Chapter 41
After interpreting the baker's dream and the cupbearer's dream, and the cupbearer getting released, Joseph stays in prison for two more years. Pharoah has two dreams, one of 7 fat cows eaten by 7 thin, another of 7 plump ears of corn eaten by 7 thin. He is troubled by the dream. As Nebuchadnezzar will do later in Nebuchadnezzar's time, Pharoah calls all the magicians in the land to interpret his troubling dreams. He tells them the dreams, but still they cannot interpret their meaning.
2026 - Interesting that pretty much every translation uses the phrase "after two FULL years". I wonder why it is so important that we know it was a full two years? So we appreciate how much longer Joseph stayed in the prison?
The cupbearer tells Pharoah about his dream being interpreted by Joseph. Pharoah sends for Joseph, who has been in the pit where Potiphar sent him after his wife's lies for two years. Joseph says the dreams are one, and mean seven years of plenty followed by seven years of extreme famine. Jacob goes on to recommend that Pharoah store 20% of all the grain produced during the productive years, and then use it to allay the famine of the next seven. In fact, Joseph goes into more detail, recommending an administrative apparatus to implement the 20% plan.
2024 - Is this a principle?
Genesis 41:32 NASB1995
[32] Now as for the repeating of the dream to Pharaoh twice, it means that the matter is determined by God, and God will quickly bring it about.
Compare to Neb's dreams in Daniel. None repeated, so long delay between dream and fulfilment. Prophetic dreams and visions....often long delayed. But dream the same thing twice - if the dreams are one, repeated, it is coming true soon.
Pharoah puts Joseph over the implementing the plan, and gives him power in Egypt second only to himself. He calls Joseph Zaphenath-paneah (no one is sure to this day what the name means), and gives him Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as his wife. So Pharoah makes Joseph a part of his own royal family by marriage. From the pit to the pinnacle. Joseph was 30 years old at the time.
During the next seven years Joseph stored grain in each city from all the area around that city. So much they just quit counting it. It was everywhere. Also, Asenath bears him two children, Manasseh and Ephraim. So the daughter of the priest of a false God gives Joseph two sons, each of whom receives a separate share in the promised land. In this way, Joseph, the next youngest son of Israel, receives the double portion normally reserved for the oldest.
The famine, when it comes, is very widespread. Even the nations around Egypt are hard hit. Things get bad enough that the people of Egypt cry out to Pharoah. Pharoah refers them to Joseph, and tells them to do as he says to do. When the famine gets into full swing, Joseph begins to sell the stored grain back to the people, and to the whole world. Hmm....Joseph is in charge - a single man is in charge - of the only food remaining on the earth - at least in this corner of it. As the Antichrist will take over all buying and selling at the end, Joseph is perhaps (I do not know, and do not remember seeing that elsewhere) the type for such a time. It would be good to read this whole story of Joseph again and establish milestones that might correspond to the rise of the Antichrist.