And Joseph nourished his father, and his brothers, and all his father's household, with food, according to their families.
All Commentaries on Genesis 47:12 Go To Genesis 47
John Chrysostom
AD 407
“He gave everybody rations individually,” the text says. What is meant by “everybody individually”? Enough for everyone. You see, it is customary with Scripture to refer to every person sometimes as a soul and sometimes as a body. As it said previously, “Jacob’s company traveling to Egypt numbered seventyfive souls” so as to describe seventyfive men and women, so here too “everybody individually,” that is, each person. Even though the whole of Egypt and Canaan was laid waste with famine, these people were comfortable through having a supply of grain flowing as if from a spring.
