How long did the famine last in Joseph’s time?

Seven lean years, as foretold

The seven years of famine began to come, just as Joseph had said. There was famine in all lands, but in all the land of Egypt there was bread.

Joseph had read it in Pharaoh’s dream: seven fat years, then seven lean ones (see Pharaoh’s dream). The plenty came first, and he stored grain “as the sand of the sea” until he stopped counting (41:49). Then the harvests failed, and the count of seven began.

Year by year

Genesis does not keep a diary, but it leaves enough markers to follow the seven years:

• Years 1 and 2. The famine reaches Canaan. Jacob sends ten sons to Egypt, and when that grain runs out he sends them again, this time with Benjamin (42:1–5; 43:1–2).
• Year 2. Joseph reveals himself: “For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are yet five years, in which there will be no plowing and no harvest” (45:6). Jacob’s household, seventy people, moves down to Goshen.
• The years after. In Egypt the people spend all their money on grain, then trade their livestock “for that year” (47:17), then come back “the second year” offering their land and themselves (47:18–19).
• The end. Joseph hands out seed to sow (47:23), a sign that harvests are expected again. Genesis never narrates the last day of the famine. It simply moves on.

Did the famine reach Canaan?

Yes, and that is the hinge of the whole plot. “All countries came into Egypt, to Joseph, to buy grain, because the famine was severe in all the earth” (41:57). In Canaan “the famine was severe in the land” (43:1), and at its worst “the land of Egypt and the land of Canaan fainted by reason of the famine” (47:13). When Joseph’s brothers meet Pharaoh, they explain why they came: “there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks” (47:4).

Why did Egypt have grain when Canaan did not? Canaan’s fields lived on winter rain, and a few dry years ruined them. Egypt hardly saw rain at all; it lived on the Nile’s summer flood. The famine struck Egypt too (41:56), but Egypt had seven harvests’ worth of stored grain, a fifth of each one, waiting in its cities.

Famines before and after

Hunger drives the family stories of Genesis again and again. Abraham went down to Egypt because “the famine was severe in the land” (12:10), and Isaac moved to Gerar during “a famine in the land, in addition to the first famine that was in the days of Abraham” (26:1). Centuries later the prophet Elisha warned a woman of Shunem that a famine would come “on the land for seven years,” and she lived among the Philistines for seven years until it passed (2 Kings 8:1–2). Egypt kept its own memory of a seven-year failure of the Nile, carved on the Famine Stela near Aswan (see the archaeological evidence).

The seven years changed Egypt, too. By the end, all the land except the priests’ belonged to Pharaoh, and farmers paid him a fifth of every harvest, a rule Genesis says still stood “to this day” (47:26). The people told Joseph, “You have saved our lives!” (47:25). Readers still argue whether that was a rescue or a hard bargain.