Devotion for Tuesday, September 8th
Kevin Peterson
Devotional Text: Genesis 41 (To read and even listen to this text for free, click here.)
Verse in Focus: “And Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I have had a dream, and there is no one who can interpret it. I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’ Joseph answered Pharaoh, ‘It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.’ ... ‘It is as I told Pharaoh; God has shown to Pharaoh what he is about to do.’ ... ‘And the doubling of Pharaoh's dream means that the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about’” (Genesis 41:15-16, 28, 32).
Related Verse: “Then he [Joseph] dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, ‘Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me’” (Genesis 37:9).
Devotional Thought:
In the ancient world, dreams were a big deal. They were thought to be one of the only ways in which the realm of the supernatural—the realm of the gods—could interact with people. The Greeks, for example, built temples dedicated to healing through dreams. But it was in Egypt that the whole dream thing jumped to another level. Obsessed with death and departing to the next world, the Egyptians took dreams incredibly seriously. One of the primary roles of the priests in Egyptian culture was the interpretation of dreams. And there are many examples of hieroglyphics still visible today depicting dreams and their interpretation.
Unfortunately for Pharaoh, but great for Joseph, was the fact that none of the dream professions—the priests and advisors—could tell him what his two dreams meant. The dreams may seem fairly straight forward to us. The message of a coming famine and a fixation on the number seven seem fairly obvious. Why couldn’t the priests pick up on this? Well, the reason the dreams seem pretty obvious is that we know the interpretation. All the priests had to go on was the images from the dream itself and its clear from the text itself that they were baffled. I suspect that the various priests offered Pharaoh their best guesses, but he rejected them all since they didn’t agree with one another and none of them were offered with any real confidence.
And, of course, that’s when Joseph enters the picture. Cleaned up from the filth of the prison and dressed in fine clothing, he is brought before the Egyptian king. The Master of Time and Timing (read here: God) has finally “dropped the other shoe.” The bringing of the cupbearer down to the prison was never about just getting Joseph a “get out of jail free card”—it was about a whole lot more! Because he interpreted the cupbearer’s dream, he is now in the royal palace so as to interpret the dream of the cupbearer’s boss—Pharaoh. The priests took great pride in their abilities to interpret dreams. They held forth that they had tremendous abilities—granted by the gods of course. It is of great interest, then, to hear Joseph deny having any such abilities. His humility and attributing of any interpretation to God—and not “the gods”—must have intrigued the king.
The two dreams are revealed to Joseph. Startlingly, he reveals that the two dreams are actually the same. Interestingly enough, the same was true of the two dreams that Joseph himself had when he still lived with his father and his brothers. Something even his father picked up on when he spoke with his son privately (37:10). But what is really interesting here is Joseph’s explanation as to why two dreams were given. The doubling meant that “the thing is fixed by God, and God will shortly bring it about” (41:32). God has signaled to Pharaoh through these dreams as to what he is about to do, and Joseph knows it will come about “shortly”. Fascinating interpretation, especially when you consider that Joseph’s events foretold two dreams back in chapter 37 have still not happened.
But it is clear that Joseph believes they will, just has he believes that Pharaoh’s dreams will happen as well. The Lord has been with Joseph every step of the way. He was with him at the bottom of the cistern, on the trail with the Midianites, in the house of Potiphar, in the prison cell, and now, in the presence of the Egyptian king. God is the giver of all good things but sometimes those good things take time to ripen, and now Joseph knows that for certain. Blessings on your day!
Vaya con Dios!
Pastor Peterson
REMINDER: You can check out previous email devotions from Shepherd of the Valley Devotions by going to http://groups.google.com/group/salmonlutheran
With Windows Live, you can organize, edit, and share your photos. Click here.