NOTES for Gen 47:1-31
Joseph carries out his plan for gathering the land into the state land fund quite successfully. So successfully that the people who lost their land consider him their savior; after all, he really did save them from starvation. This way of looking at things is generally characteristic of those who see, instead of God's great world, only a small part of it, the little world with which they come into contact. Those whom Joseph settled on the newly acquired lands, giving them grain for sowing, of course could know nothing about the plans discussed several years earlier in Pharaoh's palace. They knew only what they saw.
Yet it is not necessary to know all the details of events in order to have a full vision of reality. What matters here is precisely the point of view, this or that angle of perception of that reality. More precisely, awareness, not only perception, since perception alone is not enough for full vision. For this one needs the ability, as it were, to step back, to look at the situation from the outside, and to step back not only with regard to what is happening here and now, but also with regard to habitual models of perceiving reality in general. Only when one is outside their limits can one realize what is truly happening before one's eyes. From such a view, no one would have looked at Joseph as a savior; they would have seen in him only an effective state administrator who managed to use a situation favorable to him, that is, they would have seen him for what he in fact was.
Of course, Joseph's role in saving particular people from starvation would not have become any smaller from such a view, but it would have become clear to those who were saved that they should thank not Joseph himself, but the One who placed him in the position of first minister in a country that was not even his homeland.
Meanwhile, for God and for Joseph himself, the center of attention was still not Egypt or the Egyptians, but his own tribesmen, for whose sake, as he himself understands, God sent him to Egypt. Through Joseph's hands God carries out His plan, and in carrying it out He saves, by the same hands, many inhabitants of the country connected with the fulfillment of His plan from death by starvation. This is how God acts: saving at once as many people as can be saved.