Genesis 47: Pharaoh Comes to Own Egypt
Pharaoh gives Jacob the best pasture lands in Egypt to take care of their own and his cattle. This also ensured the survival of the cattle as one commentary suggested. Egyptians did not like shepherds and so a natural boundary between the Egyptians and the Israelites existed to keep them pure. Jacob blesses Pharaoh. When the famine begins, the Egyptians sell all of their possessions and land to Pharaoh and they promise to give one fifth of the harvests to him. Meanwhile Jacob continues to prosper and his family grows in Goshen. Then Jacob, who seems to have been approaching death for a long time now, has Joshua swear to take his bones back to Canaan.
I wonder if there had been an official proclamation to prepare for the seven years of famine? It seems all the Egyptians had run out of their own stores of grain in the first year and beginning in the second year they sold their cattle and land to Pharaoh. Whereas Jacob and his people prospered. The unbelievers lost their possessions though they still were blessed by Joshua’s foresight and survived.
Jacob and his children probably thought they were in for a short stay but if they had thought about the promise to Abraham, they might have realized that they may be there for a long 400 years.
Grain storage silos have been found from about this era in Edfu, Egypt. Some have thought that the pyramids were also silos but we know that they have no internal storage space and were built many centuries before Joseph.
Planning and foresight have their place in the lives of humans. I need to do all I can with the meager wisdom I have been blessed with and then Let God!