Joseph Part 8: Dreamer in Pharaoh's Prison

Dreamers in Prison

Genesis 40:1–23 CSB

1 After this, the king of Egypt’s cupbearer and baker offended their master, the king of Egypt. 2 Pharaoh was angry with his two officers, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, 3 and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guards in the prison where Joseph was confined. 4 The captain of the guards assigned Joseph to them as their personal attendant, and they were in custody for some time. 5 The king of Egypt’s cupbearer and baker, who were confined in the prison, each had a dream. Both had a dream on the same night, and each dream had its own meaning. 6 When Joseph came to them in the morning, he saw that they looked distraught. 7 So he asked Pharaoh’s officers who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why do you look so sad today?” 8 “We had dreams,” they said to him, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Don’t interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.” 9 So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph: “In my dream there was a vine in front of me. 10 On the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, its blossoms came out and its clusters ripened into grapes. 11 Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup, and placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand.” 12 “This is its interpretation,” Joseph said to him. “The three branches are three days. 13 In just three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position. You will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand the way you used to when you were his cupbearer. 14 But when all goes well for you, remember that I was with you. Please show kindness to me by mentioning me to Pharaoh, and get me out of this prison. 15 For I was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing that they should put me in the dungeon.” 16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was positive, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream. Three baskets of white bread were on my head. 17 In the top basket were all sorts of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.” 18 “This is its interpretation,” Joseph replied. “The three baskets are three days. 19 In just three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from off you—and hang you on a tree. Then the birds will eat the flesh from your body.” 20 On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he gave a feast for all his servants. He elevated the chief cupbearer and the chief baker among his servants. 21 Pharaoh restored the chief cupbearer to his position as cupbearer, and he placed the cup in Pharaoh’s hand. 22 But Pharaoh hanged the chief baker, just as Joseph had explained to them. 23 Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.

"And it came about after these things," classic biblical style where who knows how much time, that's not important. What matters is these two stories sitting next to each other as quickly as possible. Okay, so in light of what just happened, chapter 39, consider 40.

"It came about after these things that they sinned." Who, you might ask? "The cupbearer of the king of Egypt and the baker." Notice how the word "sin" came up in the previous story when Yoseph said, "How could I sin against Elohim?" And then we have these guys sinning against Pharaoh.

Cupbearer, the word "baker" is one who bakes.

Baker is pretty straightforward. 

Cupbearer

Cupbearer is interesting because the Hebrew word is not "cup," it's the word "to drink." And then it's a causation verb, "to make a drink." Somebody who provides a drink for another. So he's the captain of drinking.

A more literal translation. 

A cupbearer was an officer of high rank at ancient oriental courts responsible for serving wine at the king’s table. Beyond this basic duty, the position carried significant security responsibilities. The cupbearer had to guard against poison in the king’s cup and was sometimes required to taste the wine before serving it. In Pharaoh’s court specifically, the cupbearer served as a sort of butler who tasted the wine to ensure it wasn’t poisoned before it reached the king’s lips, and his frequent access to the throne gave him considerable influence at court.

The position demanded exceptional trustworthiness. Because ancient oriental courts were rife with plots and intrigues, only thoroughly trustworthy individuals could hold the role, and the cupbearer’s confidential relationship with the king often gave him great influence.

So the baker and the captain of drinking. 

"They sinned against their master, against the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh was angry with the two officials against the captain of drinking and the captain of baking. And he gave them into the prison, the house of the captain of the butchers," remember? "And the round house, that is the place where Yoseph was imprisoned,".

"And remember, the captain of the butchers had appointed Yoseph with them," because everything was in Yoseph's hand there in the prison. "And so Yoseph served these two.

And they were there for days in the prison, how many doesn’t matter.

Dreams

And the two of them dreamed a dream." Chapter 37, dreams. "Each according to his dream in one night.

Each according to the interpretation of his dream. That is the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, the ones who were imprisoned there with him in the round house."

These repetitions are always intentional for structural purposes.

We're creating an opening line, verses 1 through 3, a key pivot, so focus on Yoseph there with them. Now back to the two guys who were put in the prison in all the same language, but now with Yoseph there with them. So shift on the two guys, shift on Yoseph, and then third, Yoseph with the guys. Verse 6, "And Yoseph went to them in the morning, and he saw, and look, they were distraught.

And he asked the officials of Pharaoh who were with him in the prison of the house of his master, saying, 'Why do your faces look so bad today?' And they said, 'Oh, we dreamed a dream. And there is no one to interpret it.' And Yoseph said, 'Oh, you know, all interpretations belong to Elohim. Please tell me.'"

In the ancient Near East, dreams held profound significance as messages from the divine realm, quite unlike modern Western skepticism toward them. Ancient peoples viewed dreams as encoded revelations requiring specialized expertise to decode. For Egyptians specifically, dreams functioned as portals to the divine, and they developed systematic approaches—producing dream manuals as early as the thirteenth century BCE that catalogued dream imagery and their corresponding meanings.

The cupbearer and baker’s distress in Genesis 40 stemmed partly from their imprisonment preventing access to the professional dream interpreters who were standard fixtures in Egyptian culture. Egypt and Babylon maintained professional magicians trained in dream interpretation methods, making it entirely normal for someone experiencing a troubling dream to seek out such specialists. When symbolic dreams contained imagery requiring expert assistance, diviners trained in interpreting divine messages would be consulted.

What makes Joseph’s role remarkable is not that he interprets dreams—that was an expected service—but how he reframes the entire enterprise. Joseph was assured that dreams and their interpretation belonged to God, and when the cupbearer and baker asked for help, he responded by asking, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” This assertion would have stood out powerfully against Egyptian cultural assumptions, which attributed interpretive authority to human experts rather than divine sources. While dream interpreters typically took credit for their deciphering, Joseph made clear his interpretations came from God.

Yoseph mentioned Elohim in the last chapter too, right? How could I sin against Elohim? Yahweh is with him. We were told that twice. So you kind of like, wow, this guy's, he's got a connection. Like this guy trusts, trusts Elohim. He honors and fears Elohim.

What would be difficult for human wisdom to figure out, that's not difficult for God's wisdom.

How does he know that God will give him that Interpretation?

It's very clear that the narrator is going to start presenting Yoseph as one who's very familiar with dreams and interpretation. And what it does is create the question did Yoseph interpret his dream from before, does he know what is going to happen? 

You can interpret everybody else's dreams, but what does he think about his own? And we're not told,

Potiphar is called the captain of the butchers up above. And now the guy over the prison has been called the captain of the prison or the captain of the butchers. And remember, both of them did the same thing. 

Potiphar and the guy over the prison saw Yoseph and put them over the house. So I think there's an interplay of even calling them, they were both officials serving, and they had different roles, but the same term can refer to both. I think it's a literary device to set them in parallelism with each other.

So that you would notice it. And notice the contrasting fates, the similarities and differences. 

Verse 9. "So, you know, the captain of drinking recounted his dream to Joseph. And he said, 'In my dream, look, there was a vine before me, and on the vine were three tendrils.'" Notice we're back to Eden imagery, farming, abundance imagery. "A vine with three tendrils, it was blossoming, and its blossom rose up, and the clusters ripened into grapes. And then the cup of Pharaoh was in my hand. And so I took the grapes, and I crushed them into the cup. Then I gave the cup to Pharaoh.' And Yoseph said, 'Here is its interpretation.

The three tendrils are three days. And within three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and return you to your post. You'll give the cup of Pharaoh into his hand, according to the custom of the beginning when you were his cupbearer. Now, just one extra thing.

Could you please remember me when I was here with you, when the good thing happens to you, could you treat me with loyal love?'" Does that ring any bells? Loyal love? Remember that was the thing that was said of Yoseph

at the end of 39.

Yahweh treated him with loyal love and brought him up in the low place. So now what he's looking for is a little more of that, but here from a human.

"Even more than just you remembering me, maybe make remembrance, or make mention of me to Pharaoh. You could get me out of this house.

I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews. And even here, I have done nothing that they should put me in this pit." There's been a variety of terms to refer to where he is.

The prison house, the round house, but the pit.

So the prison is the pit, is the grave, is being outside the camp in the field. 

Remember all the images of Yoseph going from the safe place to the field, to the pit, up out of the pit, down to Egypt as a slave. but here the prison is called the pit. 

"And the captain of the bakers saw that this interpretation was good. And he said to Yoseph, 'Oh, well, let me tell you my dream. Look, three baskets of just white bread were on my head. And the most high basket on it were some of all of the food of Pharaoh, the work of a baker. And so the birds came and ate them from the basket on my head.' And Yoseph answered and said, 'This is its interpretation. The three baskets are three days." And you can see him like, oh yeah, awesome. Awesome getting my job back. "Within three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head." Great. "From upon you. And you will hang upon a tree, and the birds will eat your flesh from upon you."

So we have two guys in prison. Yoseph's there. Yoseph hears they have dreams. First dream. Good. Please remember me. Second dream. Not so good. Now here's the third final unit here, verse 20. "And it came about on the third day.

It was the birthday of Pharaoh." The timing of all this is so uncanny. This is the first birthday mentioned in the Bible. It may be his actual birthday or it might be a celebration of the day in which Pharaoh became pharaoh. The god’s indwelled in him.

 "He made a feast for all his servants, and he's like, where's the captain of drinking?" It's my birthday. "So he lifted up the head," which is a turn of phrase meaning, for favor, "lifted up the head of the captain of drinking. And he lifted off the head of the captain of bakers in the midst of his servants. 

He returned the captain of drinking over his drinking work. And he gave the cup into the palm of Pharaoh, but the captain of the bakers, he hanged. It was just as Yoseph had interpreted." But you know, when Yahweh does his loyal love work, he never forgets.

This is, think Isaiah imagery, like, "How could I forget you, oh, Israel, even if a mother could forget their child, I would never forget you." But humans, their loyal love is, right, not so much. 

So the captain of the cupbearers, he forgot. This is perhaps the most straightforward and simple episode in the whole story. And it's so clearly just a transition episode. But with the two dreams, right, we're echoing back to the two dreams, and then these contrasting, what wisdom the dreams are almost identical.

And so, Yoseph is depicted as really depending on God's wisdom. 'Cause how would you, would you be able to know the difference? They're like virtually identical.

But they have opposite meanings. And so, it's that I think that's the narrative's way of turning up the theme about his wisdom and the insight God gives him as to the meaning of dreams, because I would think they're the same, but in fact they're opposite.

These dreams states will be the emergence of what will become apocalyptic literature, which is always dream or vision states. And so it can either be when you're asleep or you're awake, but you're in an altered conscious state. But when you're asleep, you're in an altered conscious state. So the biblical authors thought a lot about this actually. And so did most ancient people because even now it's really quite remarkable that our brains and bodies just shut down, and it's as if it's kind of like a death. 

It's like a near-death experience every night because, like, think of when you come across somebody sleeping, you're like, oh, my gosh. And so, the phenomenon of sleep has been the subject of a lot of pondering throughout all of human history. And so in the ancient Near East and in the biblical story, dream states or altered states of consciousness are often portrayed as moments when people actually have the most clear vision of reality. And it's our awakened state, because we often see things according to what's good in our eyes and our desires, that, it distorts everything. But somehow when we're asleep, we can gain a true picture. 

 And so apocalyptic literature is a moment when you're either asleep or awake, but God opens up your consciousness to other dimensions of reality that normally are invisible to you. And dreams were viewed as telling the real truth.

In our cultural setting, it's almost the opposite.

They saw them as a window into truth, but it's hard. They're disturbing and full of symbols, and how do you know? And thus, if you have God giving you wisdom about your dreams, then you can, it's a portal into reality. 

Three days

The first time it appears in the Genesis scroll is the story of Abraham and Isaac and, which is explicitly called a test. The first opening line is, "God put Abraham to the test." After Abraham has been putting implicitly God to the test, right, in all these other stories.

But it's on the third day that the test takes place that he goes up. And so what you'll notice is that the third day is often next to, concluding, or introducing testing stories where a character is at a crossroads that will lead either to their exaltation or their downfall.

Here it's after the test. Because the test was with Potiphar's wife.

And then the dreams are about what happens on the third day. And then here it's the third day. And so the test is followed by events on the third day that lead to his exaltation. 

In the flood narrative, the testing period is 40 days and 40 nights. And as you go forward, they become interchangeable. So periods of 40 can occupy the same slot, and which is why Jesus' first test

In the desert where he rejects the satanic temptation to seize power through force. Is during a period of 40. And then his garden test in Gethsemane is where he releases the temptation to seize power by force, and that begins a three-day test.