Genesis 41:7

But here in this chapter, how wild and strange and alarming is the double dream sent to wake the king! Yet the word used for "river" points beyond question to the Nile, and so does the word for the reed-grass on its bank, which cattle loved to graze. Dreams often muddle person and object, time and place. Here that confusion is pushed as far as it will go. First the ugly, thin cattle eat up the fine, fat ones. Then the thin, scorched ears of wheat swallow the fat, good ears that grew on one stalk.

The east wind was harmful and destructive to plants (Gen. 41:6, 23, 27) and dangerous to ships at sea (Ps. 48:7; Ezek. 27:26). It is a symbol of the withering power of God's judgments (Hosea 13:15).

Who that believes God's word can doubt that wonders so contrary to nature were all the more clearly of divine purpose? And that purpose was worthy of His goodness and compassion. In a world of sin and suffering, of death and moral ruin and misery, He works both by unusual plenty and by the hard pinch of need. For the good of souls He works more by the pain than by the prosperity. He does this so that in his distress a man's heart might ask why such trouble came from such a God.

God will speak in a vision to Pharaoh. He will speak by writing on the wall in Belshazzar's day, and by very plain speech in our own day. But now, as in days gone by, the wise men of this world fail completely when they try to interpret the Word of God. So Pharaoh calls for the "magicians of Egypt and all its wise men," only to find "there was none who could interpret" his dreams (v. 8). Man's natural pride of mind blinds him to the simple fact that only God can interpret what God says.

God had already used the king's captain, the king's jailer, and the king's cupbearer. Now He will use the king himself. And it must be done in God's way. It will be "a dream, a vision of the night." By it He will trouble Pharaoh's spirit and wake up the sleeping memory of Pharaoh's cupbearer.

At 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 start. God also gave Pharaoh the dream twice, so that he might realize the matter was settled, beyond any hope of being reversed, and that God would soon bring it to pass.

Seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine that will swallow them up — that is the prophecy of Pharaoh's dream. Even now the world is enjoying its years of plenty, and it hardly believes in the future plainly foretold for it. Yet the time of famine is certainly 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.