From Prison to Responsibility

“Two full years” is literally “two years of days”, time counted out day by day. “The river” is ye’or, a word borrowed from Egyptian and used in the Old Testament almost only for the Nile. The king’s dream begins at the source of all Egypt’s wealth.

Cattle standing in the Nile to escape heat and flies were a common sight, so cows walking up out of the water is a natural picture. “Meadow” is achu, another Egyptian loanword, the reed grass of the riverbank; Job 8:11 uses it for the “flag” that cannot grow without water.

“Ill favoured” is ra’ot mar’eh, “evil of appearance”, the exact reverse of the phrase that described Joseph in 39:6 and his mother Rachel in 29:17. For a moment the two herds stand together on the bank before anything happens.

Cattle do not eat cattle, and the grotesque detail is what makes the dream unforgettable. The first dream ends abruptly, in two words in Hebrew, vayyiqats Par’oh: “So Pharaoh awoke”.

Seven ears on one stalk describes a branched wheat grown in Egypt, which carries several heads on a single stem. “Rank” is the KJV’s word for vigorous and well grown, with no bad smell in it; the Hebrew beri’ot is the same word as the “fat” cows.

The east wind, qadim, is the hot, dry wind off the desert, what Egyptians now call the khamsin, which can scorch a crop in days. An east wind brings the locusts on Egypt in Exodus 10:13. “Blasted” means scorched.

“Devoured” is bala, to swallow whole, the verb used when the earth swallows Korah (Numbers 16:30). “Behold, it was a dream” is the moment of waking; Solomon wakes at Gibeon with the same words (1 Kings 3:15).

“His spirit was troubled” uses pa’am, to beat like a pulse, the phrase used of Nebuchadnezzar’s restless nights in Daniel 2:1. The “magicians” are chartummim, probably from an Egyptian title for the chief lector priests, the scholars of sacred texts. They reappear against Moses in Exodus 7:11.

“My faults” is plural, “my sins”, and the butler leaves them unnamed: the offence that put him in prison, the two years of forgetting, or both. A courtier who once angered this king chooses his words carefully before reopening the matter.

The butler speaks of Pharaoh in the third person to his face, “Pharaoh was wroth with his servants”, the manner of court speech. He reminds the king of his own anger before asking to be believed.

He stresses that the two dreams came “in one night”, a detail that makes the account striking and that matches Pharaoh’s own two dreams, also dreamed in a single night.

The butler never gives Joseph’s name. He calls him na’ar, a lad, the word used of Joseph at seventeen in 37:2, although Joseph is now nearly thirty. “Young”, “Hebrew” and “servant” each lower him one step further.

Read literally, the Hebrew credits the interpreter with the outcome: “me he restored to mine office, and him he hanged.” Rashi took “he” as Pharaoh, understood from the context. Either way, the butler’s report makes the word and the event the same thing.

“Hastily” is “they made him run”. Egyptians of rank were clean-shaven, and Hebrews wore beards, so shaving was the price of entry to the court. Joseph is changed into the look of the country before he says a word.

Pharaoh’s phrase is literally “thou hearest a dream to interpret it”, as though hearing were all it took. The king repeats the report he has had, a compliment that sets a trap: if the answer then fails, it fails as Joseph’s own.

“It is not in me” is one word in Hebrew, bil’adai, “apart from me”. “An answer of peace” is shalom Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s welfare. Joseph promises that God will speak to the king’s good before he has heard what the dream is.

Genesis gives the dream twice, once as Pharaoh saw it and once as he tells it. In the telling he stands “upon the bank”, literally “upon the lip” of the river. The small differences between the two versions are the first thing a careful listener would hear.

Pharaoh reverses the order of the adjectives: the cows are now “fatfleshed and well favoured” where verse 2 had “well favoured and fatfleshed”. The king remembers the flesh first.

Pharaoh adds his own reaction, absent from verse 3: “such as I never saw in all the land of Egypt for badness.” He also calls them dallot, poor, a word normally used of poor people, not animals.

“The first seven” is a word Pharaoh adds. He is already sorting the dream into before and after, the order Joseph’s interpretation will give it.

“When they had eaten them up” is literally “when they had come into their inward parts”. Pharaoh describes what the dream showed and he found hardest to bear: food going in and leaving no trace.

Pharaoh does not say he slept again, as verse 5 did. He runs the two dreams together, “I saw in my dream”, as a single telling. Joseph will say that they are indeed one. The ears are now “full”, where verse 5 said “rank”.

Pharaoh adds “withered”, tsenumot, a word that appears nowhere else in the Old Testament; its sense is guessed from the context as hard or shrivelled. The retelling is harsher than the dream as first reported.

Pharaoh admits to a foreign slave that his own experts failed. “Declare” is higgid, to tell or make known, and it is the verb Joseph picks up at once in the next verse.

What the magicians could not “declare” in verse 24, God “hath shewed”, and the verb is the same, higgid. Joseph’s first sentence on the dreams answers the court’s failure with its own word.

Seven lean years were a known terror in the ancient world. An Egyptian inscription on Sehel Island, the Famine Stela, tells of seven years of low Nile floods under an early king, and seven years of famine appear in the Gilgamesh epic.

Joseph calls the thin ears “empty”, reqot. It is the word used of the pit into which his brothers threw him: “the pit was empty” (37:24). The emptiness he knew is now the one he explains.

Joseph repeats verse 25 with a different verb. There God “told”; here he “sheweth”, lets Pharaoh see. The interpretation is framed between the two statements, so the king hears twice that the source is God.

The plenty is limited to “all the land of Egypt”, while the famine that follows will reach “all lands” (verse 54). Egypt’s name is repeated almost every sentence in this part of the speech.

“Forgotten” is nashach, the verb of the butler’s forgetting in 40:23 and of Manasseh’s name in verse 51. The good years will be forgotten the way Joseph was.

“Grievous” is kaved, heavy. The same word described the famine that drove Abram down to Egypt in 12:10: “the famine was grievous in the land.” The family’s history with Egypt keeps beginning with hunger.

“Established” is nakon, made firm and settled, and “shortly” is literally “God hastens to do it”. Joseph’s reading carries its own deadline: the matter is fixed and near, so there is no time to spare in the plan that follows.

“Discreet and wise” is navon vechakam, the pair God gives Solomon in 1 Kings 3:12, “a wise and an understanding heart”. “Look out” is the verb to see: let Pharaoh see a man. Joseph describes the post without naming anyone for it.

“Take up the fifth part” is one verb in Hebrew, chimmesh, “let him fifth the land”, a tax of twenty per cent, double a tithe. The fifth becomes a permanent law of Egyptian land in 47:26.

“Corn” in the KJV means grain of any kind, here bar, threshed grain. Maize was unknown in the ancient world. “Under the hand of Pharaoh” puts the stores under royal control, and models of granaries have been found in Egyptian tombs.

“For store” is piqqadon, a deposit held in trust, the word used in Leviticus 6:2 of goods “delivered him to keep”. “That the land perish not” uses karat, to be cut off, the word of covenant penalties.

No one in the court objects to handing a fifth of the country’s harvest to the crown. The plan is “good in the eyes” of the king and of the servants who had just failed him.

This is the first time in the Bible that a person is said to have the Spirit of God in him. The next is Bezalel the craftsman (Exodus 31:3). Nebuchadnezzar will say of Daniel, “in whom is the spirit of the holy gods” (Daniel 4:8), the same judgment from another foreign king.

The chapter uses a third verb for revelation here: God “hath shewed”, hodia, made known. Pharaoh accepts Joseph’s account of the source and turns it into a qualification for office.

“According unto thy word shall all my people be ruled” is literally “upon thy mouth shall all my people kiss”. Rashi took it to mean they would be fed or provided for at his command; others read it as submission, as in Psalm 2:12, “Kiss the Son.”

“See, I have set thee” is literally “I have given thee”, spoken as done. It is the second of three speeches that begin “And Pharaoh said unto Joseph” (verses 39, 41 and 44), and together they read like a formal installation.

The ring was the royal seal, used to sign in the king’s name. Fine linen is shesh, an Egyptian word, the cloth of priests and nobles. Egyptian kings rewarded officials with heavy gold collars, and tomb reliefs show the ceremony; Daniel receives a chain of gold in the same way (Daniel 5:29).

The cry “Bow the knee” renders abrek, a word found nowhere else. The KJV follows the old Jewish reading, from berek, knee. Others take it as an Egyptian command, “Attention!”, or the Akkadian title abarakku, chief steward. The second chariot put Joseph directly behind the king in any procession.

“I am Pharaoh” works like an oath on the king’s own name. “Lift up his hand or foot” is an idiom for any movement at all: no one in Egypt stirs without Joseph’s leave.

Zaphnath-paaneah is probably Egyptian for “the god speaks and he lives”; Onkelos rendered it “revealer of hidden things”. Asenath means “belonging to Neith”, a goddess. Poti-pherah is the fuller form of Potiphar’s name, and On is Heliopolis, the city of the sun god.

“Stood before” is the phrase for entering a king’s service (1 Kings 10:8). David was thirty when he began to reign (2 Samuel 5:4), and Levites began their service at thirty (Numbers 4:3). The verse repeats that Joseph “went out”, this time to walk the whole country.

“By handfuls” is liqmatsim, probably meaning in heaps, each seed yielding a fistful. The earth itself is the subject of the verse: the land does the producing, and Joseph’s part comes in the next.

Each city stored the grain of its own surrounding fields, which saved the labour of hauling it. The descendants of the man who filled Egypt’s granaries will later be forced to build “treasure cities”, store cities, for another Pharaoh (Exodus 1:11).

“As the sand of the sea” is the language of the promise to Jacob’s line: “I will make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude” (32:12). Egyptian scribes counted grain with great care, so for them to stop counting is a large claim.

The Talmud drew a rule from “before the years of famine came”: that couples should abstain during famine (Ta’anit 11a). Asenath is given her full descent again, as the daughter of the priest of On, each time she is mentioned.

Joseph has an Egyptian name, an Egyptian wife and an Egyptian office, and he gives his sons Hebrew names. Manasseh sounds like nashani, “he made me forget”. “Toil” is amal, trouble or hardship, the word Job uses of his misery (Job 5:7).

Ephraim has a dual ending, “doubly fruitful”. It picks up the command God gave Jacob at Bethel, “be fruitful and multiply” (35:11). Ephraim will later be the name of the whole northern kingdom, as in Hosea.

Seven years pass in one sentence. Nothing is recorded of them except the gathering and the two births. Genesis spends its words on the dreams and on the famine, not on the good times between.

Egypt’s harvests depend on the Nile flood, fed by rains far to the south; Canaan depends on its own rain. For both to fail at once, the rains had to fail across the whole region, which the verse states as a plain fact. The KJV uses “dearth” and “famine” for the same Hebrew word.

“What he saith to you, do” is echoed in Mary’s words at Cana, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (John 2:5), which closely follow the Greek of this verse. Pharaoh hands the people over to Joseph with a single command.

The Hebrew says Joseph “opened all that was in them”; the KJV supplies “storehouses”. He sold, and did not give: shavar is a verb used for dealing in grain, and the selling will lead to the Egyptians’ money, cattle and land passing to Pharaoh in 47:13–20.

“All countries” is literally “all the earth”, a sweeping phrase. God promised Abraham that in him all families of the earth would be blessed (12:3), and here the earth comes to one of Abraham’s descendants for bread; the link is an inference, not stated in the verse.