And Joseph gathered (or heaped up) corn as the sand of the sea,—an image of great abundance (cf. Genesis 32:12)—very much, until he left numbering (i.e. writing, or keeping a record of the number of bushels); for it was without number. "In a tomb at Eilethya a man is represented whose business it evidently was to take account of the number of bushels. Which another man, acting under him, measures. The inscription is as follows "The writer or registrar of bushels—Thutnofre,".
And unto Joseph wore born two sons before the years of famine came, (literally, before the coming of the gears of famine), which Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah priest of On bare unto him. And Joseph called, the name of the firstborn Manasseh ("Forgetting," from nashah, to forget): For God (Elohim; Joseph not at the moment thinking of his son's birth in its relations to the theocratic kingdom, but simply in its connection with the overruling providence of God which had been so signally illustrated in his elevation, from a position of obscurity in Canaan to such conspicuous honor in the land of the Pharaohs), said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house. Not absolutely (Calvin, who censures Joseph on this account, vix tamen in totem potest excusari oblivio paternae domus), as events subsequently proved, but relatively, the pressure of his former affliction being relieved by his present happiness, and the loss of his father's house in some degree compensated by the building of a house for himself.