The Honest Eyes of the Prophet

Abstract

Although innocent, the young Joseph found himself in prison, thrown again to the bottom of a pit. That prison, however, also became the site of the full bloom of his vocation, the one that had been announced to him by the prophetic dreams of his boyhood. Those early dreams got him to Egypt as a slave; the dreams that he interprets now in the land of the Nile will be the road that will make his great youthful dreams come true, and they will help him find his brothers who sold him and his father. It is in a prison where a new phase in the life of Joseph begins, the decisive one for himself and for his people. In that pit, from the teller of his own dreams Joseph becomes the interpreter of the dreams of others. As a boy he only told the story of his dreams, but did not interpret them. The pain he felt over being hated and sold by his brothers, becoming a slave and then being imprisoned helped him mature and discover his own self. And in the crucible of suffering and injustice he discovered his vocation: he became a servant of the dreams of others. And it was his salvation.

‘God will also predict something good for Pharaoh.’ ‘You say God,’ Amenhotep investigated. ‘You’ve said that several times. Which God do you mean? Because you come from Zahi and Amu I suppose that you mean the bull of the fields, the one that is called Baal, the Lord in the East.’ Joseph’s smile became more reserved; he shook his head. ‘My ancestors, the dreamers of God,’ he said, ‘made their pact with another Lord.’ “Then it can only be Adonai, the Groom,’ the king said quickly, ‘for whom the flute cries in the ravines, the god who rises again.”

(Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers)