Genesis 40

Notes

1. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "the butler" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 2, 3, 39

   מַשְׁקֶה is the hiphil participle of שָׁקָה "give drink" used as a noun, and its home gloss "watering" belongs to its other uses: a watered place (13:10), the drink of a feast (1 Kgs 10:21). Of a person it is the one who gives the king drink (40:1–23; 41:9; 1 Kgs 10:5; Neh 1:11, "I was cupbearer to the king"), and "watering" cannot name a man, so "cupbearer" is printed at every occurrence as a departure, with this note, and "the officer of the cupbearers" for שַׂר הַמַּשְׁקִים. The concrete word is the cup (כּוֹס) the dream turns on (vv. 11, 13, 21). "Butler" (KJV, RSV) is from French bouteillier, the keeper of bottles, the same office; in modern English it names a head servant. At v. 21 the noun has its other sense, the office ("to his watering"), and the home gloss is printed there. The baker, אֹפֶה, is the participle of אָפָה "bake" and needs no departure.

2. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "had offended their lord" (KJV) / "offended their lord" (RSV)

   Rulings 89, 2

   חָטָא is "sin," the verb of the CORE family (89), and it is used of wrongs between humans: Reuben (42:22, "do not sin against the boy"), Jacob to Laban (31:36), David to Saul (1 Sam 24:12). The home gloss keeps the link with Joseph's refusal one verse before, "and sin against Elohim" (39:9): the man who would not sin is jailed for it, and two officers who did sin are put in with him. The text does not say what they did. Genesis Rabbah 88:2 has a fly in the cup and a pebble in the bread.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   קָצַף is "be wrathful," of a king's or of Elohim's anger at those under him (41:10; Lev 10:6; Num 16:22; Esth 1:12; 2:21). It is kept apart from חָרָה "flare," the master's anger in 39:19, and from חֵמָה "fury." The cupbearer repeats the verb when he confesses before Pharaoh (41:10).

4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 18

   "The officer of the butchers" is Potiphar's title (37:36; 39:1). The round-house is inside his house, so the man who put Joseph there now has charge of these two, and v. 7 calls it "the house of his lord," Joseph's lord. Genesis Rabbah and Rashi take it so; some modern readers take the title as a different officer, since 39:20–23 gave the round-house its own officer.

5. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "charged Joseph with them" (KJV) / "charged Joseph to be with them" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 123

   This is the qal of פָּקַד, whose home gloss is "attend to" (123b). With a person as object and "with them" of the persons he is to serve, the qal is to assign or appoint: "Aaron and his sons you shall appoint" (Num 3:10), "you shall appoint to them in charge" (Num 4:27), "appoint officers" (Jer 51:27). "Attended to Joseph with them" would make the officer take care of Joseph, the reverse of the sense, so "appointed" is printed, as for the hiphil at 39:4–5. The officer's trust repeats Potiphar's and the jailer's (39:4, 22).

6. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 2

   "They were days in custody": יָמִים alone is an unstated span of time, as at 4:3 ("at the end of days") and 24:55. The WPRB has "for some time." The verse keeps the plain "days" that the three days of the dreams will count (vv. 12–13, 18–20).

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 2, 95

   פִּתְרוֹן "interpretation" and the verb פָּתַר "interpret" are one root and share one English (95), so the chain of Gen 40–41 is one word: "interpretation" (vv. 5, 8, 12, 18; 41:11), "interpret" (vv. 8, 16, 22; 41:8, 12–13, 15). The root is found only in Gen 40–41; its Aramaic cognate פְּשַׁר is the word of Daniel. "Each according to the interpretation of his dream" says that each dream was fitted to its own outcome before it was told: the interpretations are already in the dreams.

8. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "they were sad" (KJV) / "they were troubled" (RSV)

   Rulings 2, 25

   זָעַף is to be out of temper, sullen or raging: Ahab came home "sullen and vexed" (סַר וְזָעֵף, 1 Kgs 20:43; 21:4); Uzziah "was vexed" with the priests (2 Chr 26:19); the noun is a king's rage (Prov 19:12) and the storm of the sea (Jonah 1:15). Dan 1:10 has it of faces that look worse. "Vexed" holds the displeasure the word carries, where "sad" softens it. Joseph's question then reads their faces: "why are your faces bad?"

9. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "Do not interpretations belong to God?" (KJV, RSV)

   Rulings 38, 92, 129, 132

   לֵאלֹהִים has no agreeing verb, and Adonai is not named in this chapter, so ruling 38 holds, with 129(n) and 132(b): "elohim," lowercase, and the WPRB keeps it (WPRB guide, divine names). Ruling 128(d), which gave 39:9 its capital, needs Adonai named in the same scene; 39:23 closes that section. To two Egyptian officers the bare word can be heard as "gods," and Joseph does not name his God to them; he names him to Pharaoh in 41:16, where the verb is singular. Philo (On Joseph 90) and Rashi both read the speech as Joseph's confession of his God.

10. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 10, 74

    The verse is all speed. Budding, blossom, clusters and ripe grapes come in one breath, three short clauses with no conjunction after the first, and the next verse puts the juice in Pharaoh's cup with the cupbearer's own hand. כְפֹרַחַת is "as though budding": the כְּ makes the sight a dream-likeness. The baker's dream has no growth and no hand of his own: birds take the bread (v. 17).

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 24, 37

    "Lift your head" (נָשָׂא אֶת־רֹאשׁ) is printed the same at vv. 13, 19 and 20, because the narrative turns on the one phrase. Lifting someone's head is to restore and honor him: Evil-merodach "lifted the head of Jehoiachin king of Judah, out of the prison house" (2 Kgs 25:27; Jer 52:31), and "you lift my head" (Ps 3:4). It is also the census idiom, "lift the head of all the congregation" (Num 1:2; 4:2), to count and call up for review, which is what Pharaoh does at his feast in v. 20, with both men counted. To the baker Joseph adds two words, "from upon you": the lifting of the head is its removal. The listener hears the pun only when the second half comes. The home gloss "lift" (2) keeps the three uses in one English verb; "lift up" (KJV, RSV) is the same verb.

12. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    כֵּן is a noun here, a base or stand: the stand of the laver (Exod 30:18; 31:9) and of the pillars (1 Kgs 7:31). With "return you to your base" it is the position or office he held, where Pharaoh will set him back. Pharaoh uses the noun of Joseph's own restoration at 41:13, "me he returned to my base." The word is apart from the adverb כֵּן "thus."

13. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "after the former manner" (KJV) / "as formerly" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 3

    מִשְׁפָּט is "judgment" (CORE), and here it is a judgment as settled custom, the way a thing is done: "after the judgment of the daughters" (Exod 21:9), "the judgment of the king" (1 Sam 8:9, 11; 10:25), "the judgment of the priests" (1 Sam 2:13). "The first judgment" is the order of service Pharaoh had fixed and will set again. The word links the cupbearer's restoration to a decision: his case has been judged.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 74

    כִּי אִם with a perfect is the particle of the exception and the urgent request: "only," as it was "except" at 39:6 and 9 ("except the bread," "except you"). The KJV has "But think on me," the RSV "But remember me." The perfects that follow (וְעָשִׂיתָ, וְהִזְכַּרְתַּנִי, וְהוֹצֵאתַנִי) carry the request on, which the English gives as imperatives. "Remember me with you" is the Hebrew's "with you," to keep him in his own mind; "when it is well for you" is the qal of יָטַב, "be well" (20). This is the only time in the story that Joseph asks anything for himself.

15. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "make mention of me unto Pharaoh" (KJV) / "make mention of me to Pharaoh" (RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20

    וְהִזְכַּרְתַּנִי is the hiphil of זָכַר "remember," to bring a person to another's memory, to name him (1 Sam 4:18; Isa 62:6; Ps 45:18). The lexicon has "remember" for the root with no stem declared. "Make remembered" keeps the root, so that the hiphil "make me remembered" and the qal "did not remember" of v. 23 sound alike, as they do in Hebrew. The cupbearer keeps the request two years later, with the same stem: "my sins I am making remembered today" (41:9).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 126

    גֻּנֹּב גֻּנַּבְתִּי is an infinitive absolute with the finite verb, both pual: "being stolen, I was stolen," kept as the house keeps the doubled verb ("eating you may eat," 2:16; "dying, he shall be made to die," 26:11). Joseph says "stolen," not "sold": the brothers sold him (37:27–28), and the theft of a person is the capital crime of Exod 21:16 and Deut 24:7. He does not tell the Egyptian who stole him. "The pit," בּוֹר, is the word of the cistern his brothers threw him into (37:20, 22, 24, 28–29), now used of the round-house; Pharaoh's men bring him "running from the pit" (41:14).

17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 52

    "Saw that he had interpreted good" (כִּי טוֹב פָּתָר) takes the formula of creation, "and Elohim saw … that it was good" (1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). The baker sees "good" in the cupbearer's interpretation and expects the same for himself. The English keeps טוֹב as "good," the home gloss, where the KJV and RSV have "favourable."

18. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "three white baskets" (KJV) / "three cake baskets" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25

    חֹרִי occurs only here. Two roots are offered. (a) חוּר "white" (Isa 19:9 חוֹרָי "white cloth"; Esth 1:6; 8:15), hence white bread or fine cakes: Onkelos "baskets of white bread," the LXX κανᾶ χονδριτῶν "baskets of groats," the Vulgate canistra farinae, the RSV "cake baskets." (b) חֹר "hole" (2 Kgs 12:10; Song 5:4; Isa 11:8), with the same holem vowel as here, hence baskets of openwork or wicker: Rashi ("baskets of peeled willow, with holes in them"), the KJV margin "full of holes," NJPS "openwork baskets," Alter "wicker baskets." English cannot hold "white" and "holes" in one word, and "white" is לָבָן's gloss (30:35, 37), so the reading of the vowel and of the Hebrew commentators is printed (1), with the bread reading here. The contents are named in v. 17, "all the fare of Pharaoh," so the bread reading is not lost from the verse.

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    מַעֲשֵׂה אֹפֶה is "the deed of a baker," the noun of עָשָׂה "make, do" held as "deed" (5:29; Ps 19:2, "the deed of his hands"). It is what a baker makes, the KJV's "bakemeats." The cupbearer's dream was of his own hands at work (v. 11); in the baker's, his work sits on his head, and the flyers eat it. "The flyers" is the collective עוֹף, the birds of the sky.

20. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 37

    "And hang you on a tree" (וְתָלָה אוֹתְךָ עַל־עֵץ): after the head is lifted from upon him, the body is hung up for display, and birds eat it, as in Deut 21:22–23 ("if a man … is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not remain all night upon the tree"), Josh 10:26 and 2 Sam 21:10, where Rizpah keeps the birds of the sky from the hanged men. Gal 3:13 cites Deut 21:23 in the Greek. עֵץ is singular, a tree or post, and keeps "tree"; "wood" is the plural of cut timber (124a). The cupbearer repeats it as "and him he hanged" (41:13).

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 10, 20

    הֻלֶּדֶת is the hophal infinitive of יָלַד, with אֶת marking Pharaoh: "the day of the being born of Pharaoh," which English gives as a finite clause (10), "the day Pharaoh was born." The same form and construction is Ezek 16:4–5, "on the day you were born." It is the only birthday in the Hebrew Bible. The feast is a מִשְׁתֶּה, a drinking feast (19:3; 21:8), which a cupbearer serves.

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 2

    Here מַשְׁקֶה is the office, not the man: "he returned the officer of the cupbearers to his watering," to his giving of drink. The home gloss "watering" (13:10) is printed, and the clause answers Joseph's "return you to your base" (v. 13). The KJV has "unto his butlership," the RSV "to his butlership." The subject of the next clause, "and he gave the cup," is the cupbearer, as in Joseph's interpretation (v. 13).

23. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 2, 74

    "Did not remember Joseph, and forgot him" says the thing twice, negative and positive, as Joseph asked twice, "remember me … make me remembered" (v. 14). Genesis Rabbah 89:3 and Rashi read Joseph's two requests as a lapse of trust in Elohim, paid for with two more years (41:1); the narrative says only that the man forgot. The chapter ends with the section mark, and the next one opens "at the end of two years of days" (41:1).