Private property 3

Or: "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Road to Serfdom"

OK, as promised, here's one biblical story/passage I find utterly bewildering: Genesis 47.

This isn't the story of a villain, like the story of Ahab's murderous usurpation of Naboth's vineyard, but the story of Joseph — one of the heroes, someone we're meant to read as a Good Guy worthy of emulation.

Joseph, you'll recall from Sunday school or from Andrew Lloyd Weber, had been sold into slavery by his brothers and then, by divine providence, risen to become Pharaoh's right-hand man and perhaps the second most powerful person in the world. Joseph used this position of power, we usually remember, to guide Egypt and the surrounding countries through seven long years of famine. But our retelling of this somehow usually manages to glide past the more Machiavellian aspects of this story as told in Genesis 47.

Joseph's prophetic interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams had given him the wisdom to store up food during the "seven fat years." This food saved the people of Egypt and Canaan — including the Israelites. It also enabled Pharoah, thanks to the machinations of Joseph, to become an absolute ruler over a nation of slaves:

There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying, and he brought it to Pharaoh's palace.

So Joseph "collected all the money" for Pharoah, but the famine still has years to go.

When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, "Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is used up."

"Then bring your livestock," said Joseph. "I will sell you food in exchange for your livestock, since your money is gone." So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for their horses, their sheep and goats, their cattle and donkeys. And he brought them through that year with food in exchange for all their livestock.

The people of Egypt now have no money and no livestock, but the famine still has years to go.

When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, "We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. Why should we perish before your eyes — we and our land as well? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate."

So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh's, and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other.

This story follows the conventions of legends, with that echoing, "when that year was over …" repetition. It even concludes, "So Joseph established it as a law concerning land in Egypt — still in force today," which gives it the sense of a folkloric origin story, like tales of how Pecos Bill dug the Rio Grande. But whether one reads it as history or legend, the point of the story is that the hero, Joseph, is celebrated for his actions. I have no idea what to make of that.

I've written a good bit lately about Christian teaching on property and statecraft and their intersection. This story, clearly, is about all those things, yet I've never seen it cited in any of the many books and writings I've read on these subjects.* (The theonomists, or "reconstructionists," I suppose, would love this story, but I haven't the patience to plow through more of their heretical drivel to find what they've had to say about it.)

The Bible is full of stories of evil kings in Israel and elsewhere who are condemned or punished for the kind of behavior that Joseph is praised for here. One might try to argue that Joseph's establishment of Pharaoh's nearly unlimited rule is different because he was dealing with the pagan Egyptians and not with the children of Israel, but then why would the most pagan of these pagans — the Egyptian priests — be the sole exception to Joseph's arrogation of all the land?

However, he did not buy the land of the priests, because they received a regular allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land. … It was only the land of the priests that did not become Pharaoh's.

This story is a conundrum. It blesses that which most of Scripture condemns. It seems to teach things about the land and property and the role of the state that are vehemently contradicted by Christian teaching on these matters.

I have, again, no idea what to make of this. If anyone knows of a good resource on this story, I'd love to hear about it.

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* John Calvin gamely wrestles with this story in his commentary on Genesis, but he seems to be working as hard to persuade himself as he is his readers that Joseph's actions here are defensible:

Any one might suppose it to be the height of cruel and inexplicable avarice, that Joseph should take away from the miserable husband men, the very fields, by the produce of which they nourished the kingdom. But I have before showed, that unless every kind of purchase is to be condemned, there is no reason why Joseph should be blamed. If any one should say that he abused their penury; this alone would suffice for his excuse, that no wiles of his, no circumvention, no force, no threats, had reduced the Egyptians to this necessity. … he extorted nothing, but entered into treaty with them, at their own request. I confess, indeed, that it is not right to take whatever may be offered without discrimination: for if severe necessity presses, then he who wishes, by all means, to escape it, will submit to hard conditions. Therefore, when any one thus invites us, to defraud him, we are not, by his necessities, rendered excusable. But I do not defend Joseph, on this sole ground, that the Egyptians voluntarily offered him their lands, as men who were ready to purchase life, at any price; but I say, this ought also to be considered, that he acted with equity, even though he left them nothing.

Ultimately, Calvin throws up his hands and confesses, Job-like, that he trusts that God is both sovereign and good, even if it doesn't seem to make sense to him: "Lastly, seeing that we stand or fall by the judgment of God alone, it is not for us to condemn what his law has left undecided." (One of the most interesting things in reading Calvin are the places like this where his own sense of justice seems unsatisfied, so he tosses it aside and makes a leap of faith. If he had allowed himself to write more explicitly about that inner conflict, he would've become an earlier Kierkegaard.)