Dreams

 Genesis 40

            A short reading today. Let me comment on two things. First, the cupbearer and the baker. In our day, these seem like inconsequential jobs, mere servants. In the ancient world, they were jobs of significant responsibility since those who prepared food for royalty and those who served it were the ones responsible to make sure it was safe, which is to say, not poisoned. The bake and the cupbearer were responsible for the life and health of Pharaoh, the title of the king of Egypt. We can’t know for certain, of course, but seems likely that these men were caught up in some attempt on Pharaoh’s life or some issue of national security.

            The second thing I want to comment on is the relative frequency of predictive dreams in the Bible. Joseph himself will be involved in 5 of them. Abimelek had one specifically from God (Gen. 20); Jacob had his famous dream at Bethel (Gen. 28) plus another (Gen. 31); and God spoke to Laban in a dream (Gen. 31). (Biblically speaking Genesis has the most ‘divine’ dreams. They’re not this prominent again until the book Daniel, over a thousand years later.)

            Here’s the thing: we read Genesis and we think that the Lord speaks in dreams all the time. The same things goes for miracles. Because the Scripture is filled with them, we assume they happen all the time. Consider this, though: the reason the Scripture is filled with dreams (and miracles) is because they are unusual in human experience! It’s like the old saw about the news: dog bites man is not news because it happens all the time, but man bites dog—get that on at both 6 and 10! It’s why the news is filled with horrible stories: most people live perfectly ordinary lives.

            The same goes for dreams. most dreams are completely ordinary. Now, dreams, by their nature are kind of weird, even troubling. I read a book once on sleep and the current understanding of dreams is that they are the brains way of processing information and events and filing them into more permanent places in the brain. That probably explains why they so often feel relevant to our current experience—because they are. The brain is categorizing, analyzing, and filing our current experiences. But this does not give our dreams predictive value! Often when we are tempted to say, “Oooh! I dreamed about this!” it might be helpful to say, “And, no wonder, I’ve been worrying about this for a while.”

            We can say with certainty the dreams in the Bible had predictive value, because the Bible says they do. But, please, please, please! Be careful in trying to assign the same value to dreams today. God speaks to us through the Bible. That’s the source of Christian certainty. Everything else must be suspect.