Up until Joseph, we haven’t had
dreams. This is a unique method of communication for God when it comes to what
we’ve seen so far. Most of the time, God has no problem openly telling people
what’s going on, usually in-person. Occasionally there have been angels sent,
but it’s always been verbal. It’s always been direct. For it to suddenly to
become dreams seems weird.
So why? Well, for this we have to
look elsewhere. Yes, God could have easily told Joseph, straight out, that he
was going to rule over his brothers and even his parents, but a verbal
conversation is not going to work in Joseph’s favor down the line. The dream
interpretations, however, do.
In fact, the communications must be
in dreams in order for Joseph to do his thing. While God has not put much into
dream communication, the Egyptians did. It was common for the Egyptians to
receive divine communications in dreams. Pharaoh was quite comfortable asking
for interpretations of his dreams because that was the usual mode.
To be the one to help Pharaoh,
Joseph had to have experience in interpreting dreams, which he did not just
with his own dreams, but for those of the baker and the cupbearer as well.
Now, the dream code is really not
that complex, so it’s a wonder that Pharaoh’s couldn’t crack it. Healthy cows
and crops going bad is pretty easy to predict a famine or some kind of
scarcity. The only x factor is the time. Is it weeks, months, or years? Logical
deduction says that to be truly significant, a famine would be in years as
opposed to weeks or months. For that matter, Jacob instantly knew what Joseph’s
dream of the sun, moon, and stars meant, though that could be attributed to
Jacob having received inspiration from God.
Makes you wonder if the Egyptian
priests really are capable of doing their job, but more on that when we get to
Moses (eventually).