The Fat of the Land

And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, Say unto thy brethren, This do ye: lade your beasts, and go, get you unto the land of Canaan;
And take your father and your households, and come unto me: and I will give you the good of the land of Egypt, and ye shall eat the fat of the land.

-- Genesis 45: 17-18 (KJV)

Diet-conscious modern readers may have some trouble with the concept of "fat of the land," which in the Bible means "the earth's choicest produce." But in those leaner times, fat was harder to come by than it is in the modern West. It's a sign of the times that this sense of "fat" is now obsolete, except in the expression "fat of the land."

Dietary evolution aside, there's another reason the phrase might be confusing. Biblical Pharaohs are generally quite evil; so, reading out of context, you're likely to interpret this one's offer of the "fat of the land" as some kind of threat. But it's not: not only is this Pharaoh a soft-hearted sort, he's got good reason to put himself at the disposal of Joseph, Jacob's penultimate son and the last of the Hebrew patriarchs.

Joseph, though brought to Egypt as a slave, has risen to a high position in government, second only to Pharaoh, by interpreting a few of Pharaoh's strange dreams and thus correctly forecasting a prolonged regional drought. By overseeing the storage and distribution of the "fat" of Egypt, Joseph saves the people from starvation.

At this point in the story (the second year of the drought), Joseph's brothers journey to Egypt from the equally drought-stricken Canaan to seek food. Joseph, whom they don't recognize, might easily turn them back empty-handed, since it was they who sold him into slavery (at least according to Genesis 37: 27–28). Nonetheless, after putting his brothers through a few tests, Joseph reveals himself and embraces them, and he even goes so far as to offer them a new home in Goshen, on the Nile delta.

What pleases Joseph pleases Pharaoh, who seconds the invitation and promises the entire house of Israel that they shall "eat the fat of the land" -- while back home the Canaanites starve. Actually, in the Hebrew text Pharaoh doesn't say "fat," just "best": the phrase was doubled and "fat" introduced by the King James translators. Thus "fat" must already have meant "the good bit" before 1611, and indeed, "fat of the soil" was in circulation by the 1570s. Nevertheless, "fat of the land" per se is first found in the Authorized Version, and it is only biblical usage that preserves the phrase, despite the best efforts of modern translators, who have some sort of obsession with accuracy.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!