Is not this it in which my lord drinketh, and whereby indeed he divineth? ye have done evil in so doing.
Is not this it - not only kept for the governor's personal use, but whereby he divineth. Divination by cups, to ascertain the course of futurity, was one of the prevalent superstitious of ancient Egypt, as it still is in some Eastern countries. Bunsen says, 'Clairvoyance (the so-called magnetic sight) and prophesying in the ecstatic state, were of remote antiquity among the Jews and their neighbours; and Joseph, a man of a waking spirit, who, as a growing youth, possessed a natural gift of second sight, was able as man to see visions in his cup, just as the Arab boy in Cairo still sees them in his bowl' ('God in History'). It is not likely that Joseph, a pious believer in the true God, would have addicted himself to this superstitious practice, so prevalent in Egypt ('Jamblicus,' part 3:, sec. 14; Norden's 'Travels,' vol. 3:, p. 68; Hengstenberg's 'Egypt and Books of Moses,' pp. 38,9). But he might have availed himself of that popular notion to carry out the successful execution of his stratagem for the last decisive trial of his brethren. The device of Joseph was the more natural, that the ancient Egyptians were notoriously addicted to theft (Herodotus, book 2:, chapter 121; Aul. Gellius, 11: 18; Diodorus 1: 80.).