Parshat Vayigash: Yosef’s Economic Vision: A Fair System in a Time of Famine

 

Parshat Vayigash concludes with an account of how Yosef managed the famine in Egypt, a time of great economic and social upheaval.

In the first year of the famine, Yosef sold grain to the people in exchange for money. However, after a year, the people’s money was exhausted. In the second year, Yosef provided food in exchange for livestock. The people brought him their horses, donkeys, cattle, and sheep, receiving grain in return. But eventually, even the livestock was depleted, leaving the population in dire straits. Desperate, they approached Yosef and pleaded:

“We will not hide from my lord that all our money and livestock now belong to my lord. Nothing remains before my lord except our bodies and our farmland. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we will be slaves to Pharaoh. Provide us with seed so that we may live and not die, and so the soil will not remain fallow” (Bereishit 47:18-19).

Yosef agreed to their proposal and said:

“Behold, I have purchased you and your farmland today for Pharaoh. Here is seed—sow the land. At harvest time, you shall give a fifth of the produce to Pharaoh. The remaining four parts will be yours: for seed for your fields, for food for yourselves, and for those in your households, including your children” (Bereishit 47:23-24).

Yosef thus established a law in Egypt, which endured for generations, that a fifth of the harvest belonged to Pharaoh. Notably, the priests’ land was exempt from this arrangement, as it did not become Pharaoh’s property.

This system ensured that the peasant tax did not exceed one-fifth of their produce, a remarkably fair and sustainable model for the time. It’s striking to note that slaves in Yosef’s Egypt retained such a significant portion of their harvest—80 percent! Considering that the land was state-owned and the people effectively became Pharaoh’s servants, this arrangement seems surprisingly generous. Who among us wouldn’t appreciate a tax rate capped at 20 percent of our income?

This comparison invites reflection on more recent systems of collective farming in so-called "advanced" societies of the 20th century. Yosef’s system, though ancient, appears far more humane and uplifting than many modern experiments in agricultural collectivization.

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