1And it happened at the end of two full years that Pharaoh dreamed, and, look, he was standing by the Nile. 2And, look, out of the Nile came up seven cows, fair to look at and fat in flesh, and they grazed in the rushes. 3And, look, another seven cows came up after them out of the Nile, foul to look at and meager in flesh, and stood by the cows on the bank of the Nile. 4And the foul-looking meager-fleshed cows ate up the seven fair-looking fat cows, and Pharaoh awoke. 5And he slept and dreamed a second time, and, look, seven ears of grain came up on a single stalk, fat and goodly. 6And, look, seven meager ears, blasted by the east wind, sprouted after them. 7And the meager ears swallowed the seven fat and full ears, and Pharaoh awoke, and, look, it was a dream. 8And it happened in the morning that his heart pounded, and he sent and called in all the soothsayers of Egypt and all its wise men, and Pharaoh recounted to them his dreams, but none could solve them for Pharaoh. 9And the chief cupbearer spoke to Pharaoh, saying, “My offenses I recall today. 10Pharaoh had been furious with his servants and he placed me under guard in the house of the high chamberlain—me and the chief baker. 11And we dreamed a dream on the same night, he and I, each of us dreamed a dream with its own solution. 12And there with us was a Hebrew lad, a slave of the high chamberlain, and we recounted to him and he solved our dreams, each of us according to his dream he solved it. 13And it happened just as he had solved it for us, so it came about—me he restored to my post and him he impaled.”
14And Pharaoh sent and called for Joseph, and they hurried him from the pit, and he shaved and changed his garments and came before Pharaoh. 15And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I dreamed a dream and none can solve it, and I have heard about you that you can understand a dream to solve it.” 16And Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “Not I! God will answer for Pharaoh’s well-being.” 17And Pharaoh spoke to Joseph: “In my dream, here I was standing on the bank of the Nile, 18and, look, out of the Nile came up seven cows fat in flesh and fair in feature, and they grazed in the rushes. 19And, look, another seven cows came up after them, gaunt and very foul-featured and meager in flesh, I had not seen their like in all the land of Egypt for foulness. 20And the meager, foul cows ate up the first seven fat cows, 21and they were taken into their bellies and you could not tell that they had come into their bellies, for their looks were as foul as before, and I woke. 22And I saw in my dream, and, look, seven ears of grain came up on a single stalk, full and goodly. 23And, look, seven shriveled, meager ears, blasted by the east wind, sprouted after them. 24And the meager ears swallowed the seven goodly ears, and I spoke to my soothsayers and none could tell me the meaning.” 25And Joseph said to Pharaoh, “Pharaoh’s dream is one. What God is about to do He has told Pharaoh. 26The seven goodly cows are seven years, and the seven ears of grain are seven years. The dream is one. 27And the seven meager and foul cows who came up after them are seven years, and the seven meager ears of grain, blasted by the east wind, will be seven years of famine. 28It is just as I said to Pharaoh: what God is about to do He has shown Pharaoh. 29Look, seven years are coming of great plenty through all the land of Egypt. 30And seven years of famine will arise after them and all the plenty will be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the famine will ravage the land, 31and you will not be able to tell there was plenty in the land because of that famine afterward, for it will be very grave. 32And the repeating of the dream to Pharaoh two times, this means that the thing has been fixed by God and God is hastening to do it. 33And so, let Pharaoh look out for a discerning, wise man and set him over the land of Egypt. 34Let Pharaoh do this: appoint overseers for the land and muster the land of Egypt in the seven years of plenty. 35And let them collect all the food of these good years that are coming and let them pile up grain under Pharaoh’s hand, food in the cities, to keep under guard. 36And the food will be a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine which will be in the land of Egypt, that the land may not perish in the famine.” 37And the thing seemed good in Pharaoh’s eyes and in the eyes of his servants. 38And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Could we find a man like him, in whom is the spirit of God?” 39And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “After God has made known to you all this, there is none as discerning and wise as you. 40You shall be over my house, and by your lips all my folk shall be guided. By the throne alone shall I be greater than you.” 41And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” 42And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand and had him clothed in fine linen clothes and placed the golden collar round his neck. 43And he had him ride in the chariot of his viceroy, and they called out before him Abrekh, setting him over all the land of Egypt. 44And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh! Without you no man shall raise hand or foot in all the land of Egypt.” 45And Pharaoh called Joseph’s name Zaphenath-Paneah, and he gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as wife, and Joseph went out over the land of Egypt.
46And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt, and Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and passed through all the land of Egypt. 47And the land in the seven years of plenty made gatherings. 48And he collected all the food of the seven years that were in the land of Egypt and he placed food in the cities, the food from the fields round each city he placed within it. 49And Joseph piled up grain like the sand of the sea, very much, until he ceased counting, for it was beyond count.
50And to Joseph two sons were born before the coming of the year of famine, whom Asenath daughter of Potiphera priest of On bore him. 51And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, meaning, God has released me from all the debt of my hardship, and of all my father’s house. 52And the name of the second he called Ephraim, meaning, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.
53And the seven years of the plenty that had been in the land of Egypt came to an end. 54And the seven years of famine began to come, as Joseph had said, and there was famine in all the lands, but in the land of Egypt there was bread. 55And all the land of Egypt was hungry and the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread, and Pharaoh said to all of Egypt, “Go to Joseph. What he says to you, you must do.” 56And the famine was over all the land. And Joseph laid open whatever had grain within and sold provisions to Egypt. And the famine grew harsh in the land of Egypt. 57And all the earth came to Egypt, to Joseph, to get provisions, for the famine had grown harsh in all the earth.
CHAPTER 41 NOTES
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1. at the end of two full years. The Hebrew says literally “two years of days.” The expression might simply mean “two years’ time,” but it is equally plausible, as the King James Version surmised, that the addition of “days” emphasizes that a full period of two years has elapsed before the course of events compel the chief cupbearer to recall his neglected promise to Joseph.
by the Nile. Given the Nile’s importance as the source of Egypt’s fertility, it is appropriate that this dream of plenty and famine should take place on its banks, a point made as long ago as the thirteenth century in Narbonne by the Hebrew exegete David Kimhi. As this story set in the pharaonic court unfolds, its Egyptian local color is brought out by a generous sprinkling of Egyptian loanwords in the Hebrew narrative: “Nile” (yeʾor), “soothsayers” (ḥartumim), “rushes” (ʾaḥu), “ring” (tabaʿat), “fine linen” (shesh).
3. and stood by the cows. There is a small ominous note in the fact that the second set of seven cows do not graze in the rushes, as the first seven do, and as one would expect cows to do. In a moment, they will prove themselves carnivores.
4. and Pharaoh awoke. Although Pharaoh’s dreams, like Joseph’s, are quite stylized, the one element of psychological realism is his being shaken out of sleep by the nightmarish turn of the dream plot.
6. blasted by the east wind. The desert lies to the east, and the wind that blows from there (the ḥamsin) is hot and parching.
7. And the meager ears swallowed the seven fat and full ears. The nightmare image of carnivorous cows is intensified in the second dream by this depiction of devouring stalks of grain. The imagery of Pharaoh’s second dream corresponds to the grain imagery of Joseph’s first dream, but an act of depredation is substituted for the ritual of obeisance.
8. his heart pounded. The literal meaning of the Hebrew is “his spirit pounded.”
none could solve them for Pharaoh. Since it is implausible to imagine that the soothsayers had no interpretation at all to offer, one must assume that none could offer a convincing decipherment, as Rashi observes: “they interpreted [the dreams] and he was dissatisfied with their interpretation, for they would say: seven daughters you will beget, seven daughters you will bury.”
9. I recall. The verb means both “to mention” and “to cause to remember” and so is linked with the theme of remembrance and forgetting that is central both to this episode and to the larger Joseph story.
12. a slave. Although the Hebrew ʿeved is the same term the chief cupbearer has just used in the sense of “servant” (and which is used in verses 37 and 38 to refer to Pharaoh’s courtiers), it is likely that he invokes it here to highlight Joseph’s status as slave.
14. and he shaved and changed his garments. It is obvious that an imprisoned slave would have to make himself presentable before appearing in court, but, in keeping with the local color of the story, he does this in a distinctively Egyptian fashion. In the ancient Near East, only the Egyptians were cleanshaven, and the verb used here can equally refer to shaving the head, or close-cropping it, another distinctive Egyptian practice. The putting on of fresh garments is realistically motivated in the same way, but we are probably meant to recall that each of Joseph’s descents into a pit was preceded by his being stripped of his garment. When Pharaoh elevates him to viceroy, he will undergo still another change of clothing, from merely presentable dress to aristocratic raiment.
15. I have heard about you that you can understand a dream. “Heard” and “understand” are the same verb (shamaʿ), which has both these senses, precisely like the French entendre. Although the second clause has often been construed as a kind of hyperbole—you need only hear a dream to reveal its meaning—the straightforward notion of understanding dreams makes better sense.
19. gaunt and very foul-featured and meager in flesh, I had not seen their like in all the land of Egypt. In keeping with the biblical convention of near verbatim repetition, Pharaoh, in recounting his dreams to Joseph, uses virtually the same words that the narrator used in first reporting them. The piquant difference, as Meir Sternberg (1985) has noted, is that his language underlines his own sense of horror at what he has seen in his dream: “foul to look at and meager in flesh” is elaborated and intensified in Pharaoh’s repetition, and he adds the emphatic exclamation “I had not seen their like. . . .” (The phrase “in all the land of Egypt” will become a verbal motif to indicate the comprehensiveness of the plenty, of the famine, and of the measures that Joseph adopts.) The comment in verse 21 about the unchanging lean look of the cows after swallowing their fat predecessors again reflects Pharaoh’s horrified perspective.
meager in flesh. Here, and again in verses 20 and 27, I read daqot, “meager,” instead of the Masoretic raqot (“flat,” or perhaps “hollow”). The Hebrew graphemes for d and r are similar in form, and several of the ancient versions reflect daqot in these verses.
24. and none could tell me the meaning. The Hebrew uses an ellipsis here, “and none could tell me.”
25. Pharaoh’s dream is one. Joseph, it should be observed, doesn’t miss a beat here. The moment he has heard the dreams, he has everything in hand: the meaning of all their details, and the explanation for the repetition.
28. what God is about to do He has shown Pharaoh. Although the framework of the Joseph story is “secular” in comparison to the preceding narratives, and though Joseph’s exercise of ḥokhmah (wisdom) in dream interpretation and economic planning has led scholars to detect a strong imprint of ancient Near Eastern Wisdom literature, he himself is careful to attribute the determination of events as well as his own “wisdom and discernment” to God (compare verse 16). Whatever the considerations of source criticism, moreover, the name he uses for the deity in speaking with Pharaoh is ʾelohim, the term that has general currency among polytheists and monotheists, and not the particularist YHWH.
33. And so, let Pharaoh look out for a discerning, wise man. The advice after the interpretation has not been requested. Joseph perhaps runs the risk of seeming presumptuous, but he must have a sense that he has captivated Pharaoh by the persuasive force of his interpretation, and he sees that this is his own great moment of opportunity. One wonders whether Pharaoh’s two dreams also make him remember his own two dreams of future grandeur.
34. muster the land of Egypt. The meaning of the verb ḥimesh is disputed. It could be derived from ḥamesh, “five,” and thus refer to a scheme of dividing the land into fifths or perhaps taking a levy of 20 percent from the crops of the good years. (In chapter 47, once the great famine is under way, Joseph institutes a 20 percent tax on the produce of the lands that have been made over to Pharaoh.) But the same root is also used for the arming or deployment of troops, and the idea here may be that Joseph is putting the whole country on a quasimilitary footing in preparation for the extended famine.
35. under Pharaoh’s hand. Joseph deferentially and diplomatically indicates that everything will be under Pharaoh’s jurisdiction, though it will really be the “hand”—authority, power, trust—of the “discerning, wise man” that will run the country.
38. Could we find a man like him, in whom is the spirit of God? Pharaoh produces exactly the response Joseph would have hoped for. Again, the flexibility of ʾelohim serves the dialogue well. The Egyptian monarch has not been turned into a monotheist by Joseph, but he has gone along with Joseph’s idea that human wisdom is a gift of God, or the gods, and the expression he uses could have the rather general force of “divine spirit.”
40. by your lips all my folk shall be guided. The Hebrew says literally “by your mouth.” The clear meaning is “by your commands,” “by the directives you issue.” There is some doubt about the verb yishaq. The usual sense of “will kiss” is extremely unlikely here, unless this is a peculiar idiom for civil obedience not otherwise attested. It is best to associate it with the noun mesheq (15:2), which appears to refer to economic administration.
41. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you.” This is a nice deployment of the convention of a second iteration of the formula for introducing direct discourse without an intervening response from the interlocutor. Joseph for the moment has remained silent, uncertain what to say to Pharaoh’s astounding proposal, even if eliciting such a proposal may have been his express intention. So Pharaoh must repeat himself—this time in a performative speech-act in which he officially confers the high office on Joseph and confirms the act by adorning the Hebrew slave with regal insignia: the signet ring, the golden collar, and the fine linen dress.
42. the golden collar. Although English translators have repeatedly rendered this as “chain,” Egyptian bas-reliefs show a more elaborate ceremonial ornament made out of twisted gold wire that covered part of the shoulders and upper chest as well as the neck. In fact, the Hebrew word is not the normal term for “chain,” and reflects a root that means “to plait,” “to cushion,” “to pad.”
43. Abrekh. Despite the ingenuity of traditional commentators in construing this as a Hebrew word, it is evidently Egyptian (in consonance with the loanwords in the surrounding narrative) and may mean something like “make way.” Gerhard von Rad calls attention to this meaning while canvassing other possibilities and sensibly concluding that the term is not entirely certain.
44. I am Pharaoh. Most commentators and translators have construed this as an implied antithesis: though I am Pharaoh, without you no man shall raise hand or foot. . . . But this is unnecessary because we know that royal decrees in the ancient Near East regularly began with the formula: I am King X. The sense here would thus be: By the authority invested in me as Pharaoh, I declare that without you, etc.
45. Zaphenath-Paneah. The change to an Egyptian name is of a piece with the assumption of Egyptian dress and the insignia of high office. The name may mean “God speaks, he lives,” as Moshe Weinfeld, following the lead of Egyptologists, surmises.
Potiphera. This is the full form of the same name borne by Joseph’s old master, Potiphar, but evidently refers to a different person, since Potiphar was identified as courtier and high chamberlain, not as priest. On is not a deity but the name of a city, later designated Heliopolis by the Greeks because of the sun worship centered there.
Joseph went out over the land. The wording is a little odd. It may be associated with the end of verse 46.
46. when he stood before Pharaoh. This could mean, idiomatically, when he entered Pharaoh’s service, though it is equally possible that the verb refers literally to the scene just reported, when he stood before Pharaoh and made his way to greatness by interpreting the dreams.
47. made gatherings. The Hebrew qematsim elsewhere means “handfuls,” and there is scant evidence that it means “abundance,” as several modern versions have it. But qomets is a “handful” because it is what the hand gathers in as it closes, and it is phonetically and semantically cognate with wayiqbots, “he collected,” the very next word in the Hebrew text. The likely reference here, then, is not to small quantities (handfuls) but to the process of systematically gathering in the grain, as the next sentence spells out.
49. like the sand of the sea, very much, until he ceased counting. The language here is strongly reminiscent of the covenantal language in the promise of progeny to Abraham and thus provides a kind of associative link with the notice of Joseph’s progeny in the next three verses. Upon the birth of Ephraim, Joseph himself will invoke the verb for making fruitful that is featured in the repeated promises of offspring to the patriarchs.
51. Manasseh . . . released me from all the debt. The naming-pun is on the verbal stem n-sh-h. The virtually universal construction of this term here is “made me forget,” but it must be said that the root in that sense occurs only five times in the biblical corpus, and at least two or three of those are doubtful. It is also somewhat odd that Joseph should celebrate God for having made him forget his father’s house. But a very common usage of n-sh-h is “to hold in debt,” and a natural meaning of that stem in the piʿel conjugation, as here, would be “to relieve from the condition of debt.” Such an unambiguously positive verb is a better parallel to “made me fruitful” in the next verse. I am grateful to Amos Funkenstein for this original suggestion.
52. Ephraim . . . made me fruitful. The naming-pun is on the verbal stem p-r-h.
55. all the land of Egypt was hungry. The contradiction between this report and the preceding statement that there was bread in Egypt is pointed. There is food in storage, not to be had from the wasted fields, but Joseph metes it out to the populace, and at a price.
56. Joseph laid open whatever had grain within. The Masoretic Text, which lacks “whatever had grain,” is problematic at this point. The Aramaic Targums supply these missing words. Other ancient versions presume a phrase like “stores of grain.”