Genesis 40 Series, Part 7, Verses 2-4

Hello, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Tonight is study #7 in Genesis 40, and we will again read Genesis 40:2-4:

And Pharaoh was wroth against two of his officers, against the chief of the butlers, and against the chief of the bakers. And he put them in ward in the house of the captain of the guard, into the prison, the place where Joseph was bound. And the captain of the guard charged Joseph with them, and he served them: and they continued a season in ward.

The word “season” is a transliteration of the Hebrew word “yome,” the word translated as “day,” but it is plural, so it means “days.” They continued for days in ward, or in the prison.

I mentioned a couple of studies ago the significance of the timeline, as far as we are able to determine based on Joseph’s age. God told us his age at the time Joseph was thrown into a pit and his brothers sold him to slave traders that were passing by. They, in turn, sold him as a slave in Egypt. Potiphar purchased him, and he served as a worker in Potiphar’s house. So he was aged 17 when he was first sold, and then we are told in this account in Genesis 40 that he was 30 years old when he came out of prison. So we know the entire time span was 13 years, and that is not surprising. We talked a lot about this, but the number “13” identifies with the time of the end of the world. God gives us events in Joseph’s life that repeatedly tie in with the number “13,” or with multiples of the number “13.”

And this is also true of Jacob. Jacob was 91 years when Joseph was born, and the number “91” is “7 x 13.” Then when Jacob entered into Egypt, Pharaoh asked him how old he was, and he said that he was age 130, and that number is “10 x 13.” And because we know that Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born, we can know that when Jacob was 130, Joseph was 39, which is “3 x 13.” So that is very odd.

When Joseph was 17 this calamity took place in which his own brothers sold him, and at age 30 he came out of all this calamity. Incredibly, it was a triumphant rise. To come out of prison to rise to the second in command over the great nation of Israel is just very incredible. Of course we can relate it spiritually to the body of Christ which after 13,000 years of history at the time of end rises up out of the world, and we are resurrected.

So these are interesting facts we are given about these ages in the Bible, like age “17” and age “30,” with a 13-year span. But we are also told that not long after the butler and baker were thrown into prison, Joseph interpreted their dreams, and Joseph tells the butler that after three days the butler would be restored to his butlership, and after three days the baker would be hanged. So they were only there in prison a few days, and from all we can gather, Joseph was not in the prison for all that long. Then we read in Genesis 41:1:

And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.

What happens in chapter 41 is that Pharaoh will have a dream, and the butler will remember his fault in not remembering Joseph. Joseph had asked him to remember him when he was restored to his butlership, but the butler forgot it, but Pharaoh having this dream was a reminder to him that he had met a man in prison who could interpret dreams. But the significant thing is that it was “two full years,” and we know from the point of this statement Joseph was very quickly taken out of prison. They called him forth to come before Pharaoh, and he does interpret Pharaoh’s dream, and Pharaoh said, “Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?” And Pharaoh put Joseph in charge because the interpretation of the dream laid out a plan for the next 14 years, and it made Egypt and Pharaoh the greatest country and most powerful king in all the world.

But that “two full years” would be the last two years that Joseph was in prison, and that gives us an additional breakdown of numbers. He was 17, and then he spent 11 years in Potiphar’s house as a slave, and then being put in prison for two full years. So the space in time from age 17 to 30 is 13 years. 

If you have been following along in these Genesis studies, you are probably thinking how it is interesting that we have the number “11,” and then the total number of “13.” Remember that earlier Joseph himself had dreams that he told his brothers about, and it was one of the reasons why they hated him and thought of killing him. We read in Genesis 37:5:

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.

Joesph was a great type of Christ, so the dreams of Joseph would really represent the revelations of God. God gave him the dreams which had to do with the future, and it is recorded in the Bible, which is divine revelation. And it really shows the hatred of the people of the world (sinners) toward the truth of the Word of God. They hated Joseph for the dream. They hate Christ because He is the Word, and they hate the elect children of God because we identify with Christ, and we fully identify with the Word, the Bible. So it is really a typical response because the Bible says, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.” Jesus also said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.” And as God said to Samuel, “…for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me…” That is the typical thing to be expected as we live in the world, especially as we share the truths of the Bible. This is our normative expectation. That is why Christ said in John 16:33: “…in the world ye shall have tribulation…” There is tribulation for the Word’s sake. 

So Joseph dreamed a dream, and it goes on to say in Genesis 37:6-7:

And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.

The word for “obeisance” is also translated as “bowed down” in verse 10, so Joseph was telling his brothers that their sheaves bowed down to his sheaf. Then notice their reaction in Genesis 37:8:

And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.

You see, it was his words. They especially hated the interpretation of his dream. When it is in parabolic form it is more bearable to them, but when it is interpreted they hated it. By the way, that is what God did with His Word. He sealed it up unto the time of the end. A great deal of biblical truth was unknown, being hidden from our understanding until the time of the end. Once the Word was interpreted by the Spirit and proclaimed by the people of God, it was hated – especially by the brethren. And that is because part of what had been sealed was the information about judgment upon the corporate church. The end of the church age was horrible information, as God delivered up the churches into the hand of Satan for destruction, and the people of God were to depart out. We were hated for that interpretation of the scriptures.

Just to be clear (due to the evil days we live in), once the Bible was completed, there is no supernatural activity from God in the form of dreams, visions, or tongues. What God did was to seal up His Word in the Bible in hidden parabolic form, and these are the mysteries that must be searched out in the Bible. At the time of the end God simply opened up the eyes of understanding of His people to these things. There were no voices, no dreams, and so forth. Since the Bible was completed, all that kind of activity is of Satan. 

What I mean by God giving interpretation of dreams is that a good deal of the scriptures were given by visions and dreams to prophets of old, and the interpretation is of God. Joseph said, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” And who is our interpreter? It is the Holy Spirit. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” The Holy Spirit interprets as we compare spiritual with spiritual, and we receive understanding and proclaim it. Again, let us make sure we understand that there is no supernatural revelation today outside of the Bible.

One more point before we continue is to think about how many brothers Joseph had. He had 11 brothers. And in this account of the prison experience in Genesis 40, the numbers “11” and “13” come up. There were 11 years from age 17 to 28 when he was a slave. The last two full years he was a prisoner. And we find in these dreams of Joseph the same two numbers are in view. First, concerning his dream of his brethren, 11 bow down to him. Then it says in Genesis 37:9-11:

And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

In this second dream, the 11 brethren are also in view, plus two – his father and mother. And they are likened to the sun, moon, and stars. The 11 stars would be the brethren, and the other two would be his father and mother, as represented by the sun and the moon. I do not want to get into the spiritual meaning of this, but the elect people of God are likened to stars. The promise to Abraham was that his seed would be as the stars of the heaven for multitude. The sun can be a picture of God Himself, and his mother is pictured by the moon, as the Word of God identifies with the law. The whole Bible is God’s law book. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, and that is how the elect would be born again in the day of salvation. They were born of the Word, so the Word is like a mother, is it not? God would bless the word and there would be spiritual life – being born again. We are told about the milk of the Word in 1Peter, and one would drink of the “milk of the word,” like a baby would drink his mother’s milk. So that would be the spiritual picture.

But let us look at the numbers. In the first dream we see the number “11” featured, and then the second dream features “13,” and all are bowing down. When Christ came the first time it was after 11,000 years of earth’s history. He was born in the Jubile year 7 B. C., which was 11,006 years from creation, and He walked among men and went to the cross, and so forth. The brethren bowed down. Remember when they came to apprehend the Lord Jesus in the garden. Judas brought a band of soldiers, and Jesus said, “Whom seek ye?” Then they all went backward and fell to the ground. Israel were the brethren of Christ, and they were the ones who sought to slay Him and to kill their own brother. And we see that with the 11 brethren that betrayed Joseph, historically, and turned him over for death, as far as they were concerned. He was thrown into a pit, which represents hell, and Christ came under the wrath of God in the demonstration of the atonement that He had actually performed at the foundation of the world. All that relates to the first dream of Joseph.

But in the second dream, 13 bow down, which is 2,000 years later than Christ’s first coming. You know, these things would not work out if this were 500 years ago or if it were 500 years in the future (for those people that think this world is going to go on forever). They do not see the deadly tremors of “a woman in travail,” as the whole world at this time is about ready to give birth to the “sons of God” that come forth out of the “womb of hell,” as it were, on the very last day, to be declared to be sons of God. It is just like the Lord Jesus rose out of hell to be declared the Son of God. But with the number “13,” there is the second coming of Christ, and He has already come. He came first to carry out the judgment on the churches and congregations of the world in 1988. Then on May 21, 2011 there was a transition to judgment on the entire world, and He began judgment on the nations of the world. So Christ has come, and the Bible says that every knee will bow, as it says in Philippians 2:10: “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth.” And we could go to several more verses to show what it means to bow, but in Judges 5 it speaks of Sisera after Jael took a nail of the tent and a hammer and pounded the nail through his temple. It says in Judges 5:27:

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.