The Bottom of the River - Genesis 41:55-47

41:55-57 - In Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph interpreted that there would be 7 years of abundance in Egypt followed by 7 years of devastating famine, and so Pharaoh appointed Joseph to execute a plan in which a 20% tax was levied on the Egyptians to store so that the people wouldn’t starve to death when the famine came. It’s important to remember here that the ruling class of Egypt at the time, to include Joseph, wasn’t Egyptian, but instead Semites, Joseph being an Israelite and the rest of the rulers being Bedouins. This dynamic is important to keep in mind but we’ll come back to that.

I had never considered the when, how, or why of this famine because Egypt and the middle east is so far away and it is hot and desert there, so of course there is famines all the time because the water situation is so precarious all the time. But then again, we have to remember that Mesopotamia is the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq and is also known as the fertile crescent, where humanity dawned. All this is to say that it’s not a forgone conclusion that there was famine all the time, historically it’s actually been a very productive and plentiful place to live.

The nature of this famine is actually quite interesting and TB from Torah Class really sets the stage here for us. The Nile river consists of two parts, the White Nile and the Blue Nile with the White Nile originating in the mountainous area around Lake Victoria “Located at the intersection of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.” TB tells us that water flows down hill, but the geography of north eastern Africa is a little confusing, for instance, the river originates in the area of Lake Victoria, thousands of miles south of Egypt, where the elevation is very high but flows north as the elevation decreases. This is how the land of Egypt got it’s local designation as “upper Egypt” in the south and “lower Egypt” in the north. This isn’t talking about north and south on the map, but instead refers to the elevation difference in the region.

While the White Nile (about 2300 miles) is significantly longer than that Blue Nile (between 900-990 miles) streaming from Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean sea in northern Egypt, “the Blue Nile contributes the vast majority of the water that flows through Egypt and into the Mediterranean Sea. During the rainy season, it is estimated that the Blue Nile contributes around 80% of the total volume of water flowing in the Nile.” The Blue Nile dives from about 5000+ feet in elevation at its origin at Lake Tana in Ethiopia to where it joins the White Nile at around 1000 feet in central Sudan, then joined together and just referred to as the “Nile” river, it coasts for the next 1864 miles gradually decreasing in elevation from 1000 ft to sea level.

Once the Nile approaches the Mediterranean Sea it quickly diffuses into the “delta” area which kind of looks like a big leaf at the end of a skinny stem. This delta area is very large about 100 miles long and 150 miles wide. TB explains the significance of the geography better than I could write it, saying, “Even though the Egyptians very early on began digging canals to channel water from the Nile to water crops, it was the annual rising and falling of the water levels of the Nile that determined feast of famine. It is crucial that the Nile overflow its banks during the 3 summer months; an overflow caused by monsoon type rains that occurred far to the south, in the two southern river basins that formed the headwaters of the Nile. The overflow not only watered the land, but it brough silt, rich in nutrients necessary to grow crops all along the Nile. But, it takes only a few inches of rainfall deficit in but one of the two great southern river basins to destroy the delicate balance and prevent sufficient water flow to cause the necessary downriver flooding.”

It wasn’t just that there wasn’t enough water to grow the crops, it was that there wasn’t enough water to flood the delta and bring silt to the ground for the plants. This isn’t a simple A=B situation where rain falls from the sky and gives water to the crops, it’s more like algebra where there has to be enough rain fall in an area 1000 miles to soak into the ground there and then take that foreign dirt by water down stream to a place where there needs to be enough water to flood, and eventually settle that water and dirt deep into the soil so that the seeds that are planted have enough mineral content that it can be healthy. With the Blue Nile providing 80% of the water for the delta, any diminished rainfall anywhere on the route from Lake Tana to the delta would result in significantly reduced ability to grow food for the people in Egypt. It’s pretty complicated actually with the complex and fragile nature of this agriculture system causing me to wonder why this system ever worked at all, it seems like too many moving parts.

TB sums up the complexity saying, “it’s not that the Nile dried up in Joseph’s time, nor that the people didn’t have sufficient water to drink; it’s simply that for a several year period, the Nile did NOT overflow, and the marshlands of the Delta receded, and therefore sufficient crops were not produced to feed the citizens of Egypt. To be clear: all food production did NOT cease. But, it was dramatically reduced and there was not enough to sustain the people.” I always thought that the Nile dried up, and I always wondered why the people didn’t die from dehydration because if there was no water for the crops, then how was there water to drink, and this makes sense here, that it wasn’t necessarily water quantity enough to sustain mammalian life, but instead not enough to completely flood a huge area of land consistently.

Anyway, after 7 years of great agricultural abundance, the famine began, and “the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do.” Pharaoh is very wise in taking himself out of the public spotlight for this situation. Sure, ultimately everyone knows that the buck stops with Pharaoh, but by making Joseph the authority on the stored grain there could always be the speculation amongst the people that Joseph was taking Pharaoh’s generous policy regarding the food and using it for his own personal gain. If the plan worked Pharaoh was a genius who saved his people, and if the plan made people angry, well then there’s Joseph who is taking advantage of everyone.

One of the main problems isn’t that the people were being saved their Joseph’s storing of their food over the years, the main problem was that this stored food was confiscated from the people by the government and now when it comes time to fulfill the purpose for which it was confiscated, the people didn’t just receive their food back, but it was “sold unto the Egyptians.” Now if it were me, I would be furious that this food was not only stolen from me through taxes at the time, but now when I need it back, I have to pay my money for my own food that I grew on my own land with my own hands. I would be furious, and I’m pretty sure that the Egyptian people are, especially considering that their food was “taxed” by foreign invaders and now being sold back to them by the same people.

It wasn’t just Egypt that suffered with this famine, but “the famine was so sore in all lands.” Again, I group all the area of Africa and Asia all together because it’s so far away from me, but TB comments on the significance of there being a famine simultaneously in both Egypt and the middle east, saying, “The weather systems that govern rainfall in southern Egypt, and those that govern rainfall in the Middle East are totally separate. That very low rainfall occurred for several years in southern Egypt during the same time there was a drought for several years in Canaan was a God thing; that does not normally occur. One of the reasons that Egypt and the people of Canaan knew each other so well, and had since time immemorial established trade, was because usually when there was crop failure in Egypt due to low levers of the Nile, Egypt could count of going up to Canaan to buy extra food… and vice-verse. But this time it was different.”