Nehar Deah

Vayeishev

Dreams and their Interpretation in the Story of Joseph
Three sets of dreams appear in the story of Joseph: Joseph's dreams, the dreams of Pharaoh's ministers and Pharaoh's own dreams. Joseph's brothers mockingly referred to him as the "master of dreams" (Bereishit 27:19) and did not realize just how correct they in fact were, since the continuation of the story reveals that Joseph was not just a dreamer of dreams, but also knew how to interpret dreams and that his fate, as with their fates, where predestined by the dreams.

Joseph's first dream was about his brother's sheaves bowing to his sheaf; his second dream, which reinforced the message of the first dream, was of celestial bodies bowing down to him. In the first dream the events took place on the earth, in the second - in the heavens. In the first dream there is initial equality between the figures; in the second - a structured hierarchy: the parent and brothers are symbolized by the sun, moon and stars, while there is no symbol for Joseph (he says "bowing to me" [37:19]). After the second dream the brothers' enmity toward Joseph grows and even their father castigates him.

The dreams carry Joseph from the depths of despair to the heights of triumph and vice versa. At every transformation of his status, caused by the dreams, the motif of clothing appears and every low point in his life is symbolized by the motif of the pit. His coat of many colors made for him by his father symbolized his being preferred over his brothers (such dress was reserved for royalty, see Shmuel II 13:18-19). Because of his dreams, the brothers removed his coat and threw him into the pit (Bereishit 37:20-29). When he is in the "pit" (40:15), after the affair with Potiphar's wife, he interprets the dreams of the chief baker and chief butler and in order to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh, he is taken "out of the pit" (41:14) and soon after that he changes his dress. Thus, through the dreams and their interpretation, Joseph is transformed from the "little prince" from Canaan, who wore a coat of many colors, to the deputy of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, dressed in linen garments, a necklace of gold around his neck (41:42) and an Egyptian name, Zaphnath-pa'aneach (ibid verse 45).

All the dreams in the story of Joseph show a high level of status consciousness: Joseph's dreams deal with his status within his family, the dream's of the ministers deal with their fate and status within king's court, Pharaoh's dreams - with his control over his nation and the status of Egypt among the nations, since the coming of the seven years of famine will eman that not only the Egyptians will come to Pharaoh to ask for food but "all the earth" (41:57).

From one set of dreams to the next, the social status of the participants is more elevated: Joseph's dreams are about a family of shepherds in Canaan, the minister's dreams - about the happenings in the king's court, Pharaoh's dreams - about the king himself. The dreams, which climb the social hierarchy, are stages in the path of the realization of Joseph's dream of the celestial bodies which bowed down to him.

In the Story of Joseph there are, as mentioned, three sets of dreams, but the set which merits the greatest prominence are the dreams of Pharaoh. They are recounted at length and are even repeated three times: once when they actually happen, once when Pharaoh tells them and a third time as part of Joseph's interpretation of the dreams. The Torah strengthens the impression made by Pharaoh's dreams, by emphasizing the anxiety they caused him and by creating a multilevel structure from which the difficulty of the interpretation of the dreams is apparent. Joseph's dreams where transparent and easily understandable by those involved. The ministers' dreams already needed an interpreter and Pharaoh's dreams are the most complex. The Egyptians magicians were unable to present a solution to Pharaoh, until Joseph came to reveal them to the king.

The multilevel structure of the dreams is also expressed in God's involvement in the dreams. In Joseph's dreams God is not mentioned at all; in the interpretation of the ministers' dreams, God is mentioned once (40:8); in the interpretation of Pharaoh's dreams He is mentioned numerous times. This is to teach that God's hand is controlling events and it is here that this reaches its climax.

Food is also a theme in the dreams, but in Pharaoh's dream the concept of famine is also added. The first dream is Joseph's dream about the sheaves; the last dream is Pharaoh's dream about the ears of corn. Between the sheaves of Joseph and Pharaoh's ears of corn (which create a literary framework for all the dreams) we see the dreams of the chief baker about the baked goods; the chief butler's dream about preparing wine for Pharaoh; Pharaoh's dreams of well fed and emaciated cows who eat each other and of withered and emaciated ears of corn, which become carnivorous plants.

In all the dreams there is a foretelling of the future, but Pharaoh's dream also contains a warning. Joseph tells Pharaoh that God has informed him of what will come to pass, in order that he be prepared and able to save his nation. Of the fact that the dream is repeated twice, he says "it is because this thing is determined by God and God will quickly make it come to pass" (41:32).

The chief baker and chief butler's dreams are not repeated. Each one dreams one dream, with a message essentially opposite to that of his colleague. One was predicted life and the other was predicted death. The two dreams of the ministers depict, in miniature, life at court, with each depiction focusing on a representative object: a cup of wine or a basket of baked goods. From their interpretation we see that the contents of the cup or the basket determine the fate of the dreamer for good or bad.

The chief butler's dream is a dream of success, abundant with positive symbolism. It has a vine, wine and upward motion (the flowering vine). There is complete harmony between the minister and the vine: which has associated with it three actions (flowers, sprouts new growth, ripens); he also has three actions (takes, presses (the grapes], gives). This minister is revealed as being dedicated to his master and his duty (he mentions Pharaoh three times), he is industrious, professional and achieves his goal of presenting Pharaoh with a glass of high quality wine. The chief baker is in no way like this. His dream is a dream of failure. Movement in the dream is downwards: the bird that descends and eats from the basket on his head is a symbol of death (see Devarim 28:26). The minister is revealed as lacking in vitality: he does not nurture the grain, does not bake the baked goods, does not chase the bird away and never achieves his goal of presenting Pharaoh with his baked goods. Pharaoh is only mentioned once in his recounting. The dreams teach that only one who is worthy to serve Pharaoh will survive.

In the beginning of the story Joseph is shown as "grazing the flock with his brothers" (Bereishit 37:2) and the question is asked why Joseph sees himself and his brothers as "binding sheaves in the field" (ibid 7)? They were shepherds and did not work the land! It seems that the sheaves where a precursory hint to Pharaohs dreams of the ears of corn and to Joseph's position as governor (or grand vizier), with one and all coming to him for bread. When his brothers come to him in order to buy food, they bowed down to him, exactly as foretold in his dreams (42:6; 43:26, 28; 44:14). The true meaning of the dream of the sheaves, which begins the series of dreams in the story of Joseph, is only finally revealed at the very end of the narrative.

Dr Leah Mazor
Department of Bible Studies

Language - Explaining the name "Zaphnath-pa'aneach"

Many words in the Hebrew language have a complex and twisted history. Sometimes one of the paths along which the word marched is blocked, but then another is opens along which it continues its existence. This is probably the case with "Zaphnath-pa'aneach", a name which appears only once in the Bible: "And Pharaoh called Joseph by the name Zaphnath-pa'aneach" (Bereishit 41:45). The challenge of explaining this name has captivated commentators from as far back as ancient times and right up to modern times. The earliest biblical commentators already point out the difficulty in interpreting this name. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) says that there is no other word in the bible even similar to "pa'aneach", while Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1164) writes: "Despite this, the word is Egyptian - we do not know its meaning. If it is translated - we would not know Joseph's name. And the explanation was 'pa'aneach' when the translator translated [to] Aramaic (referring to the translation of Onkelos, which will be discussed below)". A careful reading of the Ibn Ezra will show us that he cleverly pointed put the fork in the road where the various versions of this word divided.

On one hand, the Ibn Ezra raises the hypothesis that this may be an Egyptian word, whose meaning is not known (and note the concentration of Egyptian words in the chapter: Pharaoh, Avreich, Poti-phera). Today we know that we can bring support for this hypothesis from other ancient sources. The Septuagint - a Greek translation of the Bible written in the first centuries BCE - contains this exact name, transliterated into Greek, without any translation. Later one of the church fathers, Hieronymus (died circa 420) states that "Zaphnath-pa'aneach" is Egyptian and means "savior of the world". Hieronymus' interpretation is probably based on an Alexandrian interpretive tradition, which understood the name as being taken from the Egyptian language: pa-santh-n-pa-ankh, meaning "creator" or "sustainer". According to another interpretation, the intention is another Egyptian expression meaning: "the god says he shall live".

On the other hand, the Ibn Ezra says that one should understand the letters "pa'aneach" according to the Aramaic translation, which is the translation of Onkelos. This Aramaic translation - which was composed in the second and third centuries CE - translates "Zaphnath-pa'aneach" as "the man to whom secrets are revealed". In truth, what would a translator do when confronted with an Egyptian word that he does not know the meaning of? It is logical to assume that he will attempt to find a phonetically similar word in Hebrew or Aramaic and try use it to explain the problematic phrase. It seems that the similarity between "Zaphnath" and the Hebrew root word "Z-Ph-N", which means "to hide" or "to conceal" (for example "And when she could no longer hide him" [Shemot 2:3]) lead to the interpretation: "revealer of that which is hidden", an interpretations that appears not only in Onkelos but also in Midrashim of chazal.

When the interpretation of the word "Pa'aneach" as "explanation of something closed" or "revealing of hidden things" took happened, the root word "P-A-N-Ch" became part of the system of Hebrew verbs. It is found frequently in medieval literature and also in Modern Hebrew. Thus the noun "pianuach" (deciphering or decoding) and the verbs "pi'nach" (decoded/deciphered)) or "pu'nach" (solved, interpreted, compiled [computing]) and even the profession, especially in the army, of "m'pha'aneach" (cryptographer).

We have seen how initially the meaning of a combination of Egyptian words from the biblical period was forgotten, but through the commentaries of chazal it received new meaningwhich continued it's existence up till today.

The Philosophy of Chazal - Dream Interpretation in Chazal

Chazal (acronym for "our sages of blessed memory") place great importance on dreams and their interpretation. A minority claim that a dream has no meaning and "nothing is shown to a person [in his dreams] other than what he [literally "his heart"] has been thinking of" (Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 51a), meaning that a dream is just an internal expression of the thoughts, hopes and fears of a person and according to this, they do not warrant being examined excessively. Most sages, on the other hand, think dreams are imposed from an external source and that there is a value to understanding their hidden message.

A key sentence, by which many sages have understood dreams, is an Aramaic saying by Rav Chisda: "A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read" (Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 58a). In the same way that the written word has no meaning until it is read, such are dreams that have not yet been interpreted. The interpretation is what gives life to the dream and fills it with meaning, and until it is interpreted - it can be explained in many ways. In a way we can compare between this method of understanding dreams and modern methodologies for understanding texts: we no longer need to ask "what did the poet mean" (the writer of a letter or a dream), the most important thing is the meaning that the readers find and this now becomes the focus.

In order to demonstrate this idea we will bring a story found in Midrash Bereishit Rabba (89:8). A woman came twice to Rabbi Elazar's study hall and on both occasions told of the identical dream: she dreamt that the roof or her house caved in. On the first occasion Rabbi Elazar interpreted her dream to mean that she was going to give birth to a son, but on the second occasion his students interpret the dream and tell her that her husband is about to die. In both cases, what the interpreters told her came to pass and Rabbi Elazar chastises his students and claims that because of them the dreadful event happened, since their interpretation of the dream is what determined reality. According to this "everything goes after the interpretation" (ibid); the dream is unimportant - the interpretation is what is really significant. With this, we also have the opposite viewpoint in chazal, according to which each dream has only one significant interpretation which contains the truth, predestined and unchangeable. Examples are: "if you see an elephant in your dream - wonders will happen to you", "if you see Ishmael in your dream - your prayers will be heard" (Babylonian Talmud, ibid 56b) and it is worthwhile to note the play on words in Hebrew: "pil" (elephant) and "niphlaot" (wonders); "Yishmael" (Ishmael) and the concept of hearing (yishma - he will hear) one's prayers. The visions in the dreams are interpreted-explained as one explains words in a letter or any other text.

In summary we can say that in the literature of the sages there is an argument as to whether dreams have significance or not and even those who hold by the former are divided into those who hold that the interpretation of the dream is what determines and those who hold that it is dependant on the interpreter and the interpretation they offer.