The Lonely Dreamer

The Antidote to Tyranny in Mikketz

You have held my eyelids open; I am overwrought (nifamti), I cannot speak. (Psalms 77:5)

In the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream; his spirit was agitated (vatitpa’em rucho), yet he was overcome by sleep. The king ordered the magicians, exorcists, sorcerers, and Chaldeans to be summoned in order to tell the king what he had dreamed. They came and stood before the king, and the king said to them, “I have had a dream and I am full of anxiety (vatitpa’em) to know what I have dreamed.” (Daniel 2:1-3)

Next morning, his spirit was agitated (vatipa’em rucho), and he sent for all the magician-priests of Egypt and all its sages; and Pharaoh told them his dreams, but none could interpret them for Pharaoh. (Genesis 41:8)

“It was in the morning and his spirit was troubled [vatipaem ruḥo]” (Genesis 41:8), and elsewhere it says: “His spirit was troubled [vatitpaem ruḥo]” (Daniel 2:1)… Rabbi Yehuda said: Here, he knew the dream and sought an interpretation from [Joseph]. But there, [Nebuchadnezzar sought to know] both the dream and its interpretation. (Bereishit Rabbah)

The Targum renders it by “his spirit was agitated” (beaten upon)—it rang within like a bell (pa’amon). (Rashi on Genesis 41:8)

[Pharaoh’s] spirit was like a beaten body. (Ibn Ezra)

Pharaoh had also forgotten the interpretation of his dream, and when Joseph interpreted it, he recalled that he also had dreamt this interpretation. (Chizkuni)

“Now the Spirit of the Lord had departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. Saul’s attendants said to him, 'See, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the lyre. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes on you, and you will feel better.’... Whenever the spirit from God came on Saul, David would take up his lyre and play. Then relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him.” (1 Samuel 16:14-23)

For the tyrant’s bodyguard is not an escort of grace, but of necessity. They follow him, not because they love him, but because they fear him… Nor yet can you say that the soul of a tyrant is free from fear; else you would not see him provided with watchers and guards innumerable…” (Xenophanes, Hiero)

Dreaming is commonplace. We dream nightly—and often forget our dreams. Occasionally we remember them, then move on, with or without interpretation. There is no obvious reason dreaming should cause us to feel tormented upon waking, except perhaps if we had a nightmare. Typically, what haunts us is a scene of horror, not a sense of being unable to parse the dream. Unless the material of the dream is immaterial, and instead it is the “truth content” of the dream that bothers—i.e., what the dream means to us. Much commentary focuses on the failure of Pharaoh’s advisors to interpret his dream, yet covers over the more obvious question: why should Pharaoh need dream interpreters at all? Granted, it’s not every day that lean cows eat fat cows, or thin sheaves of wheat consume hefty ones. It’s also not every day that one has a doubled dream, waking up from one dream sequence, going back to bed, then dreaming a new variant. Indeed, Seforno notes that it was the doubled dream that stumped Pharaoh’s court (they thought the dreams separate rather than two parts of a whole). Still, why should Pharaoh’s dream require interpretation? Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder does not lead him to consult a dream interpreter. The trajectory of Joseph’s ascent from prison presupposes not just the failure of the chartumim—the magician-priests—but the agitation of Pharaoh’s spirit.

The agitated and/or sleepless ruler is a leitmotif in both Scripture and Western thought. King Ahasuerus can’t sleep, so he opens a book. King Saul is visited by an evil spirit, during waking hours, and summons David to soothe him (a tragic irony given that David the lyricist will be the very one to usurp his reign). Nebuchadnezzar awakes from a troubled dream-vision and, like Pharaoh, fails to secure help from his advisors, a set-up for Daniel’s ascent. Why do kings need soothing? Why do dreams reveal their troubled state? And why are their consultants unable to ameliorate them?

One possibility, suggested by Xenophon’s dialogue, Hiero—a conversation between a tyrant and a poet about whether the tyrannical life is a good one—is that sovereign pain is chronic. It doesn’t need a catalyst. Pharaoh may have had a particularly odd dream, yet the content of the dream is merely a trigger for an endemic unease, structural to those who hold power through force: “This could all go away.” And while we can hypothesize about the imaginative and interpretive limits of his advisors, another possibility arises: he rejects their interpretations not because of what they say, but because of who they are. Pharaoh is paying them. They cannot speak freely so long as they are dependent on Pharaoh for their lives. And Pharaoh cannot trust them so long as he knows that they are his sycophants. Both are caught up in a game. Bad leaders reward flattery and punish truth-telling; then, when they fear their relationships are rooted in forgery and convenience rather than true loyalty, they cannot call upon anyone to disabuse them of this rare moment of insight. Except outsiders. Joseph, Daniel, David, and to some extent Mordechai, can be trusted because they appear to have no motivation to replace the king. Moreover, insofar as they serve God, they are free to tell the truth as they see it, not just sociologically, but theologically. They are not intimidated by earthly threat, nor incentivized by earthly reward. Pharaoh cannot sleep, because his power is conditional, “not for the sake of heaven.” He has no barometer on how well his kingdom is doing because his chartumim are paid to tell him that everything is great. Only a Hebrew slave will have the audacity to tell him the archetypal prophetic story: the results are mixed, but you can do something about it. Rashi offers us the possibility that what bothered Pharaoh was not the dream itself, but the physiological feeling upon waking, something like a severe headache, a kind of mental tinnitus. Ibn Ezra makes it stronger: Pharaoh felt as if he was being beaten. This reaction to the dream is what makes it stand out and require an interpreter. And if we view it this way, Pharaoh has no way to know what interpretation will “work.” It’s not about giving the right interpretation, per se; it’s about making the pain go away. Pharaoh will know he’s in the presence of a great interpreter if their words take away his pain. Of course, if his pain is related to a self-consciousness and deep insight into his precarious rule, then no amount of assurance will assure. Pharaoh cannot pay people to tell him to stop worrying that he is Pharaoh. Now here is a most radical possibility: Joseph’s interpretation is indeed a great one; Joseph accurately forecasts both a period of abundance and a period of scarcity, and offers a plan for smoothing out the volatility, but this is all a secondary service. Joseph’s real job to be done is to help Pharaoh feel less alone. With an unlikely #2 by his side, Pharaoh now has someone with whom he can share the burden of leadership. He can only achieve this existential relief by making Joseph his equal and relinquishing his absolute power. Pharaoh must cede control to make his ringing headache go away. This sacrificial gambit is a microcosm of the dream itself. Our success is a function not only of how we do in times of abundance but times of famine.

Joseph understands the isolation of Pharaoh because he shares that isolation. God solves the problem of human loneliness (“it is not good for the human to be alone”), by bringing Pharaoh and Joseph together. Their partnership is evinced in the fact that Joseph the interpreter would have nothing to interpret if not for Pharaoh, and Pharaoh would have no interpretation were it not for Joseph. While most prophecies come to one person, in this case, the two must work together to piece it together. When, at the beginning of Exodus, [Pharaoh] takes the throne, he “knows not Joseph.” This hints at a turn in the temperament of the ruler from humble collaborator to self-involved strongman. Joseph saves Pharaoh from the structural risk of rulership: egotistical arrogance. “Because I have power, I must be right about everything. Because I am successful, it must be because I am a genius.” What saved Pharaoh from self-aggrandizement was the vulnerability of being in need. No amount of fame, money, or social reward can make the migraine go away. And when the migraine is a symptom or premonition that you are hated and feared, how much the more so?

Ironically, Joseph finds a more responsive listener in Pharaoh than he does in his own family system. Context determines our ability to listen. Just as Pharaoh finds a more responsive listener in Joseph than in his own court. In The Sixth Sense, Dr. Malcolm Crowe tells his troubled patient, Cole Sear, that ghosts don’t want to harm him; they just want to be heard. So too, dreams. So too, Pharaoh. And so too, Joseph. Pharaoh’s headache goes away when he is heard. Joseph is not simply a gifted interpreter (a precondition for the royal meeting); he’s a gifted listener. He understands Pharaoh’s isolation and pain and shows him a way through. While Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob receive prophecies directly from God, Joseph inculcates prophecy as an interpreter of the dreams of others. He elucidates prophecy. In this regard he is a modern. Joseph’s moment of ascent is marked not by the power to have dreams of his own, but to be present to the dreams of the Other.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh