Gen 45 - 47 – During the famine, why didn’t Joseph just hand out the food to the people?

Gen 47:16
Then Joseph said, "Give up your livestock, and I will give you food for your livestock, since your money is gone."

Gen 47:17
So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and Joseph gave them food in exchange for the horses and the flocks and the herds and the donkeys; and he fed them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year.

During this time, the people were becoming wards of the state. They were depending upon the government for their survival. Joseph was now going to take their livestock in exchange for bread. Why didn't Joseph hand out all the food instead of making people pay for it with the very last of their possessions?

Gen 47:18
And when that year was ended, they came to him the next year and said to him, "We will not hide from my lord that our money is all spent, and the cattle are my lord's. There is nothing left for my lord except our bodies and our lands.

Gen 47:19
"Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food, and we and our land will be slaves to Pharaoh. So give us seed, that we may live and not die, and that the land may not be desolate."

Gen 47:20
So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for every Egyptian sold his field, because the famine was severe upon them. Thus the land became Pharaoh's.

Pharaoh got it all. He owned all the money, all the livestock, and now all the land. This might sound cruel to have done it this way, but if Joseph did not ration out the grain to the people and make them pay for it with what they had, even their livestock and land, then there would not be enough food to last the entire seven years.

Gen 47:21
And as for the people, he removed them to the cities from one end of Egypt's border to the other.

Gen 47:22
Only the land of the priests he did not buy, for the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh, and they lived off the allotment which Pharaoh gave them. Therefore, they did not sell their land.

Pharaoh saw that the priests were taken care of. Everyone else moved into cities as it was easier to take care of masses of people in an urban city as opposed to a rural one. They could not harvest anyway, so why live in the country?

Gen 47:23
Then Joseph said to the people, "Behold, I have today bought you and your land for Pharaoh; now, here is seed for you, and you may sow the land.

Gen 47:24
"And at the harvest you shall give a fifth to Pharaoh, and four-fifths shall be your own for seed of the field and for your food and for those of your households and as food for your little ones."

Gen 47:25
So they said, "You have saved our lives! Let us find favor in the sight of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's slaves."

Joseph probably gave them this seed in order to sow the land. The famine must have been coming to an end soon.

Gen 47:26
And Joseph made it a statute concerning the land of Egypt valid to this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth; only the land of the priests did not become Pharaoh's.

Gen 47:27
Now Israel lived in the land of Egypt, in Goshen, and they acquired property in it and were fruitful and became very numerous.

The people were to be taxed from now on in the land of Egypt. One-fifth of all they grew was to go to Pharaoh and the rest they could keep for themselves. This was the law from that period forward.