Why should we die before your eyes…?: see verse 15. Restructuring the rhetorical question, we may begin the verse “Please don’t let us perish! …” or “You can’t let us die! Help us! ….”

Both we and our land: the idea of the people dying of starvation is clear, but in what sense is the land said to die? The thought expressed here is that, if farmers do not have seed to sow, their lands are useless and become abandoned. Accordingly the people’s question must be worded in some languages, for example, “Do we have to die before your very eyes and abandon our fields [farms, gardens]?” See Good News Translation.

Buy us and our land for food: that is, “Take us and our fields in exchange for something to eat” or “Give us food to eat and you can have us and our gardens.”

And we with our land will be slaves to Pharaoh: again it may be necessary to make adjustments in translation, as people and not land may be called slaves. It may be necessary to express the slavery of the people and the “slavery of the land” in separate clauses with different senses; for example, “We will become the king’s slaves, and he will become the owner of our lands” or “We will be slaves to the king, and our farms will all belong to him.” See Good News Translation.

Give us seed, that we may live, and not die: seed is a general term, but if the language of translation has only names for particular seeds, the kind that provides a major crop in the area should be used. For live, and not die see 42.2.

Land may not be desolate: desolate land is farm land that has gone to waste from neglect, that is, from not being cultivated and planted. Revised English Bible and others say “our land will become a desert.” See Good News Translation.

We may translate verse 19, for example:

• Do we have to die under your very eyes and abandon our farms? Take us and our lands in exchange for something to eat. Then we will be the king’s slaves and our farms will belong to him. Give us seed so we can survive, and so our farms will not become like deserts.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. and Fry, Euan McG. A Handbook on Genesis. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1997. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .