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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > April 1998

Dreamer, Schemer, Slave and Prince

Understanding Joseph’s dreams

By Arnold Ages

Dreams in the Joseph story—both those he dreamed himself and those he interpreted for others—have long mesmerized us. His arrogant boasting of his dreams to his brothers almost cost him his life. His gifts as a dream interpreter won his release from prison and slavery and allowed him to become a prince in Egypt. Joseph languished in Pharaoh’s dungeon for more than two years after Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce him. When she failed, the spurned woman falsely claimed that Joseph, overseer of her husband’s household, had “come to dally with” her (Genesis 39:17). Potiphar, Joseph’s master and one […]

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Footnotes

1.

This story is the subject of the Supporting Roles column by Elie Wiesel in this issue.

Endnotes

1.

Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 159.

2.

Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18–50 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 410.

3.

Sandor Goodhart, “‘I am Joseph’: René Girad and the Prophetic Law,” Standford French Review 10 (1986), pp. 85–110.

4.

Abraham Ben Isaiah and Benjamin Sharfman, The Pentateuch and Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn: S.S. & R. Publishing Co., 1949), p. 373.

5.

Rashi and the traditional Jewish exegetes acknowledge that Rachel could not have functioned as his mother but suggest that Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine, raised Joseph after Rachel’s death and loved him as much as her own sons.

6.

Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, trans. Gertrude Hirschler (Brooklyn: Judaica Press, 1982), pp. 162–163.

7.

Gerald Janzen, Genesis 12–50: Abraham and All the Families of the Earth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 149.

8.

Isaiah and Sharfman, Rashi’s Commentary, p. 332.