Genesis 47:1–6

Genesis 47:1 — Joseph's Report to Pharaoh Joseph acts here as mediator between two worlds: the family of promise from Canaan and the sovereign power of Egypt. His announcement is precise and transparent — he names his family's origins, their possessions, and their present location in Goshen. The detail that "all that they own" has come is significant: this is not a scouting mission or a temporary arrangement. Jacob's household is making a definitive move, and Joseph, faithful to God's providence, facilitates it fully. The land of Goshen, situated in the eastern Nile Delta, was fertile and relatively separate from the heartland of Egyptian culture — a providential geography that allowed Israel to multiply as a distinct people without being immediately absorbed into Egyptian society.

Genesis 47:2 — The Presentation of Five Brothers Joseph selects five men from among his brothers to stand before Pharaoh. The number five may reflect Egyptian literary convention — Egyptian texts frequently use the number five in contexts of formal presentation — or it may simply indicate a representative delegation. This moment of formal audience requires courage: these are Semitic shepherds standing before the most powerful ruler on earth. Joseph's act of presentation mirrors the role of an intercessor: he brings his own kin into the presence of the one whose favor they need.

Verses 3–4 — The Brothers' Honest Answer Pharaoh's direct question — "What is your occupation?" — gives the brothers an opportunity that earlier (cf. Gen 46:34) Joseph had coached them for. Yet their response is not merely strategic: it is honest. They identify themselves as shepherds, knowing this profession was "an abomination" to Egyptians (Gen 46:34), and they make no attempt to conceal their foreign status or their need. They describe themselves as "sojourners" (Hebrew: gûr), a word with deep resonance in the patriarchal narrative — Abraham sojourned (Gen 12:10), Isaac sojourned (Gen 26:3), and now all of Jacob's household becomes a sojourning people. They cite two converging pressures: the depletion of pastureland and the severity of the famine in Canaan. Their petition is humble and specific: "let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen."

Verses 5–6 — Pharaoh's Generous Response Pharaoh's answer is striking in its magnanimity. He does not merely permit the brothers to settle — he tells Joseph to place them "in the best of the land." The phrase "The land of Egypt is before you" echoes the language of gift and sovereign hospitality in the ancient Near East. Pharaoh's trust in Joseph is complete: he delegates the entire arrangement to him. Furthermore, Pharaoh's offer to appoint capable men from among the brothers as "overseers of his livestock" is a remarkable elevation — from refugees fleeing famine to royal officials in a single conversation. This transforms what might have been a story of humiliation into one of unexpected dignity.

Typological Reading The entire scene operates on a second level that the Church Fathers recognized clearly. Joseph, the son rejected by his brothers (Gen 37), sold into Egypt, imprisoned unjustly, and then raised to the right hand of Pharaoh, is a type (typos) of Christ. As Joseph brings his brothers — who had wronged him — into the presence of the sovereign and secures for them not merely survival but the best land, so Christ, crucified by those He came to save, intercedes before the Father and opens for humanity not merely a foothold in the kingdom but an inheritance. The brothers' honest confession of need before Pharaoh parallels the posture of the sinner before God: unable to sustain themselves, they must appeal through the mediator. And the mediator does not present them as adversaries but as family.

Catholic tradition has long recognized Joseph as one of the most complete Old Testament types of Christ. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Genesis, Hom. 64) draws the parallel explicitly: as Joseph was cast into the pit by his brothers and emerged to save them, Christ descended into death and rose to open salvation to all, including those who rejected Him. This passage adds a further dimension: Joseph as intercessor. He brings his brothers before Pharaoh not to accuse but to advocate — a role the Catechism attributes to Christ in its highest register: "Christ Jesus…is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (CCC 519, drawing on Rom 8:34).

The brothers' self-identification as sojourners (gēr in Hebrew) illuminates what the Catechism calls the pilgrim nature of the Church: "The Church…will receive its perfection only in the glory of heaven" (CCC 769). The Letter to the Hebrews applies precisely this Abrahamic sojourning language to the entire People of God: "they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth" (Heb 11:13). Catholic social teaching, developed in documents like Pacem in Terris (John XXIII, 1963) and Laudato Si' (Francis, 2015), consistently invokes the sojourner tradition to ground obligations of hospitality toward migrants and refugees — a theme made concrete in this very text, where Pharaoh's welcome of foreign shepherds becomes a model of just reception.

Pharaoh's grant of "the best of the land" carries a sacramental resonance: God does not offer His people a minimal refuge but a superabundant gift. This pattern — humanity's poverty met with divine generosity far exceeding what was asked — characterizes the whole economy of grace (Eph 3:20).

This passage invites contemporary Catholics into three distinct examinations of conscience. First, Joseph's transparency before Pharaoh challenges the habit of managing our self-presentation — of hiding our neediness, our origins, or our identity when we fear they will count against us. The brothers say plainly: we are shepherds, we are foreigners, we are in need. Honest poverty before God and others is itself an act of faith.

Second, Pharaoh's generosity toward refugees — granting the best land to a foreign, culturally alien family in a moment of crisis — is not incidental background. It is the moral heart of the scene, and it has direct bearing on how Catholic communities and nations receive migrants and asylum seekers today. The USCCB's pastoral letter Strangers No Longer (2003) draws on exactly this tradition.

Third, the image of Joseph as mediator speaks to how Catholics understand intercessory prayer. We do not approach God's throne alone but through Christ — and, the Church teaches, through the saints who, like Joseph, stand before the sovereign and present our needs. Asking for that intercession is not weakness; it is the very structure of the family of faith.