Parashat Miketz tells of Pharaoh’s unusual dreams, which Yosef interpreted as predicting seven years of agricultural surplus which would be followed by seven years of severe drought. Yosef urged the Egyptian monarch to appoint an official who would oversee the storage of grain throughout the seven years of surplus, in order to prepare for the subsequent famine.
In describing the storage that should be conducted during the coming seven years, Yosef used an unusual term – “ve-chimeish” (41:34) – and the commentators offer different theories to explain this word. A number of commentators, including the Rashbam, Chizkuni, the Radak and Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, explain “ve-chimeish” as a reference to a twenty-percent tax imposed on all farmers. (According to this view, the word stems from the Hebrew word for five, chamesh, and thus refers to one-fifth.) The government ordered the mandatory storage of one-fifth of all produced grain during the seven years of surplus, in preparation for the drought years. The Rashbam claims that whereas farmers were generally required to pay only ten percent of their yield to the government, Yosef advised Pharaoh to double the tax during the coming seven years in order to adequately prepare for the looming famine. Indeed, the Rashbam adds, we read later, in Parashat Vayigash (47:24), that Yosef instituted a twenty-percent tax on all agricultural lands in Egypt.
Shadal, however, challenges this explanation. The twenty-percent tax of which we read in Parashat Vayigash was imposed during the drought years, when the farmers languished from underproduction and were forced to sell their fields to the government. The landowners thus essentially became Pharaoh’s serfs, working his lands and receiving a (large) percentage as payment. This arrangement, Shadal contends, has nothing at all to do with Yosef’s plan for mass storage during the years of plenty. To the contrary, the fact that Yosef introduced the twenty-percent levy upon the produce during the drought years would seem to indicate that this was an exceptional provision which differed from the standard taxation system. It indeed seems difficult to explain how the Rashbam attempted to draw proof to his explanation of “ve-chimeish” from the arrangement that Yosef established later, during the drought.
Shadal therefore prefers the interpretation offered by Targum Onkelos, which was also embraced by Rashi, explaining “ve-chimeish” to mean “he shall arm.” Rashi cites as a basis of this interpretation a verse from Sefer Shemot (13:18), which describes Benei Yisrael leaving Egypt in a state of “chamushim,” which Rashi explains to mean “armed.” Shadal writes that the term is used here, in Parashat Miketz, to mean that Egypt was “armed,” or equipped, with grain through the process of mass storage. Weapons were a vital necessity in the ancient world, and thus the verb ch.m.sh., which, narrowly defined, means “arm,” is also used in reference to equipping oneself with any vital commodity, including food. Thus, the term is used here in Parashat Miketz to mean the “arming” of Egypt during the seven years of surplus with large warehouses of grain, which the country would come to rely on once the drought years set in.