Genesis 41:36

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.” ¹ 

Genesis 42:6

42:6 Now Joseph was the ruler of the country, the one who sold grain to all the people of the country. ²  Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down ³  before him with ⁴  their faces to the ground.

Genesis 47:11

47:11 So Joseph settled his father and his brothers. He gave them territory ⁵  in the land of Egypt, in the best region of the land, the land of Rameses, ⁶  just as Pharaoh had commanded.

Genesis 47:13

47:13 But there was no food in all the land because the famine was very severe; the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan wasted away ⁷  because of the famine.

[41:36]  ¹ tn Heb “and the land will not be cut off in the famine.”

[42:6]  ² tn The disjunctive clause either introduces a new episode in the unfolding drama or provides the reader with supplemental information necessary to understanding the story.

[42:6]  ³ sn Joseph’s brothers came and bowed down before him. Here is the beginning of the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams (see Gen 37). But it is not the complete fulfillment, since all his brothers and his parents must come. The point of the dream, of course, was not simply to get the family to bow to Joseph, but that Joseph would be placed in a position of rule and authority to save the family and the world (41:57).

[42:6]  ⁴ tn The word “faces” is an adverbial accusative, so the preposition has been supplied in the translation.

[47:11]  ³ tn Heb “a possession,” or “a holding.” Joseph gave them a plot of land with rights of ownership in the land of Goshen.

[47:11]  ⁴ sn The land of Rameses is another designation for the region of Goshen. It is named Rameses because of a city in that region (Exod 1:11; 12:37). The use of this name may represent a modernization of the text for the understanding of the intended readers, substituting a later name for an earlier one. Alternatively, there may have been an earlier Rameses for which the region was named.

[47:13]  ⁴ tn The verb לַהַה (lahah, = לָאָה, la’ah) means “to faint, to languish”; it figuratively describes the land as wasting away, drooping, being worn out.