The seven lean, bad-looking cows that came up after them represent seven years, as do the seven empty heads of grain burned with the east wind. They represent seven years of famine.

You will oversee my household, and all my people will submit to your commands. Only I, the king, will be greater than you.

While the famine was over all the earth, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians. The famine was severe throughout the land of Egypt.

When they were emptying their sacks, there was each man’s bag of money in his sack! When they and their father saw the bags of money, they were afraid.

Their father Jacob said to them, “You are making me childless! Joseph is gone. Simeon is gone. And now you want to take Benjamin! Everything is against me.”

When they finished eating the grain they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, “Return, buy us a little more food.”

But when we came to the place where we spent the night, we opened our sacks and each of us found his money – the full amount – in the mouth of his sack. So we have returned it.

When he sees the boy is not with us, he will die, and your servants will bring down the gray hair of your servant our father in sorrow to the grave.

You will live in the land of Goshen, and you will be near me – you, your children, your grandchildren, your flocks, your herds, and everything you have.

The sons of Judah: Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah (but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan). The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul.

The men are shepherds; they take care of livestock. They have brought their flocks and their herds and all that they have.’

Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years; the years of Jacob’s life were 147 in all.

After these things Joseph was told, “Your father is weakening.” So he took his two sons Manasseh and Ephraim with him.

Then Israel said to Joseph, “I am about to die, but God will be with you and will bring you back to the land of your fathers.

When he sees a good resting place, and the pleasant land, he will bend his shoulder to the burden and become a slave laborer.

May Dan be a snake beside the road, a viper by the path, that bites the heels of the horse so that its rider falls backward.

The blessings of your father are greater than the blessings of the eternal mountains or the desirable things of the age-old hills. They will be on the head of Joseph and on the brow of the prince of his brothers.

When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him from the water.”

In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people.

“I will grant this people favor with the Egyptians, so that when you depart you will not leave empty-handed.