Genesis 40:5 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

According to the interpretation, &c.— That is, each man dreamed a significative dream, according to the explanation which Joseph afterwards gave of it. Houbigant would render it, after the Samaritan, each man his dream, according to the interpretation of it, i.e.. each of whose dreams had its proper and particular interpretation. That they understood their dreams to be significative, to express something respecting themselves and their state, is evident from the sadness which Joseph discerned in their countenances, Genesis 40:6 and from the cause which they assigned for that sadness, Genesis 40:8. We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it; that is, the usual interpreters of dreams fail here, they cannot give us satisfaction; see note on Genesis 40:8 ch. 41: or it may be, Here in the prison, we have it not in our power to consult those who are skilled in dreams, and who are divinely instructed to interpret them. It was a general opinion in the ancient pagan world, that dreams, or at least certain dreams, proceeded from the gods, and that particular persons were enabled by these gods to interpret them. Hence the large train of priests, prophets, diviners, &c. Bishop Warburton, who has treated largely on this subject in the third volume of his Divine Legation of Moses, observes, that, "the interpretation of dreams made a very considerable part of ancient pagan religion. The AEgyptian priests, the first interpreters of dreams, took their rules for this species of divination, from the symbolic learning in which they were so deeply read: a ground of interpretation which would give the strongest credit to the art, and equally satisfy the diviner and consulter; for by this time it was generally believed, that their gods had given them hieroglyphic writing; so that nothing was more natural than to imagine that these gods, who, in their opinions gave dreams likewise, had employed the same mode of expression in both revelations. This was probably the true original of the interpretation of those dreams called allegorical; that is, of dreams in general; for the wildness of an unbridled fancy will make all natural dreams to be of that kind. If this account of the original of this art stood in need of farther evidence, I might urge the rules of interpretation given from Artemidorus, and a great many more which might be given; all of them conformable to the symbolic hieroglyphics in Horapollo. As hieroglyphics were become sacred, by being made the cloudy vehicle of the AEgyptian theology, and as none but the priests preserved these sacred mysteries, the butler and baker might well be uneasy for want of an interpreter, as none could be gotten in the dreary abode where they were confined."