Chapter Forty

Joseph in Prison with Two Officers of Pharaoh

Genesis 40:1. Some time after this, the cupbearer of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord the king of Egypt. The Hebrew text of verse 1 does not call the cupbearer and baker chief or commanding, but this addition in the LXX and Slavonic in verse 1 is entirely accurate, since later (verses 2, 7–9) the great men who offended Pharaoh are repeatedly called in the Hebrew text—the chief of the cupbearers and the chief of the bakers. These positions at Oriental royal courts were considered and were very important; the entire power of Oriental despots rested on a multitude of courtiers, who combined personal service to the king with service to the state. The text of Scripture does not say what the guilt of Pharaoh’s courtiers consisted of. Having in view the arbitrariness of Oriental despots, who punished their servants even for trifling offenses, Rabbi Yarhi supposed that a fly could have gotten into the cupbearer’s cup, a speck, coal, etc., could have appeared in the bread served by the baker to Pharaoh. The Targum of Jonathan, on the contrary, with greater probability, assumes suspicion of both great men of an intention to poison the king; in this charge the cupbearer was vindicated, but the baker was not.

Genesis 40:2–4. And Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and he put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the prison where Joseph was confined. The captain of the guard assigned Joseph to them, and he waited on them. And they remained in custody for some time. The courtiers who had incurred Pharaoh’s wrath were sent by him, due to the absence of special state prisons in ancient Egypt (as throughout the Orient, even in modern times), to the prison at Potiphar’s house, who now had the opportunity to ease the lot not only of these great men, but also of Joseph, who was imprisoned here earlier: he assigns him to the great men for personal service to them. The Hebrew janim, days, often means: year (1 Sam 1:3), but here (verse 4) this word probably means an indefinite and perhaps small number of days.

Genesis 40:5–8. One night they both had dreams—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were confined in the prison—each his own dream, and each dream with its own meaning. When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they were troubled. He asked Pharaoh’s officers, who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.” These verses form the introduction to the narration and interpretation of the dreams of both courtiers. In a state of anxiety for their lives, wholly dependent on the whim and arbitrariness of the despot-Pharaoh, both his courtiers, without doubt, expected an indication from on high concerning their fate, perhaps precisely in a dream, since the Egyptians, according to Herodotus (book 2, 83), produced divination and foresight of the future from the deity and considered dreams one of the means of revelation of the will of the deity. The Midrash (Beresch. r. Par. 88, s. 432), on the basis of the construction of the sentence in verse 5, says that each great man saw his own dream and at the same time the interpretation of the dream of his fellow, which supposedly explains why, according to verse 16, the baker found that Joseph had interpreted the cupbearer’s dream well. But, apart from the unnaturalness of such an assumption, verse 8 directly speaks against it, according to which the interpretation of the dreams was given to neither one of Pharaoh’s officers. In this verse 8 are expressed the unequal views of Pharaoh’s officers and Joseph on the source of dream-interpretation: the former are ready to see it in scientific wisdom and scholarly study, the latter points to God as the sole source of all wisdom and enlightenment of man, which suggests they refer the subsequent dream-interpretation solely to God.

Interpretation of the Cupbearer’s Dream

Genesis 40:9. And the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph, and said to him, “In my dream I saw a vine before me; Herodotus denies the existence and cultivation of the grapevine in Egypt (book 2, 77) and says that Egyptians instead of wine drink beer, prepared from barley. This testimony of Herodotus was one of the bases for biblical critics to push back the composition of the book of Genesis, which recounts in the chapter in question (cf. Num 20:5; Ps 77:47) vineyards and grape wine in Egypt, to a later time. But Herodotus’ testimony is very vague, and in other places of his history he speaks of the use of grape wine (οῖνος ἀμπελίνος) by priests and at sacrifices (book 2, 37, 39), and even, like Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, identifies Osiris with Dionysus-Bacchus (book 2, 42, 48, 144). Probably, therefore, in the indicated place Herodotus speaks only of the comparatively smaller development of winemaking in Egypt, in comparison with Greece. If we were even to understand this testimony strictly, the conclusion from the times of Herodotus to the times of Joseph would be poorly founded: thirteen centuries, separating the father of history from the biblical patriarch, could substantially change the appearance of Egypt (now viticulture in Egypt does not flourish because of the prohibition of wine by Islam). But the science of Egyptology now has indisputable proof in favor of the Bible and against Herodotus: in the vicinity of Beni-Hasan, Thebes, and the great pyramids on monuments are found numerous images of pictures of vineyards and winemaking. Both, without doubt, go back to the times even before Joseph.

Genesis 40:10–13. and on the vine there were three branches; as soon as it budded, its blossoms shot forth, and the clusters ripened into grapes. Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand; and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” Then Joseph said to him, “This is the interpretation: the three branches are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your office; Having listened to a vivid and graphic presentation of the dream by the cupbearer (verses 10–11), in which he appeared fulfilling the duties of his rank, Joseph gives the interpretation of the dream (verses 12–13): within three days Pharaoh will “lift up your head,” that is, remembering his services and finding him innocent, restore him to his former dignity (cf. 4Цар. 25:27).

Genesis 40:14–15. But remember me, when it goes well with you; please do me the kindness to mention me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here too I have done nothing that they should have put me in the dungeon.” To his interpretation, in the truth of which Joseph is evidently completely convinced, Joseph adds a request to the cupbearer—once freed, to remind Pharaoh and help secure his release from prison, and in briefly and in general terms telling his story, Joseph says that as he was sold (“stolen”—the action of Joseph’s brothers was kidnapping) from the “land of the Hebrews” (the territory occupied by the descendants of Abraham in Canaan) innocently, so too in Egypt he fell into prison without any crime. The cupbearer’s forgetting of this request from Joseph (verse 23) was his last severe trial.

Interpretation of the Baker’s Dream

Genesis 40:16–17. When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was favorable, he said to Joseph, “I too had a dream: there were three cake-baskets on my head; and in the uppermost basket there were all sorts of baked food for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating out of the basket on my head.” Having heard a favorable (Hebrew tob here—fortunate, favorable, inaccurately LXX: ὀρθῶς, Vulgate: prudenter; Slavonic: “rightly”—the baker could not have been convinced of the correctness of the interpretation, which could not yet be verified by anything) for his fellow, the baker tells Joseph his dream, which presents both features of similarity with the cupbearer’s dream—the performance of official duties, the number three (“baskets solved,” verse 16; this is probably the most correct way to render the Hebrew sallejchori, rather than “bread baskets,” as in the LXX, Vulgate, and other translations). The carrying of baskets on the head is completely in the spirit of ancient Egyptian customs: according to Herodotus (book 2, 38), men among Egyptians carry burdens on their heads, women—on their shoulders.

Genesis 40:18–19. And Joseph answered, “This is the interpretation: the three baskets are three days; within three days Pharaoh will lift your head from you and hang you on a pole; and the birds will eat the flesh from you.” In his interpretation of the second dream, Joseph turns attention to the fact that the baker in the performance of his official duty encountered an obstacle, damage from birds, and interprets, by God’s inspiration, the latter dream in an unfavorable sense: within three days Pharaoh will behead (in Hebrew “lift the head,” as in verse 13, but in the directly opposite sense) this great man, and birds will devour his very corpse.

Fulfillment of Joseph’s Interpretation of the Dreams

Genesis 40:20–22. On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants. He restored the chief cupbearer to his cupbearing, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand; but he hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had interpreted to them. The birthday, in ancient times, kings and other notable people always celebrated with feasts, etc.; Herodotus (book 1, 133) testifies to this among Persian kings; cf. the gospel account of Herod (Matt 14:6-7). Among Egyptian kings, the birthday was also a day of announcing amnesty to various criminals; in this case, remembering both imprisoned great men, Pharaoh grants amnesty, restoration to former dignity, only to the cupbearer, according to the interpretation of his dream by Joseph (verse 21); the baker, according to the opposite interpretation by Joseph, he punishes (this execution coincided with Pharaoh’s birthday by chance and was not a permanent feature of this day).

Genesis 40:23. But the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him. Psychologically it is entirely understandable that a distinguished and now fully happy great man would forget a poor slave—Joseph, his service and his request. The Talmudists in this circumstance saw divine punishment for Joseph’s sin of relying on man instead of relying solely on God, and referred to Ps 39:5. But the true higher pragmatism of Joseph’s history, undoubtedly, is better understood by the holy John Chrysostom, saying: “Joseph needed to (wait two years) for a favorable time to come forth from prison with glory. If the cupbearer, remembering him before Pharaoh’s dreams, by his intercession had freed him from prison, then his virtue to many, perhaps, would have remained unknown. But now the all-wise and provident Lord, like a skilled artist, knowing how long gold must remain in the fire and when it must be taken out, permits the cupbearer to forget Joseph for two years, so that the time should come both for Pharaoh’s dream and by the requirement of necessity itself the righteous man became known throughout Pharaoh’s kingdom” (Homily 63, p. 675).