What Does Genesis 47:20 Mean?

So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe on them. The land became Pharaoh's. The comprehensive transfer: Joseph bought all the agricultural land of Egypt for Pharaoh. "All the Egyptians sold their fields": not some, not those unable to manage otherwise, but all. The famine was severe enough that every farmer in Egypt eventually exhausted their silver and livestock and made the final exchange: land for grain. By the end of the famine years covered by this section, all Egyptian agricultural land has transferred to crown ownership.

The previous private land ownership of Egyptian smallholders has been transformed into crown ownership with tenant-farming arrangements. This is a fundamental restructuring of Egyptian agrarian property relations: from dispersed private ownership to concentrated royal ownership. Whether Joseph engineered this outcome or merely administered the mechanism that produced it (the famine-driven exchange system) is a question the text leaves open by describing the process as responsive rather than imposed. The population made the offers; Joseph accepted them; the result is universal crown ownership.

"The land became Pharaoh's" is the result statement. The agricultural productive capacity of Egypt: the land that the Nile floods, the soil that grows the grain, the fields that supported Egyptian civilization: is now under Pharaoh's title. Joseph has transformed the resource situation of the Egyptian state from having large grain reserves (from the seven abundant years) to having grain reserves plus all the agricultural land plus all the livestock. The famine that threatened to destroy Egypt has, through Joseph's administration, produced a dramatic expansion of the crown's resource base.