44 | DECEMBER 22 • 2022 

J

oseph is languishing in prison. Then, 
at the beginning of this week’s Torah 
portion, a sequence of events takes 
place, leading to the most rapid, radical 
change of fortune in the Bible. Pharaoh has 
two dreams that trouble his spirit. None of 
his priestly retinue can decode the dreams 
in a way that satisfies him. 
Pharaoh’s butler remembers 
Joseph. Hurriedly, he is taken 
from prison, given a wash and 
change of clothes and brought 
before the ruler.
Not only does he interpret 
the dreams, he also becomes 
the world’s first economist, 
inventing the theory of trade cycles. The 
dreams mean seven years of plenty followed 
by seven of scarcity. Having diagnosed the 
problem, Joseph proceeds to solve it: Store 
surplus grain in the years of plenty, then 
use these reserves in the years of famine. 
Pharaoh invites him to implement the strat-
egy, appointing him second-in-command in 
Egypt. Joseph moves from prisoner to prime 
minister in one effortless leap.
That is the narrative on the surface. One 
apparently insignificant detail, however, 
stands out. Pharaoh has had not one dream 
but two: one about cows, the other about 
ears of grain. Joseph explains that they are 
the same dream, conveying the same mes-

sage through different images. Why then 
were there two? This is his explanation:
“That Pharaoh has dreamed this twice 
means that God is firmly resolved on this 
plan, and very soon He will put it into 
effect.
” Genesis 41:32
At first sight, this looks like just another 
piece of information. Understood in the full 
context of the Joseph narrative, however, it 
changes our entire understanding of events. 
For it was not Pharaoh alone who had two 
dreams with the same structure. So, too, did 
Joseph at the very beginning of the story: 
one about sheaves of wheat, the other about 
the sun, moon and stars.
At that stage we had no idea what the 
dreams signified. Were they a prophecy or 
were they the fevered imagination of an 
over-indulged, overambitious young man? 
The tension of the Joseph narrative depends 
on this ambiguity. Only now, chapters and 
years later, are we given the vital information 
that a dream, repeated in different images, is 
not just a dream. It is a message sent by God 
about a future that will soon come to pass.
Why were we not given this information 
earlier? It may be that it was only later that 
God disclosed this to Joseph. Or perhaps 
Joseph has only now come to understand 
it. Or it may simply be a literary device to 
create and maintain tension in the unfolding 
plot. It may, though, signal something alto-

gether deeper about the human condition 
seen through the eyes of faith.
It is only in retrospect that we understand 
the story of our life. Later events explain 
earlier ones. At the time, neither Joseph nor 
his brothers could know that his dreams 
were a form of prophecy: that he was 
indeed destined for greatness and that every 
misfortune he suffered had a part to play 
in their coming true. At first reading, the 
Joseph story reads like a series of random 
happenings. Only later, looking back, do 
we see that each event was part of a precise, 
providential plan to lead a young man from 
a family of nomadic shepherds to become 
second-in-command of Egypt.

CHOOSING OUR PATH
This is a truth not about Joseph alone but 
about us also. We live our lives poised 
between a known past and an unknown 
future. Between them lies a present in which 
we make our choices. We decide between 
alternatives. Ahead of us are several diverg-
ing paths, and it is up to us which we follow. 
Only looking back does our life take on the 
character of a story. Only many years later 
do we realize which choices were fateful and 
which irrelevant.
Things which seemed small at the time 
turn out to be decisive. Matters that once 
seemed important prove in retrospect to 
have been trivial. Seen from the perspec-
tive of the present, a life can appear to be a 
random sequence of disconnected events. It 
takes the passage of time for us to be able to 
look back and see the route we have taken, 
and the right and wrong turnings on the 
way.
The novelist Dan Jacobson puts this 
thought in the mind of the narrator of his 
novel, The Confessions of Josef Baisz:
“Told one way, looking forward as it were, 
and proceeding from one event to the next, 
my story may seem to be a mere sequence, 
without design or purpose. Told another 
way, looking backwards, it can be made to 
resemble a plot, a plan, a cunningly invo-
luted development leading to a necessary 
conclusion. Being both narrator and subject, 
how am I to know which way to look?”
This is a truth not only about literature 
but about life. There is an intrinsic connec-
tion between time and meaning. The same 
series of events that once seemed mere 
happenstance becomes, with hindsight, the 

Divine Providence 
and Human Choice 

continued on page 45

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Joseph interprets 
Pharaoh’s dream (19th 
century woodcut)

