Genesis 41 Study Notes

41:25-32 Joseph prefaced his interpretation with three important insights: first, Pharaoh actually had only one dream (lit “Pharaoh’s dream is one”), though it was given twice using different symbols. Second, the dream’s source was the one true God (lit “the God”). Third, it revealed what God was about to do.

41:33-36 Joseph advised Pharaoh to take specific steps in preparation for the upcoming fourteen-year cycle of events in order to create a food reserve for the seven years of famine.

41:37-46 Joseph’s insight into the dream, along with his ability to devise such a prudent plan, convinced Pharaoh that Joseph had God’s spirit in him. Pharaoh gave Joseph the Egyptian name Zaphenath-paneah (“Then God Said, ‘Let Him Live’”) and a wife of high social status. Asenath (“She Who Belongs to the Goddess Neith”) was the daughter of Potiphera, a priest at On (Heliopolis), the prestigious religious center of solar worship in ancient Egypt. Joseph, who was now thirty years old, had been transformed by God in thirteen years from an imprisoned foreign slave to the world’s second most powerful man. He who had spent years in prison now went throughout the land of Egypt overseeing a project that would save the lives of untold thousands.

41:47-52 In addition to giving blessing on the harvests, God blessed Joseph’s personal life with two sons. Manasseh’s name reflected the fact that God had helped Joseph forget his hardship both in Egypt and in his whole family, with its sordid background of rape (34:2), murder (34:25-26), incest (35:22), deception (34:13), and betrayal (37:28). Ephraim’s name confessed that God had made Joseph fruitful in a land where he had once been treated as a despised felon.

41:53-57 As Joseph, guided by God’s revelation, had said, after seven years of abundance famine struck every land in the region, even beyond Egypt’s borders. Pharaoh directed the people to go to Joseph, who sold grain to the Egyptians to preserve the lives of his adopted countrymen. However, as other nations learned of Egypt’s food supply, they came to Joseph. In the centuries to come, Egypt proved to be the breadbasket for the Mediterranean world.