C. F. Keil and Franz Delitzsch on Genesis 41:47-49

Gen 41:47-49

For the seven years of superabundance the land bore לקמצים, in full hands or bundles; and Joseph gathered all the provisional store of these years (i.e., the fifth part of the produce, which was levied) into the cities. “The food of the field of the city, which was round about it, he brought into the midst of it;” i.e., he provided granaries in the towns, in which the corn of the whole surrounding country was stored. In this manner he collected as much corn “as the sand of the sea,” until he left off reckoning the quantity, or calculating the number of bushels, which the monuments prove to have been the usual mode adopted (vid., Hengst. p. 36).