------------------
WHEN he was only a boy Joseph dreamed that he was out in the field with
his father and his brothers binding sheaves in harvest time, and the
sheaf which he bound stood upright, and all the other sheaves bowed down
before his. Then he dreamed another dream, that the sun and the moon and
eleven stars bowed down before him. When he told these dreams it made
his brothers very angry, and they hated him, and the first chance they
had they sold him a slave into Egypt.
When Joseph was in the prison in Egypt it was a dream which saved all
the land in time of famine, but this time it was the king’s dream. King
Pharaoh dreamed one night that he stood by the river, and seven fat
cattle came up out of the water and fed in a meadow. Pretty soon
afterward seven lean cattle came up out of the water and ate up the
seven fat cattle. The king wondered what the dream meant, and when he
fell asleep again he dreamed that he saw seven large ears of corn come
up upon one stalk, and then seven thin ears that had been blasted spring
up upon the same stalk, and the seven thin ears ate up the seven good
ears.
When the wise men of Egypt could not tell the king what it meant his
chief butler remembered how Joseph had told him the meaning of a dream
when he was in prison; and when the king sent for Joseph he told Pharaoh
that the dreams were a warning from God, that after seven plentiful
years in Egypt there would be seven years of famine, which would eat up
all the corn they could save up, and so Joseph came to be a great man in
Egypt.
[Illustration: BEHOLD THIS DREAMER COMETH Joseph’s brethren determine to
slay him.]
Solomon, too, had a splendid dream just after he came to be king in the
place of David, his father. He was very young, and wondered how he was
going to get along and be wise enough to settle all the questions that
came before him as king. While he was thinking about it he fell asleep,
and he dreamed that the Lord appeared to him and asked him what he would
like the Lord to do for him, and Solomon said to the Lord that, though
he had been made king, yet he was only a child, and did not know how to
act, and asked the Lord to give him wisdom, so that he would always be
able to know which was right and which was wrong, and be a good king.
The Lord was so pleased with this request that he promised Solomon not
only to make him the wisest man that ever lived, but to make him very
rich and powerful as well.
------------------------------------