genesis, chapter 40

Man, Whoever wrote this chapter needs a lesson in economy of words. Like, I realize the copy I have now is an updated version of a translated version of the original text, but it really reads like the Author was just trying to fill out His word count, but didn't really have much to say. Maybe He was writing on a deadline, and this was His last chapter to finish and He was just really tired or something. I don't know, but I do know that it would be a journalism professor's worst nightmare:

...the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt offended their master, the king of Egypt. (40:1)

Okay. So the cupbearer and the baker made their boss, the king of Egypt mad. Got it.

Pharoah was angry with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker (40:2)

Erm...all right. He's, uh...still mad at those same guys.

and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the same prison where Joseph was confined. (40:3)

Right. Okay. The Pharoah put them in prison. What happened next?

After they had been in custody for some time, each of the two men--the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison--(40:4-5)

Dude! We got it. Two guys, a cupbearer and a baker, who work for the king, made him mad and got sent to prison! You already said it, like, eight times in the first paragraph of this chapter. Message received, okay?

Then again, "cupbearer" has nine letters, and "chief cupbearer" has fourteen letters (fifteen if you count the space), and when you're just looking to fill up space with drivel, long words always help.

Anyway, Joseph meets these guys and they look sad:

So he asked Pharoah's officials who were in custody with him in his master's house

Wait, wait, wait. Who was in prison? The Pharoah's...? Huh? I am totally lost here.

I mean, I have to admit that I am one of those people who can never remember characters' names in books and movies, and I'm always trying to figure out who the hell the characters are talking about when they refer to other characters. But come on. This is a little excessive. We aren't stupid. At least, I'm not stupid. I think we've pretty well established that people in biblical times were very stupid. I mean, they didn't even have toaster ovens. God! Get with the times, guys.

After all this unnecessary clarification the two dudes tell Joe that they each had a dream, but they are sad that no one can interpret them. In one breath, Joseph says that only God can make such interpretations, and then offers to interpret the dreams himself. Or maybe he just meant that the guys should tell him their dreams, and then he can tell God (because God is with him in prison, remember?), and then God will interpret them and he can tell the interpretation to the guys. Or maybe Joseph is just a crazy idiot.

The cupbearer has a dream about vines and grapes, which isn't surprising, considering his whole life is spent serving wine. Based on some rudimentary internet dream interpretation, I would say that the dream means the the cupguy will be healthy for a long time to come and will regain favor in the king's eyes, after which he will become prosperous, but that his only ambition will be to be true to his master, which is actually pretty close to what Joseph predicts, although he says this will all happen within three days. Cupguy is happy about this, and Joseph asks Cupguy to promise that when he gets out of prison he will tell his master, the Pharoah, who is the king of Egypt and master of the two men in jail, the cupbearer and the baker, that Joseph was good and should be let out of prison, where he, Joseph, is right now (in prison, that is). The cupbearer, who is in prison with Joseph, promises to tell the Pharoah about Joseph.

The baker dreams about (surprise!) bread in baskets, and birds that keep eating the bread. My interpretation of this is that the baker will be miserable after being cast out and treated inhumanely by someone in a position of power. Of course, if this dream were occurring in the 21st century, that could mean lots of things. If a prisoner had this dream, it might mean that he would be put in solitary confinement or tortured in some other way. But if a co-worker were telling me this dream (and if I believed that dreams could predict events in a person's life), I might think that the boss would publicly humiliate and then fire the person. The one thing I would probably never come up with from this interpretation would be that the person would be hanged or impaled on a pole, because those are things that don't often happen in 21st century America. But that is exactly what Joseph predicts.

This is not too different from "hot" psychic readings. Joseph already has some information about this guy before he even hears the dream: he works for the king and he's in prison for doing something bad to the king. Joseph also knows the standard contemporary forms of punishment. If Joseph had told the baker that he was going to be fried in the electric chair, that really would have been an astounding prediction. But I guess people interpret dreams based on the current social customs and mores, kind of like the way people interpret the Bible.

Before the existence of venture capital, for example, no one would have thought to interpret the Parable of the Talents as an endorsement of venture capitalism, but now some do interpret it that way. For that very reason, we can not help but admit that the Bible does not have all the answers. I mean, come on; that's a tall order for any book. The only way The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy could accomplish this feat was to take up several buildings' worth of space. There are lots of things that exist now that the Bible doesn't mention at all, and that's because a lot has changed between 5000 B.C.E. and 2007 C.E., both in terms of technology and morality. In moderns societies, we don't impale people on stakes, because it's seen as cruel and immoral. But Biblical people didn't have much of a problem with it, did they?

But I digress.

Joseph's predictions do indeed come true. Three days later, both dudes are released, the cupebearer is restored to his original position, and the baker is either hanged or impaled on a stake. My translation isn't sure which.

And then comes the most flagrant unnecessary clarification of the chapter, which reads like a middle schooler's attempt to be poignant or poetic:

The chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.(40:23)

Man, You could have made the chapter a whole lot longer if You used this technique throughout:

Joseph did not ignore the dreams; he interpreted them.
Joseph was not free; he was in prison.
Joseph did not say, "My brothers sold me into slavery because I liked to dream, and then my dad tore his clothes because they told him I died. Also, God is with me"; he said, "Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams."

I guess I should just be happy that He used the semicolon properly.