Genesis 40 Series, Part 28, Verses 11-15

Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis. Today is study #28 in Genesis 40. Let us read Genesis 40:11-15:

And Pharaoh's cup was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand. And Joseph said unto him, This is the interpretation of it: The three branches are three days: Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler. But think on me when it shall be well with thee, and shew kindness, I pray thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house: For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews: and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon.

We have spent considerable time looking at “three days” in the Bible. First, it makes a difference whether the three days are broken down, or not. First, if it is broken down like we saw in Exodus 19 into “today, tomorrow, and the third day,” or like we saw in Like 13:32 where Christ said, “I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected,” then it is basically laying out the entire New Testament era. Two outpourings of the Holy Spirit are in view. It is the two periods of “rain,” the early rain and the Latter Rain, and that would represent “today and tomorrow,” and the third day would refer to Judgment Day, as presented by the statement in Exodos 19 that God would come down on the third day, or when Christ said that on the third day He would be perfected. In other scriptures it tells us that He will raise us up on the third day. 

So, again, when it is broken down, then we can understand it to represent the early rain period of the church age (today), and the Latter Rain period during the second part of the Great Tribulation (tomorrow), and the third day is Judgment Day, our present time, wherein Christ has come down to judge the world. He is carrying out a spiritual judgment through His Word, the Bible. But on the literal last day, there will be the end of all things and the “raising up” of the elect, as Christ said, “I will raise him up at the last day.” The Lord also said in John 2:19: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” It was true of Himself, and it is true of the body of Christ. On the third day we will go up, as is pointed out in Exodus 19. And when we go up, we will be perfected because we will have been transformed into new spiritual creatures. 

So whenever we see the “three days” broken up in that manner with specific references to each of the days, we can have that understanding. But it can also be understood as three days, referring to a time of judgment. The Lord Jesus referred to Jonah being in the belly of the whale three days, and He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” This was really Christ’s experience at the foundation of the world, but God demonstrated this fact over the course of that three days when Jesus began to suffer that Thursday evening in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was in agony and a great heaviness was upon Him, and great drops of sweat fell from Him as blood, and He was beseeching the Father, “May this cup pass from me.” What “cup” was that? We are going to look at the word “cup” in our study because we see it in our passage in Genesis 40:11:

And Pharaoh's cupwas in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.

This identifies, as we will see, with the wrath of God. I will quickly go to a verse that clearly shows that. We read in Revelation 14:10:

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:

The cup of His indignation is the wrath of God being poured out into the cup, and that is the “cup” that Jesus beseeched the Father that it might pass from Him. There is a lot involved in His statement because of the complicated nature of the atonement, as the Bible has revealed in our time that Christ actually died for sin at the foundation of the world. He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and that is when He originally drank of the cup of the wrath of God. There were no witnesses from mankind because man had not yet been created. Therefore God entered into human history, and Christ was born of a virgin, and He lived out in a tableau the things He had already done at the foundation of the world. And that is why it tells us in Hebrews 4:3: “…although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” 

What work was that? We saw it in John 6:29: “…This is the work of God, that ye believe…” It is the work of God concerning salvation, and Jesus performed that work at the foundation of the world, and that is the “work” that is spoken of in James 2:17: “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” It is not your work or my work. The Bible says in Galatians 2:16: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ…” His work of faith was accomplished at the foundation of the world, so the main point of that passage in James 2 is to show that a mere profession of faith is “dead.” It accomplishes nothing as far as salvation goes. But Christ had faith with works at the foundation of the world, and then He demonstrated that atonement by going to the cross, showing a great many witnesses what He had done. It was to “make manifest,” or to reveal, what He had already done. 

Christ drank of the cup at the foundation of the world by drinking of the wrath of God for the sins of His people, and that is why in the Garden of Gethsemane, He cried out, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me…” We can understand this because He had already made payment for sin, and there was no need to suffer the wrath of God to make payment for the sins of His people because it had already been done, but it was according to the Father’s will that Jesus should suffer again. His suffering was genuine and grievous suffering as He was separated from the Father in order to make this demonstration.

Again, the “three days” begam Thursday night in the garden, Friday night in the tomb, and Saturday night in the tomb, so the three days were Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, and then He rose up. 

So we want to see how God uses “three days” in several places in the Bible, and one consistent theme for its use is judgment. We have to determine the particular judgment by the context but judgment is in view, and we see this in Genesis 40 regarding the butler and the baker. They were both in prison, and then Pharaoh made his determination of their fate. I mentioned this before and it is speculation, but I think it is reasonable speculation. Since the Pharaoh had both the butler and the baker thrown into prison at the same time, it appears there was an attempt on Pharaoh’s life through poisoning of his food or drink. These two men are chiefs. They are the chief butler and chief baker. Also, the butler would be the cupbearer. Hopefully we will have time to look at the word “butler” in this study. So the butler had to do with drinks, and the baker had to do with food. So if there had been an attempt on Pharaoh’s life, there would have more than likely been a number of cupbearers covering different times of the day and night. 

So the attempt on his life was discovered, and the Pharaoh was not killed, but while these men were in prison they came in contact with Joseph and he interpreted their dreams. It was all according to the will and plan of God that this all happened, and we will see later that the butler will remember Joseph at the time that Pharaoh had his dreams.

But at the time that Joseph interpreted their dreams and told them “within three days,” in all likelihood the matter had been investigated and they knew who was guilty, given the fact that the baker was hanged, and it was determined that the poison was in the food. It does not necessarily mean that the baker was part of the plot but it could have been his failure in protecting the king. Again, so while this is speculation, they probably found out the poison was not in the drink, so Pharaoh lifted up the head of his chief butler and restored him to his butlership. His confidence in him was restored, and he trusted him again in his original role as butler. He apparently did no wrong, so he came out of prison, and we read of Joseph’s interpretation of the butler’s dream n Genesis 40:13:

Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler.

Concerning the word “butler” and the word “butlership,” it is a little difficult because of what I see in my concordance, which may or may not be true of your concordance. But when I look up the word “butler,” it tells me it is Strong’s #4945, and that word is used repeatedly throughout the chapter. And it also gives me the word translated as “butlership,” as we read in Genesis 40:21:

And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and he gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand:

In my concordance, it tells me that the word for “butlership” is the same Strong’s #4945. However, when I went to “Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance,” and I looked up that Strong’s number, I find that the Hebrew word is pronounced “mash-keh',” and it is found seven times in the Old Testament, but only once in Genesis 40, which we just read in verse 21. In other references we see it translated as “well-watered” in Genesis 13:10:

And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it waswell watered every where, before JEHOVAH destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of JEHOVAH, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar.

It is also translated as “drink” in Isaiah 32:6.

… and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.

It is translated as “fat pasture” in Ezekiel 45:15, and it is translated as “drinking,” concerning Solomon’s drinking vessels, and so forth.

So the concordance is telling us one thing, and the Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance is telling us something else. What Englishman’s does is to gather all the references. With the Strong’s Concordance, we have to look up the number, and it will give us all the words, and we have to go look up each word. Englishman’s gathers the words for us and puts them under the number, so it is a timesaver. It is rare, but there are mistakes in a concordance, as well as in Englishman’s, or in an interlinear Bible. It is rare. They did an outstanding job with all these Bible helps, but there is human error at times. So when this happens, I go to Jay Green’s Interlinear Bible, and I look at the text, which has Strong’s numbers. In this case, there were two different numbers. The word “butler” was #8248, and “butlership” was #4945. Then I went to Englishman’s for #8248, and I found all the references to “butler” in Genesis 40, as well as a number of other references.

We do not have time to look at that now, but when we get together in our next study we are going to look up the word “butler,” and we will see that it has much to do with providing drink. It is not always like a cupbearer provides drink to a king, but drink is even given to camels, as we check out this word. 

As we look at this, it is basically going to reveal that the butler being restored to his butlership where he will again give the cup to Pharaoh and press the grapes into the cup can definitely identify with the cup of the wrath of God. And yet it can also identify with other things, as far as bringing the Gospel. But we have run out of time in this study. Lord willing, we will look at these things in our next Bible study.