And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, but no one can interpret it. Now I have heard it said of you that for you to hear a dream is to tell its meaning.” Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “Not I! God will see to Pharaoh’s welfare.”(Genesis 41:15-16) The Joseph that interprets Pharaoh’s dreams is very different than the one who interprets his own dreams as a youth. This Joseph is eager to deflect credit for his skill, and shows himself to be a God-fearing person even in the face of a foreign ruler who thinks of himself as a god. Joseph now clearly understands that the world does not revolve around him.
In Israel two famous dream interpreters served foreign rulers, Joseph and Daniel. Both offered their interpretations as having been given by God (Genesis 41:16; Daniel 2:27-48; 4:18). The difference between them is that Joseph’s ability is informal, whereas Daniel’s is most likely associated with his training (Daniel 1:4) … In Israel, dream interpretation is given acceptable status only when God’s direct involvement can be affirmed. … Israel agreed with the rest of the ancient Near East that deity could and did communicate through dreams. (John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament)
Rabbi Adam Rosenbaum of South Carolina explains: “The power of imagination is one of the great powers God has given people; even prophecy itself has its root in this power. Nevertheless, it is not the same as the prophetic vision whose true source is ultimately in the mind of God. [Prophetic visions enter the mind of the prophet] in the same way that fantasies enter the heart of a human being [except that, instead of emanating from the mind of God, imaginative fantasies have] their foundation in fantasizing about things that a person’s soul loves. And whenever a person is purified from evil qualities, such as lust, anger, pride, and quarrelsomeness, so that all the person’s fantasies are disconnected from each one of those contaminations, the person ascends to the level of prophecy. (Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, Tzidkat HaTzaddik) One sees how sober this whole process is in the fact that Joseph proceeds from the actual interpretation of the future immediately to quite practical suggestions. … What is theologically noteworthy is the way in which the strong predestination content of the speech is combined with a strong summons to action. The fact that God has determined the matter, that God hastens to bring it to pass, is precisely the reason for responsible leaders to take measures! (Gerhard von Rad, Genesis).”
Rabbi Ari Kahn comments: “The dreams that Yosef interprets teach him that it is there that he will rise to power, there that his family will become as numerous as the stars.The wine steward’s dream foretells his own redemption, and Paroh’s dreams show him the path to the future. Yosef sees God’s master plan unfold in the dreams of others; his own dreams speak of the time of their return to the land – not as a nomadic band of brothers but as a nation in possession of their Promised Land. His brothers never asked Yosef to explain his dreams; would they have understood the message had he revealed it to them? Did the brothers share Yosef’s ability to see beyond the present, to discern and understand hundreds of years of history in the visions he is granted? It seems not; they saw their own personal rivalries and jealousies, and took no responsibility for the future. Yosef was, in more than one sense, a visionary: He saw beyond the present, and taught others to do the same. For Yosef, all these dreams are of one piece; they are all connected to the glorious dream of Avraham. Yosef understands that his own personal life story is a vehicle for Jewish history.”
