על יוסף כ׳On Joseph 20
א׳
1[105] The king on hearing this bade them hasten and summon the youth. They obeyed, but first they had him shaven and shorn, for in his confinement the hair had grown long and thick on his head and chin. Then they put on him a bright and clean raiment instead of his filthy prison clothes, and smartened him in other ways and thus brought him to the king.
ב׳
2[106] The king, judging him by his appearance to be a man of free and noble birth, for the persons of those whom we see exhibit characteristics which are not visible to all, but only to those in whom the eye of the understanding is quick to discern, said: “My soul has a prophetic inkling that my dreams will not for ever remain veiled in obscurity, for in this youth there are signs and indications of wisdom. He will reveal the truth, and as light disperses darkness his knowledge will disperse the ignorance of our wizards.” So he told him the dreams.
ג׳
3[107] Joseph, nothing awed by the high dignity of the speaker, spoke to him with frankness combined with modesty, rather as a king to a subject than as a subject to the king. “God has given you,” he said, “warning of all that He is about to do in the land. But do not suppose that the two visions are two dreams. There is one dream repeated, though the repeating is not superfluous, but given to convince you more firmly of its trustworthiness.
ד׳
4[108] For both the seven fat oxen and the seven well-grown and flourishing ears indicate seven years of abundance and prosperity, while the seven oxen that came up after, thin and loathly, and the seven blasted and shrunken ears mean seven other years of famine.
ה׳
5[109] The first period of seven years, then, will come bringing a large and plentiful wealth of crops, while the river each year, with its rising waters, turns the fields into pools and the plains have a fertility never known before. But after this will come in its turn another period of seven years of the opposite kind, bringing severe dearth and lack of the means of living, with the river ceasing to overflow and the fields to get their fatness, so that men will forget the former prosperity and every trace of the old abundance will be blotted out.
ו׳
6[110] Such are the facts which appear from the interpretation, but I also hear the promptings of the divine voice, devising safeguards for the disease, as we may call it; and famine in cities and localities is the severest of diseases, and we must provide means of weakening it lest it grow to full strength and devour the inhabitants.
ז׳
7[111] How, then, shall it be weakened? What is left over from the harvest of the seven years of abundance after the necessary allowance for feeding the multitudes, which perhaps will be a fifth, should be stored in the city and villages, without transporting the crops to a distance, but keeping them in the places where they have been produced, to encourage the inhabitants.
ח׳
8[112] And the crops should be brought in just as they are in the sheaves, without threshing them or purging them in any way, for four reasons. First, that being thus under shelter they will last longer without spoiling; secondly, that every year when they are threshed and winnowed they will serve as a reminder of the prosperous time, for we always find that imitation of our real blessings has brought a repetition of the pleasure;
ט׳
9[113] thirdly, the grain cannot even be reckoned when it is contained in ears and sheaves, and therefore is an uncertain and incalculable quantity. This will prevent the minds of the inhabitants from being prematurely depressed, when they see that the grain, which is a known quantity, is being gradually consumed. On the contrary, they will have courage, nourished on a food which is better than corn, since hope is the best of nourishments, and take more lightly the heavy scourge of want. Fourthly, to provide a store of fodder for the cattle when the bran and chaff are separated through the purging of the grain.
י׳
10[114] And to take charge of all this you must appoint a man of the utmost prudence and good sense and well-approved all round, one who will be competent, without exciting hatred or open resistance, to make the preparations here described without giving the multitude any idea of the coming famine. For it would be a grievous thing if they should faint in anticipation and lose heart through lack of hope.
י״א
11[115] And, if anyone asks the reason for these measures, he should be told that, just as in peace we must exercise forethought in preparing for war, so, too, in years of plenty must we provide against dearth. Wars and famines and times of adversity in general are uncertain, and we must stand ready to meet them, not wait till they have come and look for the remedy when nothing is available.”