The Pulpit Commentary — Genesis — Section 562

Ver. 11.-And J'oseph placed his father to the least (Calvin), or completely, down and his brethren (i. e. gave them a settle- even to the food for their children(' Speaker's :nent, the import of which the next clause Commentary'). explains), and gav!I them a possession (i. e. Ver. 13.-And there was no bread in all allowed them to acquire property) in the the land ; for the famine was very sore land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in (literally, heavy), so that the land of Egypt the land of Rameses,-either that district of and all the land of Canaan fainted (literally, Goshen in which Jacob o.nd his family first was exhausted, had become languid and settled (Michaelis, Rosenmtille1·), or, what spiritless) by reason of the famine. The seems more probable, the land of Goshen introduction of the present section, which itself (LXX., Keil, Hengstenberg, Knlisch, first depicts the misenes of o. starving popu- et alii), being so named proleptically from lation, and then circumstantfally describes a the town Rameses, which was subsequently great political revolution forced upon them built (Exod. i. 11), or, if the town existed in hy the stern necessity of hunger, may have the time of Joseph, and wns only afterwards been clue to a desire (1) to exhibit the ex:- fortified by the lsro.elites, deriving its desig- treme urgency which existed for Joseph's nation from the name of its chief city-as co.re of hiR father nnd brethren (Bush), (2) to -Pharaoh had commanded. show the grcn tness of the benefit conferred Ver. 12.-And Joseph nouriehed-!a,ro- on Joseph's house (Baumgarten, Keil, Lnnge), µfrpu (LXX. ), i. e. gave them their measure and perhaps nlso (3) to foreshadow the poli- of corn-his father, and his brethren, and tical constitution o.fterwards bestowed upou all his father's household, with bread, accord- the Israelites (Gerl11ch). ing to their families-literally, to, or accord- Ver. 14.-And J'oseph gathered up-the ing to, the moiith of the little ones, meaning verb, used only here of collecting money, either in proportion to the size of their usually signifies to gnther things lying on families (LXX., Keil, Kalisch, Murphy), or the ground, as, e. g.; eo.rs of corn (Ruth ii. 3), with all the tenderness with which a parent stones (eh. xxxi. 46), m:mna (Exod. xvi. H), provides for his offspring (Murphy), or the tlowers (Cant. vi. 2)-all the money (litemlly, whole body of them, from tho greatest even sili·cr) that was found in the land of Egypt,  b12 THE BOOK OF GENESIS. [CH. XLVII. 11.,--27,