Genesis Chapter 40 verse 12 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 12-15. - And Joseph (acting no doubt under a Divine impulse) said unto him, This is the interpretation of it (cf. ver. 18; 41:12, 25; Judges 7:14; Daniel 2:36; Daniel 4:19): The three branches (vide supra, ver. 10) are three days: - literally, three days these (cf. Genesis 41:26) - yet within three days (literally, in yet three days, i.e. within three more days, before the third day is over) shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, - not μνησθήσεται τῆς ἀρχῆς σου (LXX.), record-abitur ministerii tui (Vulgate), a rendering which has the sanction of Onkelos, Samaritan, Jarchi, Rosenmüller, and others; but shall promote thee from the depths of thy humiliation (Gesenius, Furst, Keil, Kalisch, etc.), to which there is an assonance, and upon which there is an intentional play, in the opposite phrase employed to depict the fortunes of the baker (vide infra, ver. 19) and restore thee unto thy place: - epexegetic of the preceding clause, the כֵּן (or pedestal, from כָּגַן, unused, to stand upright, or stand fast as a base) upon which the butler was to be set being his former dignity and office, as is next explained - and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler. After which Joseph adds a request for himself. But think on me when it shall be well with thee (literally, but, or only, thou shalt remember me with thee, according as, or when, it goes well with thee), and show kindness, I pray thee, unto me (cf. Joshua 2:12; 1 Samuel 20:14, 15; 2 Samuel 9:1; 1 Kings 2:7), and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, - literally, bring me to remembrance before Pharaoh (cf. 1 Kings 17:18; Jeremiah 4:16; Ezekiel 21:28) - and bring me out of this house: for indeed I was stolen (literally, for stolen I was stolen, i.e. I was furtively abducted, without my knowledge or consent, and did not voluntarily abscond in consequence of having perpetrated any crime) away out (literally, from) of the land of the Hebrews: - i.e. the land where the labrum live (Keil); an expression which Joseph never could have used, since the Hebrews were strangers and sojourners in the land, and had no settled possession in it, and therefore a certain index of the lateness of the composition of this portion of the narrative (Block, 'Introd.,' § 80); but if Abram, nearly two centuries earlier, was recognized as a Hebrew (Genesis 14:13), and if Potiphar's wife could, in speaking to her Egyptian husband and domestics, describe Joseph as an Hebrew (Genesis 39:14, 17), there does not appear sufficient reason why Joseph should not be able to characterize his country as the land of the Hebrews. The Hebrews had through Abraham become known at least to Pharaoh and his Court as belonging to the land of Canaan (Genesis 12:15-20); and it is not a violent supposition that in Joseph s time "the land of the Hebrews" was a phrase quite intelligible to an Egyptian, as signifying not perhaps the entire extent of Palestine, but the region round about Hebron and Mamre (Nachmanides, Clericus, Rosenmüller) - scarcely as suggesting that the Hebrews had possession of the land prior to the Canaanites (Murphy). And here also have I done nothing (i.e. committed no crime) that they should (literally, that they have) put me into the dungeon. The term בּור is here used to describe Joseph's place of confinement, because pits or cisterns or cesspools, when empty, were frequently employed in primitive times for the incarceration of offenders (el. Jeremiah 38:6; Zechariah 9:11).

Ellicott's Commentary