed to be preparations for the Egyptian civil servant exams at that time, noted how the papyrus shows the well-developed and mathematically well-trained bureaucracy in Egypt. It is not clear when Yosef lived, a little before 1550 BCE or maybe a little afterwards, but we see that in Egypt there was a talented bureaucracy at his time that could have implemented his policies.
Instead of having this large government bureaucracy, Yosef could have informed the people of the coming famine, and relied on the people themselves to store up their food. Did Yosef think that the people would not have listened since they would not trust him or because people in general are short-sighted? Or, maybe Yosef needed to have the government apparatus in order that he would be able to “catch” his brothers?
Yosef’s policies were an example of big government. Government policies usually suffer from two problems. One, government officials usually do not have sufficient information to solve problems, and two, many times the officials are more concerned with their own welfare than the welfare of the people. However, these problems did not exist in this case since Yosef was a fearer of G-d (39:9, 41:38, 42:18), and through the dreams Yosef had all the necessary information. Yet, while Yosef solved the problem of famine, in the end his solution caused the Jewish people to be in Egypt, where they eventually ended up as slaves. Yosef only had information for fourteen years, and he could not foresee the consequences of his actions after the fourteen years.
41:54-57, 42:5,6 and 47:13-26 record the implementation of Yosef’s plan during the seven years of the famine. Yosef’s actions in these years can be divided into several stages. Firstly, as we discuss on 41:54,56,57; 42:5-7; 47:15, “Was Egypt the breadbasket of the world in the time of Yosef?” I believe that there were three stages to Yosef selling the wheat. Initially, for a short time, he sold the food to anybody who came to Egypt, then for two years or so, he sold wheat both to people from Canaan and of course the Egyptians, and then in the end he only sold/ distributed the wheat to the Egyptians.
Secondly, Yosef’s policies just with regard to the Egyptians had four stages. First, Yosef acquired all of the people's money, then Yosef acquired their animals, and then when the people offered to sell themselves and their land, he bought their land as well. After the famine was almost over, in the fourth stage, Yosef gave the Egyptian people seeds to start over, but he instituted a tax of twenty percent which he justified since he had bought them and their land. The net result of the famine was that the people survived due to Yosef, which they acknowledged, 47:25, and then afterwards they had to pay an annual income tax of 20%.
One question about these policies during the seven years of famine is why did the Torah record them as the section of 47:13-26 seems peripheral to the main focus of the story of Yosef and his brothers? The Torah could have recorded in one sentence that the Egyptians survived the famine due to Yosef and they were thankful to him, without recording all the details of Yosef’s actions.
A second question is while we can understand why Yosef sold the wheat to foreigners (from the Egyptian perspective), should Yosef have given the Egyptians the food for free? Benno Jacob (1974, p. 318) argues that it was just for the Egyptians to pay for the food since they had received money when they sold the grains to Yosef during the good years. Yet, after the Egyptians ran out of money, Yosef made them pay for the food by the Egyptians giving him their animals and their land. Why did Yosef not give the Egyptians the food for free after their money was gone? It is true that when people get things for nothing, they waste them, and during the famine the goal was to conserve the food, which implies that the food should have not been distributed completely free, but was it necessary for Yosef to take all of the Egyptians’ money, animals and their land? Maybe Yosef's goal was to have the people agree to a tax of 20% (47:24). With this idea, after the people gave Yosef their lands, then the food was given freely since there was nothing left for the people to pay. Furthermore, with this understanding, maybe the reason why the Torah records the details of the implementation of Yosef’s polices was to provide proof of Pharaoh's statement in 41:39 that Yosef was brilliant, as Yosef was able to institute a tax of 20% with complete acceptance by the public.
A third question is, was the 20% tax reasonable or fair? The answer here, as in many cases by the question of fairness, depends on one’s perspective. A tax of 20% is reasonable to a person who pays more than 20% in taxes (see Ramban on 47:19), but for somebody who did not pay any taxes before the famine to pay 20% after the famine was surely a lot.
A fourth question is why would the people trade their animals for food when they could eat the animals? The answer could be that the nourishment from the wheat they received was much greater than what they would have attained by eating their animals. This could be because they received comparably more grains than the value of their animals, and it could have been that the animals had become quite scrawny (like in Pharaoh’s dream) during the famine.
After the Egyptians sold their lands to Yosef, he moved the people throughout the country to the cities, 47:21. Not only is this a difficult process logistically, but it also would have increased the suffering of the Egyptians in those years, who were already suffering from the famine. Why did Yosef do this? (A fifth question.)
Rashi (on 47:21) explains that Yosef moved the people from one city to another city in order that they should realize that they had sold their land and that they should not look upon Yaakov's family as foreigners. This is a difficult since the verse just states that the people were moved to the city and not that they were moved from city to city. Also, is this second rationale of helping his family in some minor way sufficient to justify uprooting people from their homes?
Luzzatto (on 47:21) tries to mitigate the suffering of the Egyptians from this action by Yosef by arguing that Yosef maintained the initial groupings of the people. The idea is that all the people from each town were moved together to a new town in order that there were no problems of social adjustment. Furthermore, since the Egyptian people were willing participants in selling the land, there probably was no need to forcibly move the people. Yet, the Egyptians were probably not happy to be moved from their homeland.
Ibn Ezra (on 47:21) first writes that Yosef moved each person from his place, and then he adds a second opinion that Yosef moved all the people from the rural areas to the cities. This second opinion accords with the words of the verse, but why would Yosef do this? Ibn Ezra writes that by moving the people, then the land could be worked. This seems unlikely since during a famine there was no farming at all, 45:6.
Bekhor Shor (on 47:21, also see Rashbam on 47:21) first quotes Rashi's first explanation, and then the Bekhor Shor adds a second possibility that Yosef moved the people from city to city after each city ran out of food. The idea here is that the cities were the places where the food was sold/ distributed, and then when there was no more food to give out, the people moved to another city to get food. The Bekhor Shor writes that Rashi’s explanation is more correct, but Hertz (1960, p. 177) follows the second approach, as he writes "the cities became depots for facilitating the distribution of the food." This idea that the cities were the points of distribution accords with 41:48 that the food was gathered in the cities during the seven good years.
There was no reason for the Egyptian people to remain in the fields during the famine since due to the famine there was no possibility to farm the lands, so, following Hertz's understanding, Yosef moved the people to the cities where it would be easier to feed them. Maybe the people worked at crafts in the city during the famine, and then when the famine ended the Egyptian people would have returned to their lands. Thus, Yosef’s action to move the Egyptians was only temporary until the famine was over, and was to ease the lives of the Egyptians during the famine.
Another (sixth) question is that the Torah makes a point of specifying that Yosef did not buy the land of the Egyptian priests, which implies both that they paid either less or nothing for the food that they received from Yosef and that the tax was not instituted on them, 47:22,26. Independent of why the Torah records all the details of Yosef’s action by the Egyptian population in selling them food, why did the Torah mention Yosef’s special policies with regard to the Egyptian priests?
N. Leibowitz (1976, pp. 520-529, also in Jacobson, 1986) offers two explanations. One, the Torah is ridiculing the Egyptian system of justice that allowed a difference in land ownership between the elite, the priests, and the common people. However, it was Yosef who caused the Egyptians to lose their land and who made this difference in land ownership.
N. Leibowitz’s second answer is that the Torah mentions that the Egyptian priests owned their land to contrast the future Jewish law that the Jewish priests would not own land. This point is not entirely correct since while the Jewish priests did not have land in the countryside, they did have their own cities in which presumably they owned property, Bemidbar 35:2. Also, what is to be learned from this contrast? N. Leibowitz writes that it is to show that “the Levites were not chosen in order to enable them to accumulate wealth and exploit their flock” but to work for G-d. It is true that the Torah attempts to prevent the religious elite, the priests, from being the economic elite, and this separation may not have occurred in Egypt, but I doubt this is the point of this section. Here, we do not see the Egyptians priests benefiting at the expense of the people, rather we see the Egyptian people losing their land due to Yosef.
Instead, it could be that this differentiation that Yosef made between the general Egyptian population and the priests is to explain how it was that the Egyptian people seemingly easily agreed to Pharaoh to enslave the Jewish people, Shemot 1:8-10, and then to murder the male Jewish children, Shemot 1:22. Pharaoh must have had popular support from at least a majority of the population when he enslaved and tried to kill the Jewish male children. Yet, why would the people have given Pharaoh this support if 47:25 records how thankful the Egyptians felt towards Yosef? Did all the Egyptians have amnesia? One might argue that Egyptians would have had no compunctions against enslaving the Jewish people since that was normal in those times and it provided free labor, but I think to commit genocide there needed to be some underlying antagonism.
Maybe the answer is Yosef’s policies during the famine. Initially the people were happy with Yosef, but what happened after the famine was over? The people were left without their money, animals and with a new tax of 20%, and they would have forgotten how perilous their existence was during the famine. Yosef would have quickly changed from a hero to a villain. A mere 17 years after Yaakov came to Egypt, Yosef had to have Pharaoh’s officials intercede with Pharaoh to get Yosef permission to bury Yaakov in the land of Israel, 50:4,5. Furthermore, the fact that the priests were given food (either for free or cheaper), did not lose their land and did not have to pay the tax would only have increased the resentment of the Egyptians towards Yosef and his family, the Jews, since this showed that it was not necessary for Yosef to have sold the food to them. Only Pharaoh would have had a reason to remember Yosef since he was the only person who benefited in the long run after the famine was over from Yosef’s plans. Thus, once Shemot 1:8 records that a new king came to Egypt who did not know Yosef, there was nothing to stop the Jewish people from suffering at the hands of the Egyptians. Accordingly, it could be that Yosef's polices was partially responsible for the Jewish people being enslaved in Egypt, see Lerner (1989) and Wildavsky (1993, p. 8).
To conclude, were Yosef’s policies in Egypt good or bad? From a short-term perspective, during the 14 years of the good and bad years, they were successful both in saving Egypt and in re-uniting Yosef with Yaakov and his brothers, but from a long-term perspective, it is not clear if Yosef implemented the best policies during the years of the famine.
Hertz, J. H. (1872-1946), 1960, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, second edition, London: Soncino Press.
Jacob, Benno (1869-1945), 1974, The first book of the bible: Genesis, commentary abridged, edited and translated by Earnest I. Jacob and Walter Jacob, New York: Ktav Publishing House.
Jacobson, B. S. 1986, Mediations on the Torah, Tel Aviv: Sinai Publishing.
Leibowitz, Nehama (1905-1997), 1976, Studies in Bereshit, translated by Aryeh Newman, Jerusalem: The World Zionist Organization.
Lerner, Berel Dov, 1989, "Joseph the unrighteous," Judaism, 38:3, pp. 278-281.
MacGregor, Neil, 2012, A history of the world in 100 objects, London: Penguin Books.
Wildavsky, Aaron, 1993, Assimilation versus separation: Joseph the administrator and the politics of religion in biblical Israel, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.