They would have understood the second dream to authenticate the meaning of the first. It’s likely they also were disturbed because Joseph had two dreams with the same meaning. The meaning of the dreams infuriated Joseph’s brothers. Their meaning is clear, and it incites Joseph’s brothers to hate him even more and prompts his father to rebuke him (Gen 37:8, 10). While these dreams are symbolic, they did not require expert interpretation.

In his second dream, Joseph sees the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowing down to him. His brothers’ sheaves circle around his own and bow low to the ground. In the first dream, Joseph sees himself and his brothers binding sheaves in the field. The first pair of dreams in the story of Joseph are his, and they signal where the narrative is headed. Rather, he insisted the interpretations came from God. Joseph serves as the interpreter, but he was not a trained diviner. Sometimes the significance of such imagery was obvious, but at other times it required expert assistance from a diviner-one trained in the art of interpreting messages from the gods.Īll six dreams in the story of Joseph are symbolic, two of them containing obvious imagery and four requiring an interpreter. Other dreams were symbolic-that is, they contained imagery that needed to be interpreted. In the Bible and in the ancient Near East, some dreams gave clear messages for the recipient (see, for example, Solomon in 1 Kgs 3:5–15). The first pair sets the narrative in motion and points ahead to its destination, while the second and third pairs are catalysts for Joseph’s ascension. Joseph has two dreams (Gen 37), two of his fellow prisoners in Egypt each have a dream (Gen 40), and Pharaoh has a pair of dreams (Gen 41). Six dreams, conveyed in three pairs, propel the story of Joseph rise from being the favored-and thus despised-son of Jacob to being the “discerning and wise” man appointed to manage Egypt during its 14 years of feast and famine (Gen 41:33). Dreams were one way the gods communicated from the divine realm to the human realm-a belief that is clearly evident in the Joseph narrative.

While many of us dismiss dreams as a mental reworking of the day’s events or as the result of indigestion, ancients considered dreams to have potential revelatory significance. Facebook Twitter Reddit Pinterest Email LinkedInĭreams dominate the story of Joseph, but their importance in the narrative derives from the significance of dreams in the culture and theology of the ancient Near East.

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