Genesis 41:4

But here in the chapter before us, how wild and strange and alarming is the double dream sent to wake the king! Yet the word for "river" points without question to the Nile, and so does the marsh grass on its bank where cattle loved to graze. Dreams often confuse what belongs to a person or an object, to time and place. But this dream goes to the very limit. First the ugly, lean cows eat up the fine-looking fat ones. Then the thin, scorched ears of wheat devour the fat and good ears that grew on one stalk.

Again the dreams were prophetic. God was revealing what He was about to bring on the land of Egypt. First come seven years of very great abundance. Then follow seven years of severe scarcity and famine. Both depend on the waters of the Nile. By the end of the seven years of famine, all the fatness of the good years would be gone. In the picture language of the dream, the seven lean cattle would be just as they were at the beginning.

Egypt is a little strip of country on each side of the great river that flows through it. It owes its existence to that river alone... If the river only partly fails for a single year, the land is in distress. The world is like that too. The unbroken flow of God's mercies keeps it alive, when otherwise it could not exist. Yet for all that dependence, the world does not see what it depends on, any more than Egypt saw.

But that purpose was worthy of His goodness and compassion. This is a world of sin and suffering, of death and moral ruin and misery. In it He works both by uncommon generosity and by the hard pinch of want. For the good of souls He works more by the pain than by the prosperity. Then, in his anguish, a person may consider why such an affliction came from such a God. The two dreams taught in puzzling forms, but their aim was the same: abundance to the full, then the most abnormal consumption.

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 the wise men" of the land. He finds no one who can interpret his dreams. Man's natural pride of intellect blinds him to a simple fact: only God can interpret messages from God.

To whom did God give the key? To the humbled sufferer in the dungeon. The hour of his vindication was about to strike. In a single bound he would rise from the deepest dishonour, which he had never deserved, to the highest position a subject could fill... The abundance was not to be squandered in a wasteful and harmful way; the famine was to be relieved by a wise policy.

Pharaoh's dream foretells seven years of plenty, then seven years of famine that will devour them up. Even now the world is enjoying its plentiful years. It puts little faith in the future clearly foretold for it. Yet the time of famine is not far off. It will show the resources of Him who will then be seen as the only one able to meet its terrible demands.