Pharaoh Asks for Men of Ability to Tend His Own Flocks

The meeting between Pharaoh and Joseph's brothers was over quickly. In (Genesis 47:6) Pharaoh gave them Goshen, as expected — but the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan lingers on the second half of Pharaoh's speech, the part most readers skim past: "If thou know any among them men of ability, appoint them masters over my flocks."

It is a small sentence with a large implication. Pharaoh was not only giving the Israelites land. He was offering them positions inside the royal economy — overseers, stewards of the king's own herds.

Promotion Inside the House of Exile

The Targum notices that Pharaoh assumed Joseph's family would be as capable as Joseph himself. He had seen what one brother could do with the granaries of Egypt; why not hire the rest of them to run the livestock? The offer is flattering and dangerous in equal measure. Accept too much integration into Pharaoh's court and the family loses its edges. Refuse every offer and it starves.

The Targumic tradition, and aggadah preserved in <a href='/categories/midrash-rabbah.html'>Midrash Rabbah</a>, reads the verse as a test. Which brothers would accept the king's commission? Which would decline in order to stay purely with Israel's own flocks in Goshen? The answer shapes which of them rose in Egyptian society and which remained in the pastoral shadows.

What "Men of Ability" Means

The Aramaic phrase the Targum uses — rendered "men of ability" — corresponds to the Hebrew anshei chayil, men of force or substance. In later tradition the same phrase describes the judges Moses appoints in (Exodus 18:21) and the worthy woman of (Proverbs 31:10). It is not only strength; it is competence joined to integrity.

The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, whose final form was shaped between the 4th and 8th centuries CE, quietly flags a pattern Jews would live out for millennia. Wherever we land in exile, the host society eventually asks: who among you is capable? Run our markets, our hospitals, our courts, our flocks. The question is never whether to answer. The question is how to answer without losing Goshen.

The takeaway is this. Competence travels. Use it well in the king's court, but keep your tent pitched with your own people. That was Joseph's whole life, distilled into one line of Pharaoh's offer.