על יוסף כ״זOn Joseph 27
א׳
1[157] So much for this. To continue the story, Joseph, thus appointed viceroy to the king and promoted to the superintendence of Egypt, took a journey to make himself known to all the people of the country. He visited the nomes, as they are called, city by city, and made his presence very welcome to those who saw him, not only through the benefits which they received from him, but through the remarkable and exceptional charm of his appearance and his general deportment.
ב׳
2[158] When the first seven years of plenty came, as his reading of the dreams had predicted, he employed the ‹local› prefects and others who served him in providing for the public needs to collect a fifth part of the fruits every year, and the quantity of sheaves which he amassed surpassed anything within the memory of men. The clearest proof of this is that it was impossible even to count them, though some persons who were interested in it spent a vast amount of labour in making elaborate calculations.
ג׳
3[159] But when the seven years during which the plains bore plentifully were ended, the famine began and spread and grew till Egypt could not hold it. It overran successively the cities and countries which lay in its path to the utmost limits of east and west, and rapidly made itself master of the whole civilized world round Egypt.
ד׳
4[160] In fact, it is said that never did so great a scourge fall upon the whole community. In this it resembled what the medical schools call herpes, which attacks every part and spreads in successive stages like a fire over the whole framework of the festering body.
ה׳
5[161] Accordingly from each city the most approved persons were chosen and sent to Egypt, for already the story of Joseph’s foresight in storing up abundance of food against a time of dearth had penetrated to every quarter.
ו׳
6[162] He first ordered all the stores to be thrown open, thinking that he would thus increase the courage of those who saw them, and, so to speak, feed their souls with comforting hopes before he fed their bodies. Afterwards, through the commissioners of victualling he sold to those who wished to buy, still always forecasting the after-time and keeping a keener eye on the future than on the present.