Genesis 41:14

41:14 Then Pharaoh summoned ¹  Joseph. So they brought him quickly out of the dungeon; he shaved himself, changed his clothes, and came before Pharaoh.

Genesis 41:33-44

41:33 “So now Pharaoh should look ²  for a wise and discerning man ³  and give him authority ⁴  over all the land of Egypt. 41:34 Pharaoh should do ⁵  this – he should appoint ⁶  officials ⁷  throughout the land to collect one-fifth of the produce of the land of Egypt ⁸  during the seven years of abundance. 41:35 They should gather all the excess food ⁹  during these good years that are coming. By Pharaoh’s authority ¹⁰  they should store up grain so the cities will have food, ¹¹  and they should preserve it. ¹²  41:36 This food should be held in storage for the land in preparation for the seven years of famine that will occur throughout the land of Egypt. In this way the land will survive the famine.” ¹³ 

41:37 This advice made sense to Pharaoh and all his officials. ¹⁴  41:38 So Pharaoh asked his officials, “Can we find a man like Joseph, ¹⁵  one in whom the Spirit of God is present?” ¹⁶  41:39 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Because God has enabled you to know all this, there is no one as wise and discerning ¹⁷  as you are! 41:40 You will oversee my household, and all my people will submit to your commands. ¹⁸  Only I, the king, will be greater than you. ¹⁹ 

41:41 “See here,” Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I place ²⁰  you in authority over all the land of Egypt.” ²¹  41:42 Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his own hand and put it on Joseph’s. He clothed him with fine linen ²²  clothes and put a gold chain around his neck. 41:43 Pharaoh ²³  had him ride in the chariot used by his second-in-command, ²⁴  and they cried out before him, “Kneel down!” ²⁵  So he placed him over all the land of Egypt. 41:44 Pharaoh also said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, but without your permission ²⁶  no one ²⁷  will move his hand or his foot ²⁸  in all the land of Egypt.”

Job 5:11

5:11 he sets ²⁹  the lowly ³⁰  on high,

that those who mourn ³¹  are raised ³²  to safety.

Psalms 113:7-8

113:7 He raises the poor from the dirt,

and lifts up the needy from the garbage pile, ³³ 

113:8 that he might seat him with princes,

with the princes of his people.

[41:14]  ¹ tn Heb “and Pharaoh sent and called,” indicating a summons to the royal court.

[41:33]  ² tn Heb “let Pharaoh look.” The jussive form expresses Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh.

[41:33]  ³ tn Heb “a man discerning and wise.” The order of the terms is rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[41:33]  ⁴ tn Heb “and let him set him.”

[41:34]  ⁵ tn The imperfect verbal form has an obligatory nuance here. The Samaritan Pentateuch has a jussive form here, “and let [Pharaoh] do.”

[41:34]  ⁶ tn Heb “and let him appoint.” The jussive form expresses Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh.

[41:34]  ⁷ tn Heb “appointees.” The noun is a cognate accusative of the preceding verb. Since “appoint appointees” would be redundant in English, the term “officials” was used in the translation instead.

[41:34]  ⁸ tn Heb “and he shall collect a fifth of the land of Egypt.” The language is figurative (metonymy); it means what the land produces, i.e., the harvest.

[41:35]  ⁹ tn Heb “all the food.”

[41:35]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “under the hand of Pharaoh.”

[41:35]  ¹¹ tn Heb “[for] food in the cities.” The noun translated “food” is an adverbial accusative in the sentence.

[41:35]  ¹² tn The perfect with vav (ו) consecutive carries the same force as the sequence of jussives before it.

[41:36]  ¹³ tn Heb “and the land will not be cut off in the famine.”

[41:37]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and the matter was good in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of all his servants.”

[41:38]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “like this,” but the referent could be misunderstood to be a man like that described by Joseph in v. 33, rather than Joseph himself. For this reason the proper name “Joseph” has been supplied in the translation.

[41:38]  ¹⁶ tn The rhetorical question expects the answer “No, of course not!”

[41:39]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “as discerning and wise.” The order has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[41:40]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and at your mouth (i.e., instructions) all my people will kiss.” G. J. Wenham translates this “shall kowtow to your instruction” (Genesis [WBC], 2:395). Although there is some textual support for reading “will be judged, ruled by you,” this is probably an attempt to capture the significance of this word. Wenham lists a number of references where individuals have tried to make connections with other words or expressions – such as a root meaning “order themselves” lying behind “kiss,” or an idiomatic idea of “kiss” meaning “seal the mouth,” and so “be silent and submit to.” See K. A. Kitchen, “The Term Nsq in Genesis 41:40,” ExpTim 69 (1957): 30; D. S. Sperling, “Genesis 41:40: A New Interpretation,” JANESCU 10 (1978): 113-19.

[41:40]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “only the throne, I will be greater than you.”

[41:41]  ²⁰ tn The translation assumes that the perfect verbal form is descriptive of a present action. Another option is to understand it as rhetorical, in which case Pharaoh describes a still future action as if it had already occurred in order to emphasize its certainty. In this case one could translate “I have placed” or “I will place.” The verb נָתַן (natan) is translated here as “to place in authority [over].”

[41:41]  ²¹ sn Joseph became the grand vizier of the land of Egypt. See W. A. Ward, “The Egyptian Office of Joseph,” JSS 5 (1960): 144-50; and R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 129-31.

[41:42]  ²² tn The Hebrew word שֵׁשׁ (shesh) is an Egyptian loanword that describes the fine linen robes that Egyptian royalty wore. The clothing signified Joseph’s rank.

[41:43]  ²³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Pharaoh) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[41:43]  ²⁴ tn Heb “and he caused him to ride in the second chariot which was his.”

[41:43]  ²⁵ tn The verb form appears to be a causative imperative from a verbal root meaning “to kneel.” It is a homonym of the word “bless” (identical in root letters but not related etymologically).

[41:44]  ²⁶ tn Heb “apart from you.”

[41:44]  ²⁷ tn Heb “no man,” but here “man” is generic, referring to people in general.

[41:44]  ²⁸ tn The idiom “lift up hand or foot” means “take any action” here.

[5:11]  ²⁹ tn Heb “setting.” The infinitive construct clause is here taken as explaining the nature of God, and so parallel to the preceding descriptions. If read simply as a purpose clause after the previous verse, it would suggest that the purpose of watering the earth was to raise the humble (cf. NASB, “And sends water on the fields, // So that He sets on high those who are lowly”). A. B. Davidson (Job, 39) makes a case for this interpretation, saying that God’s gifts in nature have the wider purpose of blessing man, but he prefers to see the line as another benevolence, parallel to v. 10, and so suggests a translation “setting up” rather than “to set up.”

[5:11]  ³⁰ tn The word שְׁפָלִים (shÿfalim) refers to “those who are down.” This refers to the lowly and despised of the earth. They are the opposite of the “proud” (see Ps 138:6). Here there is a deliberate contrast between “lowly” and “on high.”

[5:11]  ³¹ tn The meaning of the word is “to be dark, dirty”; therefore, it refers to the ash-sprinkled head of the mourner (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 54). The custom was to darken one’s face in sorrow (see Job 2:12; Ps 35:14; 38:7).

[5:11]  ³² tn The perfect verb may be translated “be set on high; be raised up.” E. Dhorme (Job, 64) notes that the perfect is parallel to the infinitive of the first colon, and so he renders it in the same way as the infinitive, comparing the construction to that of 28:25.

[113:7]  ³³ sn The language of v. 7 is almost identical to that of 1 Sam 2:8.