פרשת מקץ תשי"א - חלום פרעה

And Joseph said unto Pharaoh: ‘The dream of Pharaoh is one; what God is about to do He hath declared unto Pharaoh.

That is the thing which I spoke unto Pharaoh: what God is about to do He hath shown unto Pharaoh.

And for that the dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is established by God, and God will shortly bring it to pass.

And Moses said unto them: ‘If ye will do this thing: if ye will arm yourselves to go before the LORD to the war, and every armed man of you will pass over the Jordan before the LORD, until He hath driven out His enemies from before Him, and the land be subdued before the LORD, and ye return afterward; then ye shall be clear before the LORD, and before Israel, and this land shall be unto you for a possession before the LORD. But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD; and know ye your sin which will find you.

And it came to pass in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof; and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.

. ותפעם רוחו, “his spirit was agitated.” The use of the word פעם, “bell,” suggests that in his mind alarm bells were ringing. When we encounter a similar reaction to a dream by Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2,1 the text there describes the King’s reaction as ותתפעם רוחו, as if two bells rang in his mind.” The reason is that there it was clear that the king had had two separate dreams, each one of which had alarmed him. In that story the king’s agitation was caused also by his failure to recall precisely what it was he had been dreaming (Daniel 2,5) This too reinforced his agitation, hence ותתפעם רוחו instead of ותפעם רוחו. According to the story in Daniel as understood by Tanchuma Miketz 2, the Kings’s agitation was severe as he had forgotten both the dream and its interpretation. The King threatened to execute his interpreters if they failed to give him satisfactory interpretations and helped him recall the substance of the dream, whereas he promised to reward them generously if they came up with an acceptable explanation (Daniel 2,4-9). Naturally, his interpreters could not do so, but they made the mistake of saying that “no man on earth can do so.”

ואין פותר אותם לפרעה AND THERE WAS NONE THAT COULD INTERPRET IT TO PHARAOH — There were, indeed, some who interpreted it, but not in reference to Pharaoh (לפרעה) (i.e., their interpretations had no reference to him as a Pharaoh, as a king), so that their words found no acceptance by him and he was not satisfied with their interpretation. They said: “You will beget seven daughters and you will bury seven daughters” (Genesis Rabbah 89:6).

מן הבור OUT OF THE DUNGEON — from the place of imprisonment which was made as a kind of pit Similarly, wherever בור occurs in Scripture it signifies a pit — even though it does not contain water (for בור is used of a cistern, excavated as a pit out of rocks) it is still called a בור; old French fosse.