And they set on for him by himself— There seems to have been three tables; one where Joseph sat alone in state, a second for the Egyptian courtiers, and the third for the eleven brethren.
Because the Egyptians— The LXX translate these words, because every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians: and the paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan, because the Hebrews eat the animals which the Egyptians hold sacred. See ch. Genesis 46:34. and Exodus 8:26. The latter is the most generally received opinion, though both, perhaps, might concur in the present case. The Egyptians were addicted to such a number of superstitious niceties, even in their eating, that they could not endure to sit at table with the people of any other nation. Their aversion was not peculiar to the Hebrews; they had the same, as Herodotus informs us, to the Greeks; they would not so much as kiss the mouth of a Greek, nor eat with his knife or other instrument, apprehending it might be polluted by cutting or touching the flesh of one of those animals which they held sacred. There are many, however, who think that these superstitions were later than Joseph's days, and therefore resolve this abhorrence, not into a religious, but into a civil difference of manners between the two nations. Many learned men have thought, that the worship of the ox Apis was not only posterior to the times of Joseph, but that it was Joseph himself whom the Egyptians deified under the name of Apis, or the Father of his Country. See Vossius de Idolol. lib. 1: cap. 29.