"Do not interpretations belong to God?"—Gen. 40:8.
THE young son of Jacob, Joseph, had, you know, been sold by his cruel brothers, and made a slave of; and then a wicked falsehood was told about him, and he was put into prison. But wherever Joseph was he tried to do his duty, and so God blessed him; and the keeper of the prison soon found out how different he was from the others, and let him help. I suppose he helped to carry them their food and wait upon them; and he often could say a few kind good words to them.
One day two grand people came in as prisoners. One was the chief of all the bakers, who made bread for king Pharaoh; and the other was the chief of all his cup-bearers, who carried him his wine. Some wrong thing had happened, and they were both suspected of having had something to do with it, so they had been sent to prison.
WANTED TO KNOW THE DREAMS' MEANING.
One morning Joseph saw them both looking more sad than usual; and when he asked what was the matter, they said each had a dream, and they wanted to know what it meant; for the Egyptians used to think a great deal of dreams, and there were men among them who pretended to explain them. Most dreams have no meaning, but these had, and God put it into Joseph's heart to understand them.
The cup-bearer had dreamt that he saw a vine, and that it had three bunches of grapes, and that he was squeezing the juice into the king's cup as he used to do. Joseph said this meant that in three days the cup-bearer should really hand Pharaoh the cup again; and Joseph begged that when he was free, he would tell the king about himself, and get him set free.
Then the baker told his dream—that he had three baskets full of pastry and bread ready for Pharaoh, but that the birds came down and ate them up. Joseph was obliged to tell him that this meant that he would be hanged, and that the vulture and ravens would eat his flesh. So it happened. Pharaoh looked into the matter in three days' time; he caused the baker to be hung, and the cup-bearer to come back to his old place. But the cup-bearer was ungrateful, and forgot all about Joseph in his prison, trusting to him.
QUESTIONS.