The Seven Years of Plenty

At thirty, Joseph enters Pharaoh’s service and oversees the years of plenty throughout Egypt. He stores such vast amounts of grain in the cities that the measure can no longer be kept.

N⁴⁶ow Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph left Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout the land of Egypt. ⁴⁷During the seven years of abundance, the land brought forth bountifully. ⁴⁸During those seven years, Joseph collected all the excess food in the land of Egypt and stored it in the cities. In every city he laid up the food from the fields around it. ⁴⁹So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped keeping track of it; for it was beyond measure.

Before the famine begins, Joseph’s two sons are born, and he names them for what God has done. One name speaks of forgotten hardship; the other speaks of fruitfulness in affliction.

⁵⁰Before the years of famine arrived, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. ⁵¹Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, saying, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s household.” ⁵²And the second son he named Ephraim, saying, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”