King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 40
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And it came to pass after these things, that the butler of the king of and his baker had offended their the king of . And 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 was bound. And the captain of the guard charged with them, and he them: and they continued a season in ward. And they dreamed a both of them, each man his in one night, each man according to the of his , the butler and the baker of the king of , which were bound in the prison. And came in unto them in the morning, and looked upon them, and, behold, they were sad. And he asked ’s officers that were with him in the ward of his ’s house, saying, Wherefore look ye so sadly to day? And they said unto him, We have dreamed a , and there is no interpreter of it. And said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to ? tell me them, I you. And the chief butler told his to , and said to him, In my , behold, a was before me; 10And in were three : and it was as though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth; and the clusters thereof brought forth ripe grapes: And ’s was in my hand: and I took the grapes, and pressed them into ’s , and I gave into ’s hand. And said unto him, This is the of it: The three are three days: Yet within three days shall lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt ’s 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 thee, unto me, and make mention of me unto , and bring me out of this house: For indeed I was stolen away out of the land of the : and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon. When the chief baker saw that the was good, he said unto , I also was in my , and, behold, I had three white baskets on my head: And in the uppermost basket there was of all manner of bakemeats for ; and the birds did eat them out of the basket upon my head. And answered and said, This is the thereof: The three baskets are three days: Yet within three days shall lift up thy head from off thee, and shall hang thee ; and the birds shall eat thy from off thee. And it came to pass the third day, which was ’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants. And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and he gave into ’s hand: But he hanged the chief baker: as had interpreted to them. Yet did not the chief butler remember , but forgat him.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The patriarchs, 2000 BC to 1600 BC ›
Abraham's family as herdsmen among settled Canaanite city-states, in a world where Egypt and Mesopotamia are the great powers and Canaan is the corridor between them.
- Mesopotamia
- Abraham's own century is Hammurabi's. The great empire of Ur has already fallen, and Babylon rises under a king who published a law code on a stone pillar for everyone to see. Reading Genesis alongside Hammurabi's laws is illuminating in both directions: some provisions are strikingly similar, and the places where Israel's later law diverges are the places worth stopping at.
- Egypt
- The Middle Kingdom, wealthy, bureaucratic, and organised around the Nile flood. Egyptian tomb paintings from this period show Semitic traders arriving with donkeys and striped cloaks, which is more or less the picture Genesis gives of a family going down to Egypt in a famine. Toward the end of the era the Hyksos, rulers of Semitic origin, take the delta.
- Anatolia and the Aegean
- Assyrian merchants run a long-distance trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia, leaving thousands of clay letters about copper, tin, and debt. On Crete the Minoan palaces are at their height, with plumbing, frescoes, and a script nobody has yet read.
- Further afield
- The Indus Valley cities are in decline after centuries of grid-planned streets and drains. In China the Erlitou culture is building the first palace complexes. Stonehenge is standing and already old.
All of Genesis