16 Joseph said, “Give your livestock and I’ll give it to you for your livestock, if the money is gone.”
17 So they brought their livestock to Joseph and Joseph gave them food in exchange for horses, for flocks of sheep, for herds of cattle and for donkeys. He provided them with food in exchange for all their livestock that year.
18 When that year came to an end, they came to him in the second year and said to him, “We won’t hide from my lord that the money has run out and the livestock and the domestic animals are my lord’s. There is nothing left in my lord’s sight except our bodies and our land.
19 Why should we die before your eyes—both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food—we and our land will become Pharaoh’s slaves. Provide seed so that we may live and not die, and the land won’t be deserted.”
20 So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh because the Egyptians, each one, sold his field, for the famine overcame them. Thus the land became Pharaoh’s.
21 He made the people slaves from one end of Egypt’s border to the other.
22 Only he did not buy the land belonging to the priests, because the priests had an allotment from Pharaoh, and they ate their allotment that Pharaoh gave them. Therefore they did not sell their land.