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Genesis 41:19-21
New Catholic Bible
Genesis 41:19-21
New Catholic Bible
19 Then seven other cows came out after them. They were poor and sickly and thin, I had never seen any as ugly in all of Egypt. 20 The thin and ugly cows devoured the seven fat cows.[a] 21 Even after they had eaten them, you still could not see that they had eaten anything. They were still as ugly as they had been before. Then I woke up.
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- Genesis 41:20 For the Egyptians the cow was a symbol of Hator. goddess of fertility, protector of the Nile, and goddess of the “Great Wave,” that is, the ocean. Seven cows symbolized Osiris, inventor of agriculture and of the seven-year cycle (the people had linked the alternate flooding of the Nile and drought with the seven-year cycle). It was believed that during a famine, animals and human beings devoured one another, in a meeting of death with hunger.
