In three days Pharaoh will lift up your head — from you! — and hang you on a tree. And the birds will eat the flesh from you.”
Joseph has just promised the cupbearer freedom in three days, so the baker tells his own dream expecting good news too. The reply uses nearly the same words and means the opposite — why do two men in one prison end so differently?
The Same Phrase, Two Destinies
One writer sets out the three parts of the dream and what they meant:
F. B. HoleThe baker's dream had these key features: the baskets of baked goods were three; the baskets were on his head; and the birds ate the baked goods, which never reached Pharaoh. Again the interpretation was simple. Within three days Pharaoh would lift up his head and hang him on a tree, so that the birds would eat his flesh. His dream had exactly the opposite meaning to the cupbearer's.
The same phrase covered both men, and that is where the paths split:
William KellyOn the third day, his birthday, the king lifted up the head of each official. But the chief cupbearer rose to his post beside Pharaoh, and the chief baker rose to the gallows.
What Joseph Heard
Joseph did not read the dream by being clever:
William KellyClearly the chief baker saw nothing in his dream to discourage him from telling it to Joseph. But God gave Joseph the discerning ear. In the cupbearer's dream Pharaoh drank. In the baker's, the birds — not the king — ate out of the basket on his head. Joseph saw the huge difference. The credit does not go to mere natural intelligence.
What Was in the Baskets
One writer takes the three days and the baker's baskets as a picture of two ways of approaching God:
Leslie M. GrantThe three days still remind us of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. For the believer this is great blessing. For the unbeliever it is just as surely condemnation. But the bakery goods were the work of the baker's hands. The baker meant them for Pharaoh, just as men mean to please God by their good works, not realising that these things can never take away the sins they have committed. God certainly cannot accept men's works in place of the work of His own Son, who bore the agony of terrible judgment on Calvary. The bakery goods never reached Pharaoh's table: the birds ate them. The birds of the air picture the activity of evil spirits, who love to deceive people by flattering their so-called good works. It is Satan who gains from this, not God.
Another writer presses the image further. Effort and display were never the problem:
The Bible TreasuryBaked goods are not enough. Even if men pile them up, decorated and fragrant, as high as heaven, the evil spirits will waste them. The baskets are full of holes. The fancy baking of human religion is like Cain's sacrifice — his own design and his own labour, lifeless and bloodless.
The Tree and the Curse
The sentence has a grim symmetry: the birds that robbed his offering ended up feeding on him. One writer draws out what hanging on a tree came to mean in Scripture:
C KnappPharaoh hanged the baker, and the very birds that ate his baked goods ate his flesh. ... Awful end! Fearful doom! And, self-righteous sinner, it is a sure forewarning of your own. "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree," Scripture says.
One writer traces that curse to where it finally landed. Christ "redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." The baker died that death under judgment. The Saviour chose it (Hamilton Smith).
Two Men, One Prison, Opposite Verdicts
Nothing in the record separates these two men except their dreams:
The Bible TreasuryHere were two men in the same prison, equally condemned, and as far as we know equally guilty — or innocent. They were just alike in every outward way. Christ (Joseph) comes among them and pronounces one saved and the other lost.
Summary
- Same words. Pharaoh "lifted up the head" of both men on the same day — one to his old office, one to the gallows. Identical treatment, opposite ends.
- Different contents. The cupbearer's dream ended with Pharaoh drinking. The baker's put his own handiwork on his own head, and it never reached the king.
- Different reader. Joseph did not guess. He noticed that the birds, not Pharaoh, ate. God gave him that discernment; natural intelligence did not.
- Different end. Hanging on a tree carries the curse in Scripture. The birds that stole the offering — a picture of evil spirits — fed on the man.
- Same Saviour. The curse that fell on the baker as judgment fell on Christ by His own choice. He became a curse to redeem those who trust Him.