I’ve never separated Joseph’s interpretation from his subsequent proposal to Pharaoh, so I wouldn’t have been open before to this reflection on specialists and amateurs. I still wonder what palace intrigue or royal insight causes Pharaoh to give Joseph the job Joseph envisions. (Esther may be a farce, which helps to explain Mordecai’s similar rise to power.)
Amateurism (and I think citizenship is amateur activity) usually works out in civilizations as Koheleth tells it: “There was a little city, with few men in it; and to it came a great king, who invested it and built mighty siege works against it. Present in the city was a poor wise man who might have saved it with his wisdom, but nobody thought of that poor man” (9:14-15).
I’ve never separated Joseph’s interpretation from his subsequent proposal to Pharaoh, so I wouldn’t have been open before to this reflection on specialists and amateurs. I still wonder what palace intrigue or royal insight causes Pharaoh to give Joseph the job Joseph envisions. (Esther may be a farce, which helps to explain Mordecai’s similar rise to power.)
Amateurism (and I think citizenship is amateur activity) usually works out in civilizations as Koheleth tells it: “There was a little city, with few men in it; and to it came a great king, who invested it and built mighty siege works against it. Present in the city was a poor wise man who might have saved it with his wisdom, but nobody thought of that poor man” (9:14-15).