Bible Synapse
If seedtime and harvest were never to cease, how could there be seven years of famine?
Hard question · Creation, the flood and the patriarchs · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
The seven years of famine begin and “the dearth was in all lands”, but Egypt has bread stored up.
And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands; but in all the land of Egypt there was bread. And when all the land of Egypt was famished, the people cried to Pharaoh for bread: and Pharaoh said unto all the Egyptians, Go unto Joseph; what he saith to you, do. And the famine was over all the face of the earth: And Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.
Joseph says five more years remain “in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest”.
For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest.
The objection
After the flood God promised that seedtime and harvest would not cease while the earth remains. Yet in Joseph’s day there were seven years of famine over all lands, and Joseph speaks of years with neither ploughing nor harvest.
The answer
God’s promise in Genesis 8:22 is about the order of the world, not a guarantee that every land will have a good crop every year. It sets seedtime and harvest beside cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night: the round of the seasons will never again be broken by a judgment on the whole earth like the flood. Keil and Delitzsch take it of ‘the regular alternation of day and night and of the seasons of the year’; a drought in one region, however long, does not stop the seasons, though it makes the season’s sowing fail.
That is what happened in Joseph’s time. The famine struck Egypt and the lands around it, which came to Egypt to buy grain (41:57), and the grain that kept them alive had itself been harvested in the seven years of plenty (41:47–49). When Joseph says there would “neither be earing nor harvest” (45:6), he means that in the drought ploughing and reaping in the land would come to nothing; and he gave the people seed with the words “lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land” (47:23).
From the classic commentators
so long as the earth shall continue, the regular alternation of day and night and of the seasons of the year, so indispensable to the continuance of the human race, would never be interrupted again.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 8
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 8, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Genesis 8, at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Genesis 41, at Bible Hub