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)