Genesis 41:17

Why did such a mighty king need a prisoner, Joseph? Because God wanted to speak to Pharaoh. Only Joseph knew the true God, so he alone in all Egypt could help Pharaoh. In Pharaoh's dream he stood on the bank of the River Nile. In Egypt there is no rain. Without the Nile all Egypt would be dry like the desert. The Nile has a great flood every year, so it waters the land on both sides... So the Egyptians did not worship the true God in heaven. They worshipped the River Nile, and crocodiles from it, and such things.

But here in the chapter before us, how wild and strange and alarming the double dream sent to wake the king! Yet the word used for "river" points beyond question to the Nile. So does the word for the marsh-grass on its bank, where cattle loved to graze.

The Nile is the source of Egypt's water supply and prosperity. Joseph told Pharaoh that the seven cows were seven years. First would come seven years of plenty. Then seven years of famine would eat them up.

God's plans, however, must be carried out in God's time, by God's instruments, and in God's way. Joseph had probably hoped for release as soon as the butler got his job back in Pharaoh's household. But two full years must pass before God's time is reached. Now that the time has come, the last instrument in God's hand is ready to finish the work that leads to Joseph's exaltation. Already God had used the king's captain, the king's jailer, and the king's butler; now He will use the king himself. Moreover, it must be in God's way. It will be "a dream, a vision of the night," by which He will trouble the spirit of Pharaoh and wake the sleeping memory of Pharaoh's butler.

First God reveals what He is about to do; but even so man cannot profit by the revelation... the wise men of this world are utterly at a loss in their efforts to interpret the Word of God. So Pharaoh appeals to the "magicians of Egypt and all its wise men," only to find "there was none to interpret" his dreams. Man's natural pride of intellect blinds him to a simple fact: only God can interpret what God has said.

...he is the chosen of God to "confound the mighty" and "bring to nothing the things that are." So Joseph comes from the dungeon into the presence of earth's most powerful ruler. Pharaoh, speaking as a natural man, at once says, "I have heard it said of you that you can understand a dream to interpret it." Joseph at once confesses, "It is not in me." It was no more in Joseph than in the wise men of Egypt. But God was with him. So he can surpass the wisdom of the wise, stand without fear before the king, and say with complete confidence, "God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace." He does not say, "God can give Pharaoh an answer," however true that would have been. Faith goes beyond what God can do, and states plainly what God will do.

Joseph, with all his dreams and interpreting, gives us "the wisdom of God," but himself a despised one. Soon after we get him shown as the "power of God." He is a distinct figure of Christ, rejected by his brothers and sold to the Gentiles. There he shows himself as the patient, godly one, with the wisdom of God, while he is his father's delight too. Then he is exalted to the right hand of power.