The runners went ahead of the second chariot and sang. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 41:43 preserves the words of that ancient coronation chant: "This is the Father of the king; Great in wisdom, few in years."
The chant that rewrote the Torah's Hebrew
The Hebrew text says only avrekh — a word so obscure that rabbinic commentators have argued about it for two thousand years. Is it "bend the knee"? "Tender father"? An Egyptian loanword? The Targum, composed in the Land of Israel and reaching its final form around the seventh or eighth century CE, chooses a reading that splits avrekh into av (father) and rekh (tender, young): this man is a father to the king in counsel, though tender in years. Rashi (1040-1105 CE), a northern French Torah commentator, cites exactly this reading in his commentary on the verse.
Thirty years old, running Egypt
The next verse (Genesis 41:46) tells us Joseph was thirty when he stood before Pharaoh. Thirty years old, and already the heralds of an empire were calling him father. The Targum's phrasing makes the paradox visible: he had the authority of an elder and the stamina of youth in the same body. That combination is the rabbinic ideal for leadership — wisdom without decline, vigor without rashness.
The takeaway
The heralds' chant captures what makes a leader worth following: the judgment of age in the body of someone still willing to ride out and do the work.