Genesis 40:13

WEB

Within three more days, Pharaoh will lift up your head, and restore you to your office. You will give Pharaoh's cup into his hand, the way you did when you were his cupbearer.

KJV

Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head, and restore thee unto thy place: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh’s cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler.

Commentary

Yet within three days shall Pharaoh lift up thine head,.... The Targum of Jonathan adds, with glory; and the sense is, either that Pharaoh would raise him up from the low estate in which he now was, to the same exalted station in which he had been before; or that he would reckon and number him among his servants, whe n he should take a catalogue of them, or make a new list, so Jarchi and Aben Ezra; and this phrase is used of taking the sum of persons, or the number of them, and is so rendered, Exo 30:12 ; the allusion is thought to be to a custom used by great personages, to have the names of their servants called over on a certain day, as Pharaoh perhaps used to do on his birthday, Gen 40:20 ; when they struck out of the list or put into it whom they pleased, and pardoned or punished such as had offended; and this sense is the rather inclined to, because Pharaoh is said to lift up the head of both the butler and the baker, Gen 40:20 ; yet it may be observed, that the phrases used by Joseph concerning them differ; for of the baker he says, "Pharaoh shall lift up thy head from off thee", Gen 40:19 ; wherefore, though the heads of them both were lift up, yet in a different sense: the one was lifted up to the gallows, and the other to his former dignity, as follows: and restore thee unto thy place: to his office in ministering: to Pharaoh as his cup bearer: and thou shalt deliver Pharaoh's cup into his hand, after the former manner when thou wast his butler; which was signified in the dream, by squeezing the grapes into Pharaoh's cup he had in his hand, and gave unto him.