וַיְסַפֵּ֧ר שַֽׂר־הַמַּשְׁקִ֛ים אֶת־חֲלֹמ֖וֹ לְיוֹסֵ֑ף וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ל֔וֹ בַּחֲלוֹמִ֕י וְהִנֵּה־גֶ֖פֶן לְפָנָֽי׃
And the chief butler told his dream to Joseph, and said to him: ‘In my dream, behold, a vine was before me;
On Dreams
[159] It would be well to examine the former dream first. It runs as follows: “In my sleep there was a vine over against me, and on the vine were three stalks, and itself was blossoming having put forth shoots. The grapes in the cluster were ripe, and Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the cluster and squeezed it into the cup and I gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand” (Gen. 40:9–11).
On Dreams
[163] “There was,” he said, “a vine before me” (Gen. 40:9), the wanted and the wanter, wickedness and the wicked, facing each other. That vine we fools till, little thinking that it is to our own harm, and we eat and drink its fruit, thus ranking it with both kinds of nutriment, a possession which proves to entail no half measure but a wholesale complete totality of mischief.