Genesis 40:21

Earlier in the chapter, Pharaoh’s chief butler and chief baker had offended their king and been put in the prison where Joseph was held, and each of them dreamed a troubling dream (Genesis 40:1–19). Joseph was in that prison because Potiphar’s wife had accused him falsely (Genesis 39:19–20), and he was in Egypt at all because his brothers had sold him (Genesis 37:28).

Before he explained the dreams, Joseph told the two men that interpretations belong to God (Genesis 40:8). The butler’s three branches were three days (Genesis 40:12), and within that time he would be restored. The baker’s dream also ran to three days, and its end was death (Genesis 40:19).

So verse 20 opens with “the third day”, the very day Joseph had named. The word for day, yôwm, can mean a single day or a longer span of time, and here it marks the exact day of fulfilment. That day was Pharaoh’s birthday. The Hebrew joins yôwm with the verb yâlad, which means to bear or beget and in its passive forms to be born, so the phrase is the day of Pharaoh’s being born. Royal birthdays in Egypt were great occasions, kept with feasts and with the king’s decrees, and they gave a king the chance to show his power in pardon or in judgment.

Pharaoh “made a feast unto all his servants”, so the officials of his court were gathered to see what he did with the two prisoners. What Joseph had said quietly in a prison was fulfilled in public, before the whole court. God ruled these events through a pagan king at his own birthday feast, and he used an ordinary custom of the court to bring his word to pass.

Verse 21 shows the butler’s dream fulfilled down to its last picture. He had dreamed of a vine with three branches that blossomed and brought forth grapes for Pharaoh’s cup (Genesis 40:9–13), and now he is back at that cup. Pharaoh “restored the chief butler unto his butlership again”. The verb shûwb means to turn back or return, and here Pharaoh turns the butler back to the office he held before, so that his fortunes are reversed and his place at court is given back to him. The word for that office, mashqeh, comes from a root meaning to cause to drink, and it names the work of the cupbearer.

“And he gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand.” The one who gives here is the butler, back at his duty, and Pharaoh is the one who receives. The verb nâthan is the common word for giving, used very widely, for putting, setting and making as well. The cup passing into the king’s hand was the daily act of the cupbearer’s office, and seeing him do it again showed the court that he was fully restored.

Verse 22 gives the other half of the fulfilment in a few words: “But he hanged the chief baker”. The verb tâlâh means to suspend or hang, and Joseph had told the baker that he would be hanged on a tree (Genesis 40:16–19). Hanging or impalement was a known form of execution in Egypt and the lands around it. The baker’s title comes from ʼâphâh, to cook or bake. His work was to prepare Pharaoh’s bread, a post of trust close to the king just as the butler’s was.

The verse closes with “as Joseph had interpreted to them”. The verb pâthar means to open up, and so to interpret a dream. Joseph had spoken to both men, and the butler at least lived to see both interpretations come true. The outcome is tied directly to what God had shown through Joseph. The LORD declares “the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10), and “the counsel of the LORD standeth for ever” (Psalm 33:11). Daniel would later tell another king that there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets through dreams (Daniel 2:28). The same gift of interpretation would soon bring Joseph before Pharaoh himself (Genesis 41).

“Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” Joseph had asked him for one thing: “think on me when it shall be well with thee... and make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house” (Genesis 40:14). Now it was well with him, and he forgot.

The verb zâkar means to remember, and in one of its forms it means to mention or to bring to remembrance. shâkach means to forget. The verse puts the matter both ways, with zâkar and with shâkach, and the doubling makes plain how completely Joseph had slipped from the butler’s mind. The man of rank who stood daily beside Pharaoh was the one man best placed to speak for Joseph, and he kept silent.

Genesis leaves his reason unstated. The likeliest reading is that once he was out of danger and restored, his mind turned to his own comfort and his duties, and the prisoner who had helped him dropped out of his thoughts. Two full years passed. Then Pharaoh dreamed, and his magicians and wise men were unable to interpret the dreams (Genesis 41:1–8). At last the butler recalled Joseph and spoke of him to Pharaoh (Genesis 41:9–13), and that led to Joseph’s release and his rise to rule over all Egypt under Pharaoh.

Under God, even this forgetting became part of his plan. The delay meant that Joseph came out of prison at the very moment Pharaoh needed someone to interpret his dreams, and so he came out as a ruler and deliverer, for Egypt and in the end for his own family and the young nation of Israel (Genesis 45). A man devises his way and the LORD directs his steps (Proverbs 16:9), and God works all things together for good to them that love him (Romans 8:28).

Genesis 40 ends with the two officials’ fates settled and Joseph still in his cell. The butler’s restoration came at once, while Joseph waited two more years in prison (Genesis 41:1). Joseph had served his fellow prisoners faithfully and freely, and the one man who could help him forgot him.

Psalm 105 tells Joseph’s sufferings as the working of God’s providence (Psalm 105:16–19), and the rest of Genesis shows that those two years were spent on God’s timetable. God kept Joseph’s word to the butler and the baker on the third day, and Joseph’s own deliverance came on a day God had also set.

In this chapter Joseph speaks God’s word, and that word brings restoration to one man and judgment to another. In this he points to Christ, through whom God has spoken to us in these last days (Hebrews 1:1–2). Jesus is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1–3), and whoever has seen him has seen the Father (John 14:9). His words also divide. He says, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25), while unbelief stands condemned already (John 3:18), and at his coming he will separate the nations before him (Matthew 25:31–46).

The third day and the lifting up look ahead as well. Christ rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4), as he had said the Christ must suffer and rise from the dead the third day (Luke 24:46). Jesus spoke of the Son of man being lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness (John 3:14–15), and said that when he was lifted up from the earth he would draw all men unto him (John 12:32). The English words “lifted up” link these sayings with verse 20. On the cross the Son was lifted up, sin was judged, and restoration was opened to all who believe. Through him God has reconciled us to himself (2 Corinthians 5:18–19), set us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:2), and given us a living hope and an inheritance kept for us (1 Peter 1:3–5). He is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

Joseph forgotten in prison, innocent and serving others, also foreshadows Christ. Jesus was innocent and unjustly condemned, he ministered to people who would later desert him, and the world, busy with its own concerns, rejected him. God remembered his Son. He raised him and highly exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name (Philippians 2:9–11), and everyone who confesses him as Lord and believes that God raised him from the dead is saved (Romans 10:9–10).

These verses set two kinds of keeping side by side. God kept his word to the very day, in a king’s court and through a king’s choices. The butler kept his place at the cup and let Joseph slip from his mind. People forget those who have helped them, often as soon as their own trouble is past, and Joseph bore that for two years in a prison the court had forgotten. God’s faithfulness is greater than any man’s memory, and his purpose for Joseph went on straight through the forgetting.

So the story gives us the God who sets the third day and also the end of the two years. Joseph’s faithfulness in small things, among prisoners and far from any help, was the very place where God was preparing him for greater work. And the butler’s lapse shows us ourselves as we can be once our own need has been met, beside the God who remembers his people and keeps every word he speaks.