Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Genesis · About this commentary
Do not interpretations belong to God?
Genesis 40:1-23
1 After these things, the butler of the king of Egypt and his baker offended their lord, the king of Egypt. · WEB
Joseph notices two men are sad, tells them the truth about their dreams, asks one small favor — and is forgotten.
Two officials of Pharaoh's court are imprisoned in the same place, and the captain of the guard assigns them to Joseph, who took care of them. A slave with a life sentence is looking after two courtiers who expect to be released.
The scene turns on something very small. Joseph came in to them in the morning, and saw them, and saw that they were sad. He notices. And having noticed, he asks: Why do you look so sad today?
A man with far more reason for despair than either of them opens the conversation by inquiring about theirs. Everything that follows in Joseph's life comes out of that question.
Their problem is that they have dreamed and there is nobody to interpret — which in Egypt meant there was no professional available, since dream interpretation was a trained craft with manuals and fees.
Joseph's answer is the theological center of the chapter and it does two things at once: Don't interpretations belong to God? Please tell it to me.
The first clause takes the whole business out of the hands of the specialists and puts it in God's. The second offers his services anyway. He is not claiming a technique; he is claiming access, and the humility and the confidence are in the same breath. This is a considerable change in a man who once announced his own dreams to a room that hated him. He will say it again, more sharply, in front of Pharaoh: It is not in me Genesis 41:16.
The two interpretations are given without softening. The cup bearer's three branches are three days, and Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore him. The baker's three baskets are three days, and Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you, and hang him.
The phrase is the same in both and means opposite things, which is either the grimmest wordplay in Genesis or an exact record of how the sentence was worded. And Joseph delivers the second one to a frightened man's face, knowing it, having just given his colleague good news. He does not adjust it, does not hedge it, and does not decline to answer. The baker asked because the first interpretation was good, and he is told the truth.
Between the two, Joseph makes the only request he ever makes for himself in the whole narrative, and it is modest: remember me when it is well with you. Please show kindness to me, and make mention of me to Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house. His case is stated in one sentence and it is entirely true — he was stolen, and he has done nothing.
Both interpretations come true on the third day, at a birthday feast, exactly as given.
And then the last verse of the chapter, which is one of the loneliest in Scripture: Yet the chief cup bearer didn't remember Joseph, but forgot him.
The two verbs are the same idea said twice, positively and negatively, which is Hebrew's way of making a thing final. It was not an oversight that a reminder would fix. Two full years pass before the man's memory returns Genesis 41:1, and they pass in the prison, after the one reasonable favor Joseph asked of anybody.
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