Комментарий к Берешит 46:34

בעבור תשבו בארץ גשן IN ORDER THAT YE MAY ABIDE IN THE LAND OF GOSHEN — and this is the land that you require, for it is a land of pasture. If you tell him that you are inexperienced in other work he will send you far away from him and settle you there.

For [all shepherds] are an abomination in Egypt - All shepherds were disgraceful in their eyes, for sheep were loathsome to them - whether for eating or for sacrifice - as it is written, "If we sacrifice what is abominable to the Egyptians..." (Ex. 9:22)

בעבור תשבו בארץ גשן, seeing it was a land in which cattle were being raised. Furthermore, Joseph did what he did in order to prevent Pharaoh from enlisting his brothers in Pharaoh’s political and military echelon.

כי תועבת מצרים כל רועה צאן, “for every cattle and sheep raiser was pursuing a career despised by the Egyptians.” He would keep them apart from the Egyptians as they were anathema to them. Some commentators, on the contrary, consider that the Egyptians especially esteemed cattle men and men raising sheep as it would not make sense that Joseph should present his brothers before Pharaoh in a manner which would make him despise them. The reason that Pharaoh assigned the province of Goshen for them to dwell in was precisely because he considered them a very valuable asset to the Egyptian economy so that they deserved to live in the economically most prosperous part of the country. The word תועבה, abomination, does not refer to the brothers’ vocation, but to the deities whom the Egyptians worshipped.

Because they are deities to them. The Egyptians know that shepherds know all about sheep, since they are always with them. Shepherds therefore know that sheep have nothing [divine about them], so the Egyptians hate all shepherds. Alternatively, when Scripture says כי תועבת מצרים כל רעי צאן, the word תועבה means idolatry. In other words, the Egyptians greatly respected shepherds and considered them as if they were deities. Therefore, Pharaoh will settle them in the best of the land.

כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה צאן, “for the Egyptians despised people whose vocation was the rising and tending of sheep. The reason they did so was because they hated sheep meat, i.e. mutton, just as they hated goats’ meat. This was something not unique to the Egyptians. This is also why they could not sit at the same table as the Hebrews when the latter were being served lamb. They harboured a deep aversion for anyone stemming from the Euphrates-Tigris region. They considered the Sumerians as a lower class of human beings. (Exodus 8,9) The Hebrews claimed that they would insult the Egyptians if they slaughtered their animals as service to their G–d inside the boundaries of the land of Egypt. They would risk being stoned by them. It is interesting that they did not refer to being just killed, but they spelled out by which method they would be killed, a method which in Jewish law is the most severe kind of death penalty. Our author states that he has also heard a different interpretation of our verse. The Egyptians considered anyone slaughtering sheep or goats and eating their meat as guilty of the kind of perversion that would stamp such a person as a subhuman species. We find the word רועה, which we normally translate as “tending,” i.e. shepherding, also used by the Targum for “providing food” (transitive) on Genesis 48,15 by Yaakov in his blessings for his children when on his deathbed.

ואמרתם אנשי מקנה, “you’ll say: ‘we are cattle growers by vocation.’” Joseph was worried that if his brothers would occupy senior positions in Pharaoh’s Palace, this would result in jealousies and they would use this to reduce his status. He remembered that the “uniform” indicating rank, i.e. the striped coat had had worn, had led to all these jealousies once before.

כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה צאן FOR EVERY SHEPHERD IS AN ABOMINATION TO THE EGYPTIANS — because they (sheep) are regarded by them as deities.

כי תועבת מצרים כל רועה צאן, seeing that they did not eat the flesh of sheep, they detested anyone raising these animals. They only raised the number of such animals needed for their wool and milk.

כי תועבת מצרים, “for it is something that the Egyptians detest;” Rashi understands the line as “for it is a deity of Egypt;” i.e. it is something that G-d detests, i.e. an idol. Their favorite astrological constellation was that of the lamb, which they worshipped. [“Worshipping” in the language of pagans means “to be afraid of.” Ed.] We find a similar expression concerning the favorite idol of the Moabites, (Kings II 23,14) i.e. שקוץ מואב ולמלכום תועבת בנימין, “kemosh the abomination of Moav, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.”