Wherefore shall we die—we, and our land— Land may be said, metaphorically, to die, when it lies uncultivated and desolate: this is agreeable, says Calmet, to the language of the poets, and of the best elastic writers. So Martial says, suburbanus ne moriatur ager.* Seneca, sata et vivere et mori dicimus.† See Job 14:7-8.
* That the land about the city may not die.
† We say that the corn-land either lives or dies.
Buy us and our land for bread— It is to be observed here, that this is the voluntary offer of the people, not the demand of Joseph. We observed in a former note, that the land was divided among the king, the priests, and the people: but this national calamity, as Bishop Warburton observes, made a great revolution in property, and brought the whole possessions of the people into the king's hands, which must needs make a prodigious accession of power to the crown. But Joseph, in whom the offices of a minister and patriot supported each other, and jointly concurred to the public service, prevented, for some time, the ill effects of this accession, by his farming out the new domain to the old proprietors on very easy conditions. We may well suppose this wise disposition to have continued till that new king arose who knew not Joseph, that is, who would obliterate his memory, as averse to his system of policy. He greatly affected despotic government; to support which, he established a standing militia, and endowed it with lands formerly the people's, who now became a kind of villains to this order.
And give us seed— This proves that the present was the last year of the famine. The AEgyptians, full of confidence in the predictions of Joseph, offered to sell themselves, and their land, to their king, that they might have seed to sow, in hopes of a crop the next year: for Joseph had told them there would be but seven years of famine; and possibly the Nile, the source of plenty, had begun to overflow the land as usual.