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Gen_41:1-30
It is said in the common version that the animals “fed in a meadow;” a better translation would be “on the reed grass.” The word so translated is apparently an Egyptian one, achu; and a considerable amount of learned investigation has been bestowed upon it. It may be doubtful that the meaning of the term has been even yet ascertained. Professor Royle seems doubtful that any specific plant is intended—but supposes that if it be such, it is perhaps one of the edible species of scirpus or cyperus; “or it may be a true grass; some species of panicum, for instance, which formed excellent pasture in warm countries, and some of which grow luxuriantly in the neighborhood of water.” This learned botanist adds: “But it is well known to all acquainted with warm countries, subject to excessive drought, that the only pasturage which cattle can resort to is a green strip of different grasses, with some sedges, which runs along the banks of rivers, or of some pieces of water, varying more or less in breadth, according to the height of the bank, that is, the distance of water from the surface. Cattle emerging from rivers, which they may often be seen doing in hot countries, would naturally go to this green herbage, as intimated in this passage of Genesis.” Note: Art. Achu, in Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature.
All was natural enough thus far; and so likewise it is that, when the lean kine came up also, and found that there was nothing left for them to eat, they should stand beside the others, without attempting to seek nutriment in the now close-cropped and parched ground. But it was altogether unnatural and most surprising, that the lean kine should, even in the extremity of their hunger, fall upon their obese fellows. Such things, however, happen in dreams. But it is not at all wonderful that a circumstance so extraordinary shocked and startled the royal dreamer, and awoke him from his sleep.
The seven ears of corn on one stalk, in the second dream, was not, as some suppose, an extraordinary or unnatural circumstance—the wonder lay in the extraordinary fulness of each of the seven ears, and in the recurrence of the number seven. There is a species of bearded wheat, not only now and anciently, grown in Egypt, but supposed to be native to that country, and hence known by the name of “Egyptian wheat”—otherwise, “many-spiked wheat.” It is allied to the summer or spring wheat, Note: Triticum æstivum. Linn. but the spike is four times as large, and a hand in length, formed of spikelets, in two rows, from nine to ten in number—the lower ones shorter, and the upper most erect and large. If this, as is probable, were the species seen by the king in his dream, the circumstance to strike him was—that all the spikelets or ears were large and full, which is not ordinarily the case, and that the number of them was seven, which is by no means a usual number of spikelets or ears in this variety of wheat.
It is not easy to see how, even in a dream, the seven lean ears of corn could eat up the full ones. Therefore, although the Hebrew word is the same in both cases, our translators have in this instance wisely adopted the more general term of “devoured.” In horticulture, we continually see one plant consumed by another planted too near to it, and exhausting its nourishment; and this, we should suppose, was the kind of devouring witnessed by the king in his dream—only with greater rapidity, and with more immediate results, than is ever seen in nature.
The dream, on the whole, has some analogy to that of the Roman knight in Tacitus, who beheld the emperor (Claudius) crowned with a wisp of straw, with the stalks bent backward or downward—which was understood to prefigure a scarcity.
There was certainly enough in these dreams to trouble the mind of Pharaoh. As with the egg of Columbus, these dreams seem so easy to understand, now that we have Joseph’s interpretation before us, that we are inclined to wonder, not that the court interpreters and wise men could not explain it, but that they were so simple as to miss the interpretation. It is probable that they got astray from the plain and obvious significance, in seeking after one more remote, by the rules and calculations of their art—a case not very uncommon. The Jewish rabbins amuse themselves with speculations in this matter; and tell us, that the interpretation which they reached by the rules of their art was, that Pharaoh’s seven daughters (for that number they make him to have had) were to die, and that seven others should be born to him in their stead. But this, as may be supposed, was not at all satisfactory to their lord; for the new daughters would, according to the dream, have been but an indifferent compensation for the old ones. It is more likely that, as Josephus apprehended, they continued silent, and did not even pretend to offer an explanation. If we suppose the dream so plain, that an interpretation of some kind would at least be offered, it must be answered, that the minds of the Egyptian interpreters were probably, for the moment, so confounded, that the whole matter appeared as a dense mystery to them—the Lord having purposed, in the omnipotence of his will, and for the designs of his providence, to give the honor of the interpretation to Joseph, and make it the means of that high advancement which he had, even in boyhood, been led to expect. It must be admitted to speak well for the integrity of the Egyptian “wise men,” that they did not, so far as appears, attempt to satisfy the mind of the king by some invention, which might serve to explain his dreams. False as their art was, they believed it a truth, and would not act, when its rules afforded them no result on which they could rely.