Comentario sobre Génesis 47:23

הא means the same as הנה “behold”, as (Ezekiel 16:43) “I also lo, (הא) will recompense thy way upon thine head”.

I have today purchased you. Since he had purchased both them and their lands he was required to feed them and supply them with seed, but all the produce would belong to him.

הן קניתי אתבם היום. "Look, I have bought you today, etc." The reason Joseph added the word היום, and the fact that it does not appear after the report that Joseph had bought their land, is to tell us that the method of acquisition was that each individual was acquired by the method known in Jewish law as משיכה, i.e. drawing the object being purchased a short distance towards the purchaser, as customary when one purchases slaves (Kidushin 22). Joseph did this en masse by transferring whole populations from city to city. Since one cannot acquire land by moving it, the word היום was interposed between these different kinds of purchases Joseph made.