The Cupbearer, the Baker,
and God, the Dream-Maker
This Week
- How could Rachel bow down to Joseph if she died in childbirth?
- Was Joseph sold to Ishmaelites or “stolen” by Midianites?
- Was Jesus in the prison with Joseph?
- Follow https://www.facebook.com/OutOfTheWhirlwind.
Proverbs 1:11-19 (LXX2012)
11 If they should exhort you, saying,
Come with us, partake in blood,
and let us unjustly hide the just man in the earth:
12 and let us swallow him alive, as Hades would,
and remove the memorial of him from the earth:
13 let us seize on his valuable property,
and let us fill our houses with spoils:
14 but do you cast in your lot with us,
and let us all provide a common purse,
and let us have one pouch:
15 go not in the way with them,
but turn aside your foot from their paths:
16 For their feet run to do evil,
and are swift to shed blood.
17 For nets are not without cause spread for birds.
18 For they that are concerned in murder store up evils for themselves;
and the overthrow of transgressors is evil.
19 These are the ways of all that perform lawless deeds;
for by ungodliness they destroy their own life.
Genesis 37-50
I’m going to split this week’s analysis into two separate posts. This one will focus on the Joseph story and will be a little shorter than previous posts. The next one will take a look at The Big Picture in Genesis as presented by each of the main sources. As with all of my posts, it’s helpful to be familiar with the background information I provided in my Old Testament Overview.
Sun, Moon, Eleven Stars
As usual, the text provides us with some curious discrepancies. And, as usual, the stories make sense when read in the context of their original sources.
In Joseph’s second dream (chapter 37), “the sun and the moon and eleven stars” bowed to him. According to Jacob’s interpretation, this means that “I and your mother and your [eleven] brothers” would one day bow to Joseph. Joseph’s eleventh brother was Benjamin, but 35:19 told us that Joseph’s mother, Rachel, died in Bethlehem giving birth to Benjamin. So how could Rachel and Benjamin both bow to Joseph? This may be evidence of at least two if not three different traditions concerning Rachel.
Friedman attributes Joseph’s dreams in chapter 37 to the Jahwist, who records neither Benjamin’s birth nor Rachel’s death, so at least there is no internal inconsistency. But the dream is clearly incompatible with the report of Rachel’s death in childbirth; Friedman attributes that section to the Elohist.
Does our third source clarify things, or does it further muddy the waters? Interestingly, the Priestly account seems to conflict with both the Jahwist and the Elohist. Although it agrees with the Elohist that Rachel had died in Bethlehem (48:7), it had earlier included Benjamin in the list of Jacob’s sons “born to him in Paddan Aram” (35:24-26), which would mean she didn’t die in childbirth. Either way, if Rachel dies in Bethlehem during the return trip from Paddan Aram, there’s no time for the dream to ever come true. The only way the dream works is if we read the Jahwist in isolation from the other accounts.
What makes this one even more curious to me is the fact that, by my accounting, every single dream in Genesis comes from the Elohist except for the two Joseph dreams in chapter 37. Had the Elohist left them out because of this contradiction? Or might there have been two accounts of these dreams and the Redactor of the Old Epic (RJE) simply preferred the southern Jahwist version (as usual) not realizing this created a minor discrepancy? With all the other inconsistencies we’ve been finding, it seems discrepancies weren’t matters of great concern to our editors. Perhaps perfect consistency is only a modern Western obsession.
Joseph: Sold or Stolen?
Following chapter 37 in its final form, the brothers conspire to kill Joseph until Reuben convinces them not to kill him but to leave him in a pit instead. Then Judah suggests they sell him to a caravan of Ishmaelites, because “what profit is there if we kill our brother?” Apparently Reuben hadn’t convinced them not to kill him after all. Suddenly Midianites come out of nowhere and pull him out of the pit. Next it says “they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites.” They who? The Midianites or the brothers? Either way, Joseph should now be in the hands of the Ishmaelites. And 39:1 indeed says that Potiphar bought Joseph from Ishmaelites. Not so fast. The end of chapter 37 had already said that Midianites were the ones who sold Joseph to Potiphar. How do we make sense out of all this?
Let’s break this one down by source as well. If we follow only the verses attributed to the Jahwist, we begin with Joseph tattling on Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Jacob, seemingly pleased by this, makes him the coat of many colors. What really upsets all the brothers, however, and even Jacob himself, is Joseph’s recounting of his dreams in which everyone bows to him. So they conspire to kill him and throw him into a pit. But before they do, Judah comes to the rescue. Acknowledging that it would be wrong to kill “our brother, our flesh” (37:27), he saves Joseph’s life by selling him to Ishmaelites traveling from Gilead to Egypt. The brothers take Joseph’s coat and dip it in goat’s blood to convince their father that a wild animal had killed him (paralleling Jacob’s own work of deception involving a coat that wasn’t his and a slain goat: see both Week 3 and Genesis: The Big Picture).
The Ishmaelites sell Joseph to Potiphar for whom he serves as a domestic servant. Then we have the story of Joseph with Potiphar’s wife (bearing a strong resemblance to the Egyptian Tale of Two Brothers) which leads to him being imprisoned. Here is one of the few gaps in the Jahwist as it skips from YHWH giving Joseph “favor in the eyes of the warden” (39:21) to Joseph being in charge of the whole land of Egypt (42:6).
Now, the Elohist version. The brothers hate Joseph when they see that their father, “Israel,” loves him most (no mention of a coat). They conspire to kill him but Reuben convinces them to throw him into a pit from which Reuben could later rescue him (in the next post we’ll consider why the Elohist seems to prefer Reuben while the Jahwist consistently promotes Judah). In the meantime, however, Midianites find him, take him to Egypt, and sell him to Potiphar. It is fitting that the Elohist is the only source to mention Midianites since it is the only source that recorded Abraham’s second marriage to Keturah, from whom the Midianites descended.
Contrary to the Jahwist account, Joseph does not become a prisoner. Both traditions tell us that Potiphar was the “chief of the guards.” This is sufficient to explain how Joseph ended up working inside the prison. When he is assigned to attend to the cupbearer and the baker, he testifies to them: “I was stolen from the land of the Hebrews; … I haven’t done anything that they should have put me in the pit” (40:15). Stolen … from the pit. Not sold. Finally, it is the Elohist who tells us about how Joseph’s spiritual gift of interpreting dreams paved the way for him to ascend to the highest official position in all of Egypt.
All things considered–with the Jahwist’s problematic account of Joseph’s dreams, the obvious attempt to paint Judah as the magnanimous brother, the possible plagiarism of the Tale of Two Brothers, and the rare gap in the Jahwist’s plot diagram–we may have found an instance in which the Elohist is the more reliable of the “Old Epic” sources. But without the Jahwist’s version of this story, we never would’ve had Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!
The Cupbearer and the Baker
In this last section, I just want to point out some interesting details I noticed.
First, let’s look at the Levitical law of the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:8-10):
And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the LORD and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.
Now, let us return to Genesis chapter 40.
- The baker is represented in his dream by bread.
- It is prophesied that he will hang on a tree.
- His flesh will be food.
Does this sound familiar to any of you? It sounds like the goat for the LORD, mentioned above, the sin offering. It also sounds like Christ’s sacrificial death and the bread of the Eucharist! I’m thinking specifically of John 6 where Jesus says that he is the bread of life, plus the synoptic accounts of the institution of the Eucharist. Furthermore, by proving Joseph’s prophecy true, the baker’s death actually leads to Joseph’s salvation, and thence all of Israel’s salvation!
- The cupbearer is represented in his dream by a vine (see John 15:1 where Jesus says “I am the true vine.”).
- After three days in the prison, he will be exalted.
- He will pour wine into his lord’s cup and offer it to his lord.
- His testimony will free Joseph (and thereby all the seed of Israel) from servitude.
There could be a hint of a connection with the goat for Azazel, but this one definitely sounds like Christ’s resurrection and the future messianic banquet. “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom” (Matthew 26:29, ESV).
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. (1 Peter 3:18-19)
King of Dreams
Last week I mentioned the Michael Cacoyannis film, The Story of Jacob and Joseph. Still worth watching if you want a decent straightforward visualization of last week’s and this week’s stories.
How many of you were aware that, after the smashing success of The Prince of Egypt, Dreamworks made a straight-to-video follow up, Joseph: King of Dreams (starring Ben Affleck and Mark Hamill)? If you’re watching it without the kids, though, I think my wife and I would probably recommend that you just fast forward through the songs.
Next Post
Next Week
Epoch 3—The Rise of a Unified People (1500–1200 B.C.)
Days 33-34: Exodus 1 – 2:23 (The Book of Exodus)
-Jahwist: 1:6 and 1:22 – 2:23a
-Elohist: 1:8-12, 1:15-21
-Priestly: 1:1-5, 1:7, 1:13-14.
Days 35-36: Exodus 2:23 – 7:7 (Moses in Midian)
-Jahwist: 3:2-4a, 3:5, 3:7-8, 3:19-22, 4:19-20a, 4:24-26, 5:1-2.
-Elohist: 3:1, 3:4b, 3:6, 3:9-18, 4:1-18, 4:20b-23, 4:27-31, 5:3 – 6:1.
-Priestly: 2:23b-25, 4:21b, 6:2 – 7:7 (though 6:14-25 is from a separate source called the “Book of Records”).
Days 37-40: Exodus 7:8 – 12:39 (From Egypt to Midian to Egypt)
-Jahwist: (none)
-Elohist: 7:14-18, 7:20b-21, 7:23-29, 8:3b-11a, 8:16 – 9:7, 9:13-34, 10:1-11:8, 12:21-27, 12:29-39 (minus priestly redactor versus listed below).
-Priestly: 7:8-13, 7:19-20, 7:22, 8:1-3a, 8:11b-15, 9:8-12, 9:35, 10:20, 10:27, 11:9-12:20, 12:28, 12:37.