Genesis 41:8-32
Pharaoh has just had two crazy and scary dreams and he wants to know what they mean. Pharaoh calls on all the wise men and magicians of Egypt, tells them his dreams, and asks them to interpret it. Now it isn’t hard to imagine that Pharaoh has had dreams in the past that made him seek interpretation. It is also likely that he had turned to these very magicians and wise men in the past. It is these people’s jobs to interpret dreams. So when Pharaoh finished telling them his dreams it was probably just as surprising to them as it was to Pharaoh that they couldn’t interpret it.
The question that pricked my mind was “Why?”
Why couldn’t all these other people interpret the dreams and Joseph could? Why could these men, who had probably interpreted hundreds of dreams, not even begin to try to explain it, but Joseph, who’d only interpreted two dreams before this, had no trouble?
The simple answer is because God planned it that way, and that’s true, but there’s more to it then that. The magicians and wise men couldn’t interpret the dreams because they didn’t know the one who sent the dreams, Joseph did. And Joseph had been trained how to recognize dreams from the Lord and taught to ask Him for the meanings.
Imagine that you are sent a letter. This letter has no return address on it, it doesn’t say who sent it, and it’s written in a handwriting that no matter how hard you try you can’t read it. You can tell by the way the letter is written that what it says is very important. So you start asking everyone you can to try and read it and tell you what it says. Well, nobody you ask can read the letter either, but someone overhears you asking people for help and tells you that they have a friend who was able to help them with a similar problem. So you go to this person’s friend, hand them the letter, and…they can’t read it either. But they have seen this handwriting before and they know the sender. They call up the sender, ask them what the letter says, and then tell you.
This is what happened with the Pharaoh and Joseph. God gave Joseph his own dreams so he would know God’s “handwriting”. Then while in jail God gave dreams to the butler and baker, to give Joseph practice in the recognition of God’s dreams when hearing them from other people. This second step also introduced to Joseph the concept of asking the Lord for the interpretation. Both of these occurrences prepared Joseph for his encounter with Pharaoh. When Pharaoh went to Joseph, Joseph was able to say, “I can’t tell you the meaning, but I know the sender, let me ask Him”.
God help me to recognize you and your words so that I too will be able to say, “I know the sender.”
