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Gen_41:15 And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, I have dreamed a dream, and [there is] none that can interpret it: and I have heard say of thee, [that] thou canst understand a dream to interpret it.
Ver. 15. I have dreamed a dream, and there is none, &c.] So men send not for the minister till given up by the physician. Then they cry out with him in the gospel: "Sir, if thou canst do anything, help us," &c. {Mar_9:22} Whereunto what can we reply, but as that king of Israel did to the woman that cried to him for help, in the famine of Samaria; "If the Lord help thee not, whence shall I help thee? out of the barn floor, or out of the winepress?" {2Ki_6:27} Did not I forewarn you, saying, "touch not the unclean thing," &c., and ye would not hear? "Therefore is this thing come upon you." {Gen_42:21 2Co_6:17}
And I have heard say, &c.] Pharaoh despiseth not wisdom, how meanly soever habited. Saepe sub attrita latitat sapientia veste: Paupertas est philosophiae vernacula, saith he in Apuleius: and Eumolpus in Petronius, being asked why he went so poorly apparelled, answered, "The study of wisdom never made any man wealthy." {a} And afterward he addeth, "However it comes to pass, poverty is the sister of piety, {b} and virtue is forsaken of fortune." Nudus opum, sed cui coelum terraeque paterent, saith Silius of Archimedes, that great mathematician. And Aelian observes, that the best of the Greeks, Aristides, Phocion, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Socrates, were very poor men: Lactantius, that Christian Cicero, as Jerome calls him, {c} was so needy that he wanted necessaries. All that Calvin left behind him, books and all, came scarcely to three hundred French crowns, as Beza his colleague witnesseth.
{a} Amor ingenii neminem unquam divitem fecit. - Petron.
{b} Nescio quomodo bonae mentis soror est paupertas. - Ibid.
{c} Lactantius quasi quidam fluvius Tullianae eloquentiae. - Jerome.