Genesis 47:16-21

Why would a person facing starvation want to give up his remaining supply of grain in order to get some money? What good would the money do him? He wanted life, not money, and grain offered life. Because the money had “failed,” it had fallen to almost zero value. Thus, in order to buy food, the people had been forced to spend all of their money. Now they were without food or money.

They lost everything and were willing to sell their bodies for food in the way of slavery. In fact, grain became the new form of money, although the Bible doesn’t say this explicitly. What it says is that everyone was willing to trade whatever he had of former value to buy food. But if some item is what everyone wants, then we can say that it’s the true money.

Genesis 47:18-23

If people do not trade, they cannot specialize in production. In the case of Egypt, what had been a rich nation became poor. Pharaoh was rich, and the people of Egypt survived, but at very high cost: the loss of their freedom. They sold themselves into a form of slavery in order to buy food—they sold their land and their children’s inheritance to Pharaoh.

That is poverty with a vengeance. But they survived the famine, by selling themselves—their very lives.