The words are almost shocking in their starkness. After seven years of surplus, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 41:30 warns that the coming famine will "make all the plenty that was in the land of Mizraim to be forgotten" — and then, more chillingly, "the famine will consume the inhabitants of the land." This Aramaic paraphrase, composed in the Land of Israel and reaching its final form in the seventh or eighth century CE, reads the Hebrew verb killah (to finish, to consume) literally: the famine does not merely starve the people, it consumes them.
A famine with teeth
Notice what the Targum does. It refuses to treat the plenty and the famine as balanced halves of a cycle. The famine is stronger. It does not just exceed the plenty; it devours its memory. Seven bumper harvests will not be enough to soften seven failed ones unless a human hand intervenes. Joseph's plan — a 20% tax, cities turned into granaries (Genesis 41:35), sealed storage — is the only thing standing between Egypt and total oblivion. The Targum's language makes clear what is at stake: without administration, even divine abundance evaporates.
The takeaway
Good years are not self-preserving. The Targum's grim verb — "consume" — is a standing warning that without discipline, prosperity leaves no trace when the lean years arrive.