Genesis 41

Genesis 41

Two years after freeing his butler and beheading his baker, Pharaoh ate some bad enchiladas one night and had a couple of really wacky dreams. In the first, he saw seven fat cows walk out of a river, followed by seven lean and sickly cows. Suddenly, like a scene out of a bad horror movie, the seven sickly skinny cows devoured the seven fat cows.

Pharaoh woke up screaming, but soon fell back to sleep. In his second dream, he saw seven healthy ears of corn grow on one stalk. Then, seven nasty thin and wind-blasted ears showed up on the stalk right next to it. As if the cow cannibalism wasn’t bad enough, the seven thin ears of corn suddenly devoured the seven healthy ears. Completely horrified, Pharaoh woke up shaking and vowing to behead his cook at the first opportunity for making those damn enchiladas. Oh, he also sent for all the magicians in Egypt, in hopes that one of them could tell him what the hell those dreams meant, other than that he needed to adjust his medication.

His butler, who happened to be butling in the general area at the time, heard Pharaoh complain about his dreams, and suddenly remembered that jailer that had interpreted his dreams oh so long ago. So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, who was brought from the dungeon, shaved, given a new clean set of formal rags, and sent to interpret some dreams. Pharaoh asked if Joseph could interpret dreams, and Joseph, trying not to sound too arrogant, said it was really God who interpreted the dreams, but Joseph could talk to God, so that’s how it worked. Because in Egypt, interpreting dreams was way more impressive than talking directly to God.

Anyway, Pharaoh wasted 8 verses repeating the dreams to Joseph, and Joseph made the astounding revelation that both dreams were about the same thing. Joseph then went on to say the dreams meant Egypt would soon be attacked by a wave of zombie cannibal cows, and the only way to stop them would be to breed a race of ravenous corn which would eat the cows, but would also eat all of their food crops, but hey it beats being eaten by zombie cannibal cows. Not really.

Seriously though, Joseph told Pharaoh the dreams meant Egypt would have seven years of great harvests, followed by seven years of famine. He also claimed that since there were two dreams about the same event, that meant God had already decided this is how it was going to be, so don’t bother begging him to change it, and by the way it was going to happen Real Soon Now. Joseph said that Egypt should find a discreet and wise man to rule over all of Egypt and appoint henchmen to take 20% of the harvest from all the farmers in the land and store it in preparation for the famine to come.

Pharaoh, noticing that Joseph kept pointing to himself when he referred to a "discreet and wise man", and also noticing Joseph had tattooed "discreet" on his right hand and "wise" on his left, decided to give Joseph the job. He gave Joseph his ring and gave him a nice suit and some jewelry and made him ruler over the entire country. He also gave Joseph a ridiculously long and impossible to pronounce name (Zaphnathpaaneah) and gave him a wife. So, apparently dream interpretation was pretty good work if you could get it.

During the seven years of plenty, Joseph and his goons went out and took 20% of the grain produced in Egypt and stored it away, as he had said they would do. Then, when the seven years of famine came along, Joseph set up shop and sold the grain back to the people from which he had taken it. In this way, nobody starved, and Joseph made a tidy profit. Also, during this time his wife popped out two younguns named Manasseh and Ephraim.