Commentaria in Genesim
Chapter Forty
Joseph explains dreams to the butler and baker: the event proves the explanation.
1. After this it came to pass that two eunuchs, the butler of the king of Egypt, and the baker, offended their lord. 2. And Pharao being angry with them (now the one was chief butler, the other chief baker), 3. Sent them to the prison of the commander of the soldiers, in which Joseph also was prisoner. 4. But the keeper of the prison delivered them to Joseph, and he served them. Some little time passed, and they were kept in custody. 5. And they both dreamed a dream the same night, according to the interpretation agreeing to themselves: 6. And Joseph coming in to them in the morning, and seeing them sad, 7. Asked them, saying: Why is your countenance sadder to-day than usual? 8. They answered: We have dreamed a dream, and there is nobody to interpret it to us. And Joseph said to them: Doth not interpretation belong to God? Tell me what you have dreamed. 9. The chief butler first told his dream: I saw before me a vine, 10. On which were three branches, which by little and little sent out buds, and after the blossoms brought forth ripe grapes: 11. And the cup of Pharao was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into the cup which I held, and gave the cup to Pharao. 12. Joseph answered: This is the interpretation of the dream: The three branches are yet three days: 13. After which Pharao will remember thy service, and will restore thee to thy former place: and thou shalt present him the cup according to thy office, as before thou wast wont to do. 14. Only remember me, when it shall be well with thee, and do me this kindness: to put Pharao in mind to take me out of this prison: 15. For I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and here without any fault was cast into the dungeon. 16. The chief baker seeing that he had wisely interpreted the dream, said: I also dreamed a dream, that I had three baskets of meal upon my head: 17. And that in one basket which was uppermost, I carried all meats that are made by the art of baking, and that the birds ate out of it. 18. Joseph answered: This is the interpretation of the dream: The three baskets are yet three days: 19. After which Pharao shall take thy head from thee, and hang thee on a cross, and the birds shall tear thy flesh. 20. The third day after this was the birthday of Pharao: and he made a great feast for his servants, and at the banquet remembered among them the chief butler, and the chief baker. 21. And he restored the one to his place, to present him the cup: 22. The other he hanged on a gibbet, that the truth of the interpreter might be shown. 23. But the chief butler, when things prospered with him, forgot his interpreter.
1. TWO EUNUCHS,—two royal ministers and prefects, even if in fact they were not eunuchs. See what was said chap. xxxix, verse 1.
2. FOR THE ONE,—as if to say: Pharao was angry with them: because their sin, as of prefects, could be a scandal and bad example to subordinates. The Hebrew has not “for.”
3. OF THE COMMANDER OF THE SOLDIERS,—Putiphar, who had been Joseph’s master, chap. xxxix, verse 20.
PRISONER,—a captive: for he was already free of chains, as is plain in the preceding chap., verse 22.
4. SOME LITTLE TIME,—namely one year, for this the Hebrew yamim signifies, that is, days in the plural, as Francis Ribera well proves on Amos iv, number 8. After this year of the dreams Joseph was still two years in prison, as is plain.
son. In this also Joseph was a type of Christ; for as Joseph, after three years of prison, was raised to the principate, so Christ, after three days of passion and death, rose glorious.
The same three days of Christ rising again is signified by the three days of the restoration of Pharao’s butler, verse 13. So from Isidore, Lipomanus (1).
God through me will interpret your dream to you; relate it therefore to me: and when you see it come to pass in fact as I shall have interpreted it, then know that I am no vain conjecturer, but a true interpreter of dreams, by the gift of God, and consequently that I am a true worshipper and friend of the true God: for God does not reveal these his secrets to others.
Question: whether it is lawful to divine the future from dreams? Note: Dreams are of three kinds: some come from God; some from the demon; some from nature. Again, the third kind, which arise from nature, are twofold: some arise from daily thought, or from ardent affection toward some thing. Hence as The sailor tells of the winds, the ploughman of his oxen: so also he dreams of the same things. For dreams arise from daily thought; as on a lute, when the striking has ceased, certain motions that result from the impulse still continue for some time after it has stopped, as Gregory of Nyssa says in his treatise On the Making of Man, chap. 31. Some dreams, however, are natural, and arise from the temperament and the prevailing humour. Thus the bilious dream of slaughter, blows and fires; the phlegmatic dream of waters, whirlpools, suffocations, and of a slow flight from harmful things, for sluggish phlegm produces this; the sanguine dream of music, of banquets, of meadows, of birds, of flying; the melancholic dream of dark and sad things, of death, of tombs, of Ethiopians and demons.
I say first, from natural dreams one may divine naturally, that is, conjecture about a man’s temperament, health, disposition, and the diseases that threaten him. So Hippocrates and Galen wrote books on the presages to be drawn from dreams. And the reason is that effects naturally indicate their cause; and these dreams are effects of a certain temperament and of a certain humour prevailing in the body.
I say secondly, from dreams sent by God or an angel one may divine; but only he who has received their meaning from God or an angel. So Joseph here, and Daniel in chaps. 4 and 5, divine from dreams.
I say thirdly, the remaining dreams, and the divinations from them, are either diabolical, or superstitious, or vain, fallacious and futile; hence divination from such dreams is forbidden, Deut. 18:10.
Note: Because divine dreams are rare, and can scarcely be distinguished from demoniacal or vain ones, it is therefore safest to despise every dream, unless God reveals otherwise; and this he is wont to reveal, partly by enlightening the dreamers themselves, so that they know
18. JOSEPH ANSWERED: THIS IS THE INTERPRETATION. Literal sense. The cupbearer saw in a dream, symbolically, his own state, namely his office of cupbearer, restored to him, so that by this very thing God might signify that states, dignities, even life itself and all human affairs are only a dream, and all the hopes of men only the dreams of the waking, as Plato used to say. This the interpreter Joseph teaches, that is, a wise and prudent man, says Philo; and therefore he directs his actions and all his affairs according to the prescription of virtue.
THREE BRANCHES—three shoots of the vine.
THREE DAYS YET REMAIN.—“Are,” that is, signify. For as it belongs to an image to represent, so it belongs to a dream, a symbol, or a prophetic vision to foreshadow and signify things absent or future. So St. Augustine (3).
15. OUT OF THE LAND OF THE HEBREWS,—out of the land of Chanaan, in which Jacob and his sons the Hebrews dwelt (4).
16. BECAUSE HE HAD INTERPRETED THE DREAM PRUDENTLY (that is, fittingly, suitably, plausibly (5))—for the truth of the interpretation was not yet established, which afterward was proved by the event itself, verse 24 (6).
17. ALL MANNER OF MEATS WHICH ARE MADE BY THE BAKER’S ART,—and consequently cakes, loaves, and pastes of meat, to which carnivorous birds flew, tearing and devouring them. So Josephus. For these meats and birds portended that the flesh of the dreamer would in like manner be torn and devoured by birds on the cross.
19. For on the third day itself the baker was hanged, and the birds portended this from the third basket, tearing and eating the flesh. So Josephus.
HE SHALL TAKE AWAY THY HEAD—not by beheading thee with the sword, as Philo will have it, but by hanging thee with a halter, and so killing thee and thy head. Whence follows: “And shall hang thee”; for he who takes away a man’s life takes away also his head, because it is chiefly in the head that a man lives and thrives, which life and vigour are taken away from the head, as from the man, by the halter and by death, just as by the sword.
AND THE BIRDS SHALL TEAR THY FLESH.—Hence it is plain that the bodies of the hanged were then left on the gibbet, as they are now, either to rot there, or to be dried and wasted by sun and wind, or to be torn by birds. Whence the line:
I committed no theft; thou shalt not feed ravens on the cross.
But the Jews were commanded, Deut. 21:23, to take down the hanged and bury them on the same day.
eunuchs, they say, of whom one was restored to his station and the other hanged, signify two orders of men, namely the elect by grace, and the reprobate, or those to be damned by justice. Again, Joseph between the two eunuchs is Christ crucified between two thieves, promising heaven to one, and leaving hell to the other. For Christ opened dreams and visions: both because he fulfilled the prophecies; and because he unlocked to men the hidden counsels, judgments and promises of God; and because he gave the Apostles understanding to grasp the prophecies and the whole of Sacred Scripture.
Here “that” signifies not the end intended by Pharaoh, as is plain, but the event or consequence, as if to say: So it came about that Joseph’s divination and interpretation of the dreams was found true, and was proved by the event itself.
A like divination was that of St. Athanasius, who, on entering Alexandria, when a crow flying in the air cawed, was asked scoffingly by the Gentiles what the crow said, and answered: “It sounds out ‘Tomorrow’; and it signifies that tomorrow, on which you celebrate a festival, will be mournful for you.” So it came to pass, as Nicephorus attests, book 9, chap. 35. So also that Christian, asked mockingly by Julian the Apostate: “What is your Galilean carpenter doing?” answered: “He is preparing a coffin for you,” that is, a bier; and truly, for a little after Julian was slain by a weapon not of man but of Christ. In like manner the hermit Isaacius foretold defeat and death to the Arian Emperor Valens, as he marched against the Goths, as Nicephorus attests, book 11, chap. 50.