The moment the famine deepened, Joseph opened the storehouses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 41:56 records the mechanics: "Joseph opened all the treasures and sold to the Mizraee."
Why sell instead of give?
The verb is deliberate. Joseph did not distribute the grain free. He sold it. The rabbinic tradition has wrestled with this choice for centuries. One reading, offered in Bereishit Rabbah 91:5 — a commentary on Genesis compiled in the Land of Israel around the fifth century CE — argues that charging kept the distribution orderly. Free grain would have triggered hoarding, riots, and resale at inflated prices. A controlled price meant each family received what they actually needed and no more. Another reading suggests Joseph was building a sovereign wealth transfer: the grain tax of the plenty years was being returned to Pharaoh's treasury as famine revenue, creating the economic base Egypt would need to survive the next lean harvests.
The famine grows teeth
The Aramaic paraphrase, whose final redaction belongs to the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, closes the verse with a warning: "the famine waxed mighty in the land of Mizraim." The granaries opened, and even so, the famine kept growing. Joseph's plan is not eliminating the hunger. It is keeping the hungry alive.
The takeaway
Crisis management rarely makes the crisis disappear. Sometimes it just keeps the doors of the granary open long enough for the rain to return.