Yosef’s story … of butler(s) and of baker(s)

After discovering questions that never bothered me before, and using learning skills acquired in classes taught by the late Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, a new approach to the dreams that Yosef interprets at the end of our parsha became apparent. Wonderfully, some of these ideas are also shared by Abravanel and Alshikh (and others), both of whose interpretations of chapter 40 are essential.

When the Torah describes for us the circumstances surrounding Pharaoh’s sending his servants into prison, the verses become inexplicably repetitive.

1. The king of Egypt’s butler and the baker sin to their master, the king of Egypt.

2. Pharaoh gets angry at his two officers: the officer of the butlers, and the officer of the bakers.

3. He placed them in the holding cell (mishmar) of the officer of butchers, to the prison (beit hasohar) where Yosef is imprisoned.

4. The officer of butchers appointed Yosef to be with them, and he served them, while they spent days (yamim) in the holding cell (mishmar).

5. The two of them dreamed a dream, each his own dream, and each his interpretation, the butler and the baker of the king of Egypt, who are imprisoned in the prison (beit hasohar).

6. Yosef came to them in the morning and saw they were perturbed.

7.  And he asked the officers of Pharaoh, that were with him in the holding cell (mishmar) of the house of his master saying, “Why are your faces so upset today?”

The most notable changes in the text from verse to verse are:

a. the difference between referring to the singular baker and butler (verses 1,5) and the “officers over many” (verses 2,7)

b. the sin (verse 1) vs. Pharaoh’s anger (verse 2)

c. the location of imprisonment — a beit hasohar (second half of 3, 5) vs. a mishmar (first half of 3, 4, 7)

d. the nature of the prison location — beit hasohar is where Yosef was at the end of chapter 39, while the mishmar seems to be a private prison in the house of the officer of butchers — Yosef’s former master

e. those who work for the king of Egypt (verses 1,5) vs. those who have a relationship with Pharaoh (verses 2,7).