Surah 12. Yusuf, Ayah 55

By making this request, Joseph wanted to assure an efficient build-up of grain reserves during the coming years of plenty, knowing well that they would be followed by seven years of scarcity. It is obvious from the sequence that his request was granted, and that he was able to fulfil the task which he had set himself.

Joseph had been given plenary authority by the king. He could have enjoyed his dignity, drawn his emoluments, put the hard and perhaps unpopular work on the shoulders of others, and kept to himself the glitter and the kudos. But that was not his way, nor can it indeed be the way of any one who wants to do real service. He undertook the hardest and most unpopular task himself. Such a task was that of organising reserves in times of plenty, against the lean years to come. He deliberately asked to be put in charge of the granaries and store-houses, and the drudgery of establishing them and guarding them, for the simple reason that he understood that need better than any one else, and was prepared to take upon himself rather than throw on to another the obloquy of restricting supplies in times of plenty.