Comentario sobre Génesis 45:11

פן תורש — The Targum renders this by דלמא תתמסכן LEST THOU BE IMPOVERISHED, for the verb is of the same root as we find in (1 Samuel 2:7) “The Lord maketh poor (מוריש) and maketh rich”.

LEST THOU COME TO POVERTY, THOU, AND THY HOUSEHOLD. Joseph said this by way of respect for his father. To his brothers he said, For G-d did send me before you to preserve life,³⁹Verse 5 here. and to give you a remnant,⁴⁰Verse 7 here. but to his father he did not want to say so. Instead, he said, “that if you will delay in the land of Canaan you will be impoverished for I could not send you much food from the royal storehouse as they will suspect me of selling it there in order to accumulate treasures of money and then return to my land and to my birthplace. But when you come here, and they will know that you are my father and brothers, the king will give me permission to sustain you.”

פן תורש, so that you will not be driven from the land due to the famine. The root ירש of which the word תורש is a derivative occurs in the sense of disposing, expelling in Deut. 9,3 והורשתם ואבדתם מהר, “you will expel them and destroy them quickly.” It also occurs in a slightly different form in Deut. 7,23 פן תוקש בו, “so that you will not be trapped by it.” There the root is יקש. [as long as two of the root letters match there is a strong conceptual linkage between the two roots. Ed.]