Genesis 45:6,7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Five years there shall be neither earing (an old English word for ploughing, which is the meaning of the Hebrew) nor harvest That is, except in a few places near the river Nile; for, understanding from Joseph that the famine would be of long continuance, and that their labour and seed, which they could ill spare, would be lost, people would neither plough nor sow, and, of course, could not reap. To preserve you a posterity in the earth That you and your children might be sustained in this time of famine, and afterward abundantly multiplied as God hath promised. To save your lives by a great deliverance Or, according to the Hebrew, for a great escaping, or, a great remnant; that is, that you, who are now but a handful, escaping this danger, might grow into a vast multitude; the word evasion, or escaping, being put for the persons that escape, as 2 Chronicles 30:6, and Isaiah 10:20. Joseph reckoned that his advancement was not so much designed to save a whole kingdom of Egyptians, as to preserve a small family of Israelites; for the Lord's portion is his people: whatever goes with others, they shall be secured. How admirable are the projects of Providence! How remote their tendencies! What wheels are there within wheels; and yet all directed by the eyes in the wheels, and the spirit of the living creature!