Bible Strands
Genesis 41:49
So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped keeping track of it; for it was beyond measure.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Joseph records grain accumulation during Egypt's seven years of plenty, acting under Pharaoh's authority before the famine and the birth of his sons.
The words — וַיִּצְבֹּר (va-yitzbor) translates "and he stored up," while כְּחוֹל הַיָּם (ke-chol hayam) literally means "like the sand of the sea."
The thread — The "sand of the sea" motif for uncountable quantity appears in Genesis 22:17 and Psalms 78:27, where it similarly marks divine blessing and provision.
Why it lands — The passage records administrative overflow without commentary, requiring the reader to accept the scale of storage as a factual precursor to the coming famine.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea, very much, until he left numbering; for it was without number.
Cross-references
- Psalms 78:27 He rained meat on them like dust, and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
- Genesis 22:17 I will surely bless you, and I will multiply your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.
- Judges 6:5 For the Midianites came with their livestock and their tents like a great swarm of locusts. They and their camels were innumerable, and they entered the land to ravage it.
- Judges 7:12 Now the Midianites, Amalekites, and all the other people of the east had settled in the valley like a swarm of locusts, and their camels were as countless as the sand on the seashore.
- 1 Samuel 13:5 Now the Philistines assembled to fight against Israel with three thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and troops as numerous as the sand on the seashore. They went up and camped at Michmash, east of Beth-aven.
- Job 1:3 and he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and a very large number of servants. Job was the greatest man of all the people of the East.
- Jeremiah 33:22 As the hosts of heaven cannot be counted and as the sand on the seashore cannot be measured, so too will I multiply the descendants of My servant David and the Levites who minister before Me.”